It was forbidden to have your balcony closed up because this ruined the aesthetics of the block. But the interdiction only applied to buildings on the main streets, on the boulevards. The argument was that the closed balconies weakened the structure of the block, made it harder to refer to and spoiled its looks. It is one thing to have them all alike, and another to end up with every one different from the other.

Also, it was forbidden to hang your laundry on the balcony. The balcony was only for flowers and refreshing air. (M. A., 113)

BARTER

If you just happened to work somewhere where they made goods that were in demand, you called that luck. Let?s say you were a cook. If you were a cook, everyone wanted to know you. You had unrestricted access to goods that you could trade in exchange for other goods. I for one worked in a clothes factory and ran at the same time my own sportswear business. They weren?t the regular type that you could find in any shop, but the posh ones with rubber imprints. I went to the butcher?s, gave the fellow sportswear to go around for the whole family, and left home with a kilo of meat in my bag. (I. H., 48)

For me the barter was the intricate web of connections. Bookshop assistants, chiefly the seniors, heads of departments, head grocers, etc. I took a book from the bookshop and traded it for meat from somewhere else. People were killing to lay grab on good books such as Clavell?s ?Shogun? or Fowles? ?The Magus?. (I. H., 54)

BASIN

Semi-spherical recipient usually used for washing. When the magnificent construction sites were opened (the Danube-Black Sea canal, the hydroelectric station in Bicaz, etc.) the workmen were nominally supplied with (deformed, yet usable) aluminum basins.

Much later, when we finally got our television (one national channel with a two-hour broadcasting program per day, dedicated to the Ceausescus), these basins became notorious. Since cable TV did not exist and parabolic aerials were forbidden, against reception of foreign TV channels, some crafty people, particularly in the north of the country, used these aluminum basins to make clandestine parabolic aerials. This was the occasion of an announcement posted in the window of a ?Ferometal? shop in Suceava: ?We have basins for cabling in the Russians.? (51)