Detergent? I only remember my grandmother?s homemade soap (G. S., 107)

The population used soap made in the countryside or Romanian soap ?Cheia?, which could be bought in the shops. You could buy Romanian detergents ?Trial? and ?Dero? in the shops, but you had to queue for them. (A.-I. B., 34)

During Ceausescu?s regime we used to stay in a queue long as a whole day to receive 2 big boxes of detergent. They cost 2 lei a box. (A.-I. B, 102)

There was almost nothing to be found in the shops. When we found detergent, we would buy kilos. They were packed in paper bags, filled with ?Perlan?, which we would pour in a glass jar when we arrived home. Something happened once because of the detergents-I went to my sister?s in the countryside, because it was Palm Sunday, my brother-in-law?s birthday. When I arrived there he was just castrating the pigs. I was glad we were going to eat some? delicatessen?. We kept all of them, put them in vinegar and started to party. Late at night we remembered we hadn?t salted them. We were only men, the wives had gone to bed, so we didn?t wake them up. And we started to search after the salt. We found it finally in a big glass jar and we started sprinkling the so-called salt over the pig fries and we thought they were the best we had ever eaten. We were so drunk that we didn?t realize anything. In the morning my sister came to me: ? What the hell did you do yesterday with the detergent? What?s it doing on the table? (G. S., 126)

There was a diplomatic shop near Rosetti Square, on Diana street. You needed a card to enter. I once got in and all goods were awfully cheap. At that time the shortage of goods was not so evident, so I was not startled to see eggs or hard cheese? (C. V., 129)

DISEASES

There were no epidemics in this country. There was no cholera. Actually there are, to this day, cases of cholera in the Danube Delta, but the word could not be uttered back then. You couldn?t call it ?cholera?. The phrase was ?diarrhea of I-don?t-know-what-sort?. There was no AIDS. No one talked about HIV. (I. H., S. R.-B., 15)