PLAY CONTEST IN FAGARAS, ROMANIACHARACTERS:

GRANDAD: student

WAITRESS: student

ROMANIAN STUDENT: STUDENT

GRANDDAUGHTER. Student

Inside a café in the universitarian area of Oviedo

Text

Waitress: Hello, Good morning!

Grandad: Hello, good morning!

W: What can I serve you?

Grandad: I´d like a coffee and you? ( to her graddaughter)

Gradd: I´d like an orange juice and a ham and cheese sandwich

(they sat at the end of the room)

Grandad: I think It will be quite good for you, you will learn a lot and who knows? Perhaps you might find a job and you will like the place after all, you know how the situation in this country is.

Gradd: I´m a bit scared , granddad! Another country, another culture and I´m going to stay so far…this is the first time I have moved for such a long time…

Grandad: Don´t worry , anyone can be quite far but feeling quite near (laughs)- moreover, with Internet and all that………when I had to emigrate to Belgium in the sixties, due to the mine strikes, I had to communicate by mail with your grandma, and that was not always so easy… So, take it as an important choice to learn a lot about life.

Grandd: I don´t know, I´m a bit scared, anyway. Well, I´m going to the university to fill in the application for my scholarship. See you!!

The granddaughter stands up and goes out of the café. After some time, a Romanian Erasmus student, gets in.

RE: Hello, Good morning, I´d like a coffee.

(the waitress doesn´t understand well)

W. Excuse me ?

RS: One coffee, please.

W: Oh, yes, of course, in a minute.

( the granddad stared at him and suddenly he gets up towards him, inviting the boy to sit down)

Grandad: ( to the waitress) dear!! I will invite the boy!!

Where are you from?

S: I´m from Faragas, in Romania, But I´m studying in Bucarest.

Granddad: So , what are you doing here in Oviedo?. Waitress!! Bring the boy some potato omelette!!

S: Well, I´m studying Spanish and I am going to spend one year here, thanks to an Erasmus scholarship.

( the waitress comes with the omelette)

Grandad: Ah, Romania, I know some things about Romanians, although here in Spain , people have a wrong idea about your country.

( the granddad gets closer and talks in a low voice)

Here, people are not very well informed. (he laughs)

St: Aren´t they? And what do you know exactly about us?

Grandad: I know there was a hard dictatorship for 40 years, as it happened in Spain, although yours was a communist one.

St: Yes you are right.

Grandad: I know people rebelled against the dictator, Ceaucescu, and they wanted to change the country….like here in Spain

St: I can see you knoe many things about my country.

Grandad: Yes, your country had also a kind of political changes, as we had. Things seemed to go well….work, German or French investments , easy money, quite like in Spain.

ST: Yes, you are right again.

Grandad I also know that young people in Romania- as young Spanish people- were a bit confuded at that time and preferred earning a salary to studying

ST: Yes, that´s it , how do you know?

Grandad, Well, I read a lot on Internet. It´s more reliable than newspapers or TV. But, tell me, Do you like Oviedo?

ST: Yes, a lot. But this is my first time abroad, far from my country, alone and with little money. I´m a bit scared.

( The granddaughter appears and sat down with them)

Grandad: Scared? I was also when I had to go to Belgium in the sixties .. look, this is my granddaughter Cristina, tomorrow she´s going to Stuttgart with an Erasmus scholarship and, like you, me or those who had to emigrate, she is scared too.