I am saying this because I remember my neighbours? reaction, their discontent, because people were asking themselves why the miners didn?t finish ?cleaning up? why they were loitering without taking action. A few of my neighbours who were miners were waiting for the signal coming from the union leaders in order to head to Bucharest.

Later on I had the chance to see images with aggressive miners, with bats in their hands, hitting people down the street. I especially remember the images with the workers in Bucharest, congratulating them, middle-aged people who were saying that the miners where the nation?s pride. It is more than obvious that I cannot forget Iliescu?s apparition at the balcony, while pi-ously thanking the miners for their self-denial. Big technical perversity can the television be if in wrong hands!

After the miner riots, during the fall of 1991, I went to university. My mother was afraid of letting me go, since Bucharest was a dangerous city. She kept on telling me that I would be better off in Cluj, since it was quieter, cleaner.

This is when I grew wise and I realised all about the ?ragamuffins?. The walls of the University still preserved the marks of the Revolution. You could still see inscriptions saying ?Down with the communist regime?. I couldn?t even get the chance to properly read them and at the time I didn?t think to write them down. Well done for those who did, Irina Nicoau gathered them up in a booklet. I didn?t think that they would be gone. After the miner riots the inscriptions had been scraped, direct order from the leaders, the walls washed because there were no money for renewal in the emptied funds of the town hall.

Even if everybody wanted the Revolution to be forgotten as street riot, concealed and settled according to the rules of those acting as its unique representatives, the students of my generation wanted to carry on.

I wanted it less, it took me some time to understand and from then on I kept on feeling the fear of being once again lied to I had the chance to witness manipulation, to learn the feeling produced by imposture, no matter the form. I used to sit back, either admiring the active ones or suspecting them of God knows what hidden interests, neither of the two attitudes being eventually carried out. But I was curious, that is why I was letting myself dragged in all sorts of new situations.