I am very glad to meet you all here in Bled. I welcome the opportunity to express my thanks for you having accepted our candidature.

I am not going to give a presentation of our company ... Nevertheless, I want to share with you a few impressions in this auspicious moment.

I wrote the application with the frustrating feeling of the step brother, as there are many in the Eastern countries, who is begging for himself and his world a kind embrace.

I greeted you with a gesture which can mean either Hello or Bye-Bye. As a Romanian philosopher said, you, the European people, have always favored a society where a decorous smile, politeness and a courtly greeting and handshake are the only measure for civilized society. But, at the same time, you do not assert that some 1500 years ago a European culture evolved that was to unfold, exploit, but still educate with its values the rest of mankind. Thus, everything happening now in the world and will take place in the universe tomorrow bears the imprint of Europe. We, the Europeans continue to be conquistadors, pirates, corsairs. But now we are corsairs of the spirit and this changes everything !

Still, you let the people live near one another as if they were one without another. And being supported by an intricate technique, which not only allowed you to get anywhere but rather, to get away from any place, you took over and advocated the society of 'Bye Bye'.

Since you don't say this, should we, the outsiders, the outcasts voice it? The great European personalities have taught us that two unique centuries will prevail in the Annals of the World by the communion of their stray geniuses.

As you have welcomed us back today, like the wandering son who left to expiate the sin of its family, we thank you for having sacrificed the fat lamb and listen to what we have to say with the tolerance shown to the newcomer who still doesn't know to play by the rules. I have told you all these thing, things for learned and wise people, because I realized that tourism has came to be the most powerful mass media. From a very young age the child gets accustomed to holidays. Then, from desire, alluring brochures to the holiday itself we create the image, the illusion of happiness. We sell them their remembrances. We are endowed with most effective means of persuasion, which would have gratified even Apostle Thomas. This is the result of our being continuously in immediate contact with life and reality, but reality as we present it. Thus, we are simultaneously physicians, wizards and businessmen. In such hard times, when the world is shaking on its foundations under the ravaging struggle for power and greatness, in times of bloodshed, famine or illness, we are among the few ones who can bring relief and comfort. This is why I think that we have to meditate upon this dimension of our craft, on the effects of our actions lest the rush after money, glory, power or organizational perfection should make us break that supposed oath of Hippocrates which we should have taken when we made our start in this trade. Now, at a time when this artificial environment was created by the multimedia we should bring in and protect the human dimension of this mass media means, tourism.

I too felt the need to know the scholars and the wise on my side! I have written hundreds of letters to the western part and got no answer while an entire system was falling apart around me dragging the former tourism along.

Thanks to your kindness, I am here now, face to face with you. I suggest, that together we should find the means to bring to this part of Europe where I come from the system which should give this new means of mass media to several million people, which are already accustomed with this modern drug - tourism - which used to create their pleasant remembrances and which is no longer accessible to them.

Thank you for your attention and, again, for giving me the chance to be here. I am looking forward to welcome you in Sibiu, my native town and close with the usual greeting in our parts: the Latin 'SERVUS'.

Ilie Rotariu