TRIPS ABROAD

You could leave the country if you didn?t have a police record, or relatives abroad, in a word, if you were a serious person. You could leave every year. I can?t remember what my salary was, but you could manage with bank loans. Anyway, the cost of the trip covered pocket money, too. You could also trade something and get yourself some more money, and so could buy not only souvenirs, but more consistent things, like gold, for instance. Instead of the gilded metal necklace you wore when you left, you came back with real gold, and there was no problem, the items were included in the customs declaration anyway. (C. S., 20)

Those who owned a typewriter those times were forced to register it to the local militia office. Every year a postcard summoned you to take a writing "test". At the local militia office no. 1 people were allowed to bring their sheets of paper from home. You had to type three copies without carbon. At office no. 3 they were more vigilant and had you take the test under their supervision.

Radu and I had two typewriters, a big 'Erica' I had bought when I was a student with money gathered from private lessons and a 'Continental' designed for correspondence, made in the 30s. So I carried both of them to the militia office and typed the same rubbish six times. It was something about the economic crash of the capitalist countries and the poverty of those that were part of the Third World. I knew no one would read what we were writing, yet I was trying hard not to skip letters and words.

In 1989 I took my heart into my hands and stole "the sample". I threw it away two or three years ago together with the sanction received for lining up to buy sausages instead of working at the Folklore Institute. On the same occasion I also threw the postcard which invited Radu and me to take the writing test at the militia office in March 1990! (111)