My Memoirs - Citizen of the World

minutes with the line never moving because the island was full of
tourists that needed to return to their cruise ships. As I am very
impatient, I said that we would be better to walk down the 700
stairs. We proceeded to the beginning of the stairs, where we could
descend to the bottom of the hill and found many mules, whose
owners wanted tourists to ride down the wide steps on their mules.
I decided to just walk down the hill and forgot completely about
my wife, daughter and son-in-law. I started coming down the hill
and the owner of one of the mules came after me, saying that I had
to pay, even if I did not take the mule, which I knew was not true. I
avoided him and he became very angry and started to curse at me.
The steps were filthy, so when I got to the bottom, my shoes
smelled and were filthy. I set down in a bar by the pier and had a
nice cold beer. About half an hour later, the rest of the family
arrived very upset because I had not waited to help my wife go
down the hill -- rightly so, because she had had a hip replacement a
few weeks before, so she really needed help. I confess that when I
am walking, I have a tendency to walk in front the groups, so I had
forgotten completely about my family. Thank God, my wonderful
nice son-in-law, Arthur got her arm and helped her to walk down
the hill. I felt terribly guilty, but I honestly did not think about it.
My wife was lucky to have had Arthur, who is much younger than
me; therefore she was in good hands. It was not nice what I did,
but at least there is a story to be told and have lots of laughs about
when we are among our friends.
Russia
As I have always been very interested in political science, in 1975
I decided to travel to the former Soviet Union. It was quite
complicated to enter that communist country. I gathered all the
information about the requirements to travel to Russia and I was
informed that not only I needed a passport, but also a visa and 12
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