As if this hadn?t been enough already, starting with the first serious snowfall until March 1^st, the traffic of all private property automobiles was forbidden all over the country.

Waiting in lines in winter was the hardest. The cars were not heated, for fear of spending up the remnants of gas in the reservoir. It lasted for ages. My personal record was of 22 hours, with small breaks when I reserved my place in line and ran home to drink a cup of hot tea. One evening, when I finally reached the front line, some militia officers came and drove us away on side streets: Ceausescu was coming back home from Predeal and, everyone knew this, he couldn?t stand to see any sort of lines, and our bad luck was that we were exactly on his route. Order, which had been kept with difficulty till then, was now spoiled altogether; after waiting quite a lot, the militia officers allowed us to continue; Ceausescu had come home by helicopter!

At the beginning of December 1989 (it was very cold, but the big snow hadn?t come yet), I bought myself a Turkish electric stove that could adjust to the camping stove gas cylinder. I could now warm up the back seats, but the air inside was rapidly spent up, even if I kept one window half open.

Only one month later, all these had become a bad dream. You can find as much gasoline as you want, wherever you like, provided you have the money? (129)

Gasoline, coffee and cigarettes ? these were the strong currency of those times. They could be offered as presents or bribery, or they could be stocked for eventual selling: there was always someone willing to buy. (I. M., 99)

This was a difficult problem, gasoline was very hard to find and it caused very long lines. Besides, traffic was forbidden on certain Sundays: you could only drive your car every other Sunday, depending on your registration number, on whether it was even or odd. Traffic was thinner in those periods, which was good, since this meant less pollution. There weren?t as many cars as there are today. (M. C. J., 96)

I used to go and park my car in a line at 10 in the evening, and asked the man behind me whether he was going to stay there all night. If he said no, I?d come back in 10 minutes and wait until someone said they would not move until morning, so I could go home and come back in the morning, around 9. That?s how I did it?

There was a law that forbid car traffic in winter. From the first snowfall until March.