Moving to Bucharest was a whole adventure. If your connections did the job for you, very well. If not, you were forced to enter a network of partial solutions, compromise and delays which cost a lot of money, because you depended upon the district officer, the executives at the Fiscal Office, and other such fearful instances. If you had the misfortune to settle temporarily within an area of 30 km away from Bucharest, that was it, you never made your way into the capital. The people who lived just outside Bucharest did not stand a chance, the regulations said it explicitly. Only marriage did it. A house was hard to get too, not even the trade union could help you. (114)

Once I tried to arrange for a girl from the province, Carmen was her name, to get married with a guy who lived in Bucharest. The girl was stunning, great looks and all. The guy wanted 10,000 lei, the girl said yes, but he asked for something more: one night together as man and wife. The girl ran away, it was out of the question. That?s how a Bucharest ID idyll came to an end. (I. H., 48)

I remember one time when I went out to buy chicken. If I presented my work card, I could have, besides the chicken, some cheese, butter and some other things. When I reached the counter, the shop assistant told me she couldn?t give me the cheese and butter because I didn?t have a Bucharest ID and that the card was not enough. I started to shout at her. My colleagues who were standing in queue with me began raising hell and told the shop assistant to give me what I wanted. But she wouldn?t. I happened to have a pair of tongs in my hand, so I threatened her with the tongs and told her that if she wouldn?t give me the cheese and butter, I?d pull out her nose with my tongs. What with the screaming and threatening, she finally gave me the cheese and the butter, together with the chicken. (I. C. M., 172)

BULB

Economies were in order, not of our own money, but of national electric power. So that no street lamp was ever lit, and after ten in the evening the windows of the shops and restaurants went dark. In the staircases of the blocks there were bulbs only on every other floor, and inside their homes people lived in half dark, simply because there was nothing else on sale but bulbs of maximum 40W. It was hell, we read at lamp light ? there were those bed lamps with metal screen and the bulb in the shape of a candle. (125)

Permanent concern of the State. The advice was to use only 40W bulbs in the rooms. One project was to put fridges out of order during winters. A fair proposal, since the temperature inside was so low the food could not possibly get altered. (51)

Bulbs were a real capital in the ?80s. We all chased them, especially those that exceeded the regular 40W. The bulb on the hall of the block was always being stolen. Some people used to protect it with a wire screen and put a small lock on it. Others just replaced the bulbs one after the other, whenever they had any. (90)