Generally they could hardly be found. Those who could afford got them from abroad, those who couldn't took aspirin. Because of that, we had to do our best to be healthy and treat ourselves with palliatives. Maybe the death rate was bigger, but we steeled ourselves. I knew many cases in which overseas relatives requested Romanian medicines for they were simple and crude, that is they were unprocessed. I know for sure that simple aspirin (there was no other type manufactured in Romania) and the head pills were the most requested. (125)

The meetings were incredibly diverse? (111)

MILK

 used to wake up at 5 in the morning to go out and stand in the line for milk, for my little niece. And even though I woke up that early, when I got to the food shop which was next to my block, there was already a line. In case I did not made it so early, and so I couldn?t get a place in the front line, I was sure to say goodbye to milk that day. If I remember well, at some point, milk began to be portioned: one liter per person. You can imagine how things were, if they portioned the milk of all things! (O. S., 41)

One of the reasons why I stayed in Bucharest after graduation was access to milk. I for one cannot live without milk.

I lodged with a family in the central area. I was delighted with the idea. I had read about it in books, and heard stories of other generations, how the milkman made his rounds. I?d meet the milkman in the small but beautiful street where I lived, Popa Rusu St. Who was the milkman? A workman, a young boy who carried the milk in a sort of two-wheel coach. He had a job, of course, but I think he woke up very early and went to the milk shop on a street nearby, where there was a certain quantity of milk put aside for him. He went there with the coach full of empty bottles, loaded the milk and left the full bottles at the subscribers? doors. I?d watch him from the room I had rented in that villa together with a friend. It was a comforting sight, so essential to the city life. (114)