We first saw the block of flats on paper. We liked it, so we went to see it, we saw another identical apartment, we liked that one, too. We decided to take an apartment on the top floor, so that there we wouldn?t have to worry about the noise. Those were the criteria: the fact that it was on the top floor and that we liked the apartment. Let alone that there was nothing around the block, only tress and grass, as the other block hadn?t? been built yet. Then there was another important reason, the fact that the market place was within walking distance. There was a time when I would cross the market place to get home, as the tram and the trolley only circulated on Militari. Whether I wanted or not, I had to cross the market place to get home; actually you could find anything there. I remember when my mother used to drop by, she would say: I didn?t find anything for the house, so I got you two chickens. Which means that you could find a thing or two to buy. So that was it, those were the basic criteria.

Well, but starting in 1983, things changed. Why? In 1982, at the 12^th party congress, it was decided that Romania was going to pay its foreign debt, which amounted at that time at some 7 billion dollars. When they started to pay the debt, they also started to turn the squeeze on. Anyway, the reports coming from agriculture, animal husbandry, therefore any field related to food, were always false. Those huge figures were fake. There was even a joke that circulated at that time. There was this guy Vasile, whose sow gave birth to 11 baby pigs. When Ceausescu heard about it, he said: very well, then ten go to domestic consumption, and one to export. Actually, the sow had only given birth to one piglet, which had to be exported. That was how things stood back then. However, you couldn?t actually say that people suffered from deprivation, as it was 3 years later, in ?85-?86 that food was rationed. Everybody had ration cards. Like it or not, we always had 5 kilos of sugar, rice, flour and oil. That was a lot. Sometimes we would even have deposits of 12-14 bottles of oil, because you couldn?t possibly use it all.

People would barter. I gave 5 kilos of sugar for 10 kilos of cherries. Or, other times, 10 kilos of cherries for 5 kilos of sugar.

The situation was really bad when it came to bread.