The sessions of ? Youth Training for Defending the Country? (?PTAP?) were included in the curriculum of schools and high schools; their number , their scope and their importance varied according to the ?zeal? of the teachers in charge. These sessions were a compulsory school object, the goal being to educate the youth in topical matters of a capital importance for communist Romania: weapons of mass destruction and the defense against them, trips (wind and clouds), anti-aircraft defense, the forms of the terrain and its features, throwing hand grenades and orientation.

Part of this information, from the manuals of ?youth training for defending the country? was not completely useless, but the truth is that few schools paid attention to these classes of ?PTAP?. Nobody ever learned how to throw a hand grenade or to shoot with a gun. At most, pupils learn how to improve their dribbling and the passes, that?s what we did during those so-called sessions. (11)

Those were black years, also, for those who believed that the Romanians and the alcohol were tightly related. Considering that the alcoholic drinks were responsible for the decreasing productivity, the ?reasonable? Ceausescu commanded another regulation: no alcoholic drinks were to be sold in public places before 10 a.m. This hurt mostly the workers (especially those who had just arrived from the depopulated villages), which had long been used to start their working day with a gulp of brandy. I do not know how seriously this imperative was seen to in Bucharest, but in the villages things were different. Once, when I went on a business visit in the rural area, I had a very good time with the mayor of the respective town. The next day he invited me to ?patch? up with a beer at the local pub. When I told him that it was only half past eight a. m., he watched me with a patronizing smile and told me to follow him. In front of the pub, locked up with a padlock (there was no reason to open it before ten o?clock) there was a rather large group of men waiting and smoking. We went through the back door, in the backyard, where another group, drank beer from bottles. They were the shop assistant?s acquaintances. We went inside and drank our beer slowly sitting at the table, trusting that it was a good remedy for a hang over. There were also 2-3 tables occupied by the local elite: the chief of police, the accountant from the agricultural co-operative, and a few others. It was obvious that through the dirty windows those waiting appropriately outside, without even protesting could see us. It seemed natural, since they were neither friends of the publican, nor important political men. Was this not what socialist equality was all about? (129)

I went to the pub in the evening and at 10 -10:30, at the most, they would close. We had to go. Sometimes, they only played with the light, they switched it on and off, in a continuum fluttering, to urge us to go. (G. S., 86)