I remember that once, while coming from work, old man Presur, the administrator, stopped me at the entrance to the block: ?one moment, lady, I have to talk to you about something.? He took me aside, lowered his voice, held my elbow intimately and told me that two comrades had come from my office to inquire about me and my life. Poor old Presur, he was a good man, but limited and full of self-importance. He told me how he had praised me together with two other neighbors, and asked those men how came that I couldn?t find a good husband at work. By the time I reacted, while I was watching him unmoving and with mouth wide open, old Presur hurried to suggest a good match: the neighbor from the 7^th floor, a retired secret service agent who had access to the store of the Interior Ministry and a domestic man. I remember that the most difficult part was to rid myself of the familiar attitude of the friendly administrator in a polite way. I felt rotten from head to toe. My hand hurt from the heavy bag I was holding, and at home it wasn?t even possible to take a shower, as the bathtub was full of reserves of water. I climbed to the tenth floor and I put on a big smile for my daughter waiting for me at home. (V. M., 89)

BLOCK OF FLATS

The communist block of flats is very much similar to a mixer, if you think of the way it was used by the party and state leaders. After almost thirty years of professed counter-elitist policy, every block is a strange mixture of population of the most varied social extraction. (V. M., 123)

Those who managed to travel abroad or those who became friends with those who traveled abroad got to wear real blue jeans. As for the rest, we were only interested to know where the blue jeans were made in Romania. For export trade, that is. Romanian textile plants used to make very good quality jeans for exportation. An example is the Botosani plant, which produced at a profit for three years: it became the foremost factory in the whole county, thanks to the blue jeans it manufactured in loan system.

There was also the more regular linen and hempen fabric, which they called ?blue jeans fabric?, but was not even remotely that. It was more like a tarpaulin or rug.  (I. H., 54)