BORDER

On Saturdays and Sundays, free access out was allowed at the country border. All you had to do was present your ID and you could cross the border to Bulgaria and buy aliments and even certain electric apparatuses that were not available in the country. You could buy them cheap and did not have to pay for custom taxes. Ruse and Negru-Voda are two of the frontier localities where you could cross the border. Bulgaria was also the place where Romanians could find bananas and oranges. In Romania they were only available on holidays. (M. V., 157)

The word spread that the present extension of the Dacia Boulevard was built at Ceausescu?s request, so that he could reach the Cotroceni area more easily. The extension was called either ?The Way of Shit? or, more decently, ?The Boulevard of the Two Toilets?, since it connected two very frequented public toilets, one in the Romana Plazza and the other in the Grivita area, near the gas station. In between the Writers? Union and the Academy, there was a small park, where people used to play football or the writers used to take a nap after a tiring restaurant ?session?. They cut the road right through that park. (7)

BOWS (AND RIBBONS)

It was a ribbon with two big bows, resembling roses. They had to be really big. I remember that in the beginning my mother had made me one with fewer petals and seeing the other colleagues wearing fuller bows was a tragedy for me. It was a fashion imposed by Ceausescu in schools, after coming back from China. I can still remember that I used to take the bows in a bag to school, so that they wouldn?t crease. The bows were attached to the ribbon; it was all part of the uniform. You weren?t allowed to leave your ribbon at home. We all wore the same uniform, as if enrolled in the army.  There were some restrictions, too, meaning that you weren't allowed to wear your hair long, unless in a ponytail. They used to control everything. (O. S., 120)

Yet, unlike the ribbon, the bows were never compulsory. I?ve never worn those. Neither have other classmates.  But as far as the ribbon was concerned, it was a real competition among us- which had the most beautiful and unusual ribbon. I couldn?t stand the broad ribbon, made of elastic, which used to squeeze my ears and my head. My mother crocheted one for me, which was never broader than 2 cm. Then the fashion of plastic ribbons came, more rigid, more delicate and almost invisible. Their only disadvantage was they would break very easily. The ribbon, however obligatory, was worn every once in a while. Everything depended on the teacher. We always had them when we had Romanian, and when we had English with our class master, we used to take them off with relief. (160)