Barefoot but Dreaming: My Transylvania to California Odyssey

Writing a Memoir often means a series of narrative stories about someone’s life and experiences, providing a set of principles and values that were his guidelines.

This book, however, is different. It walks the reader in another world, now almost forgotten and presents sequences of village life deep inside Transylvania, before and during the communists taking control of Eastern Europe. Some of his life dilemmas, conflicts and resolutions - right or wrong are summarized with closure to some difficult periods and life encounters.

The author describes in simple sentences his struggle to escape the realm of poverty, isolation and injustice, through education and continuous endeavor for recognition, yet, without compromising his belief and ethical upbringing. Always aiming to excel, the author does not hide his failures, disappointments and defeats, thus providing an optimistic approach of never giving up.

The reader will surely be amazed to re-live the emotions of the first love, with its thrills, excitements, but also disappointments and sufferings. But love endures, always wins, conquering the hardest of hearts, as you will discover in this book.

After a stellar professional success that gave him a chance to travel the world and experience life in East Africa, the author was suddenly marginalized due to a political feud, thus leading him to plan and undertake escaping from a tightly-controlled society, seeking refuge and starting a new life for him and his family in California. The struggle for recognition in order to achieve the American Dream was not easy, requiring patience and hard work, but also major adjustments in setting goals and priorities not only for himself, but for the entire family.

Traveling and seeing the world was a passion for the writer from an early age, but it became the coronation of his life during his last years, while completing his almost 53 years of continuous employment, being involved in various projects on all continents. He witnessed dramatic changes in the social, political, economical and environmental concepts, some of them mentioned in the book.

By coincidence the author was involved with, and spent time dealing with tunnels, therefore it was appropriate for him to confirm the saying that there is light at the end of the tunnel, thus providing a ray of hope for young people to break barriers of poverty, isolation and temporary or occasional failures.