The SOFIA Store, on Dorobantilor Road, sold Bulgarian merchandise. You could see long queues forming whenever they brought in vegetal silk underwear. There was less and less of that after ?85, not even the classical ?Tetra? things.

Relatives abroad was a clear advantage in this respect, and an object for the other people?s envy. My mother once got a jeans skirt. All her colleagues came to her office to admire it. Quite a pilgrimage. Jeans were only trafficked, inherited or craved for. Foreign clothes were passed down from generation to generation, and every child had to wear them carefully, so that the next on line could enjoy them too. I had to wait a long time before my friend?s purple and green multi-pocketed jacket grew small on her and she passed it on to me. But I couldn?t wear it too much either. I passed it on myself. Anyhow, any western clothing item was a fascinating object. There was a craze for the western fashion magazines, such as the Quelle or Neckermann catalogues, or the more practical Burda magazine. Materials were available, so the women sewed their own clothes, using the patterns in the magazine. (160)

COFFEE

One could not find natural coffee. When coffee could be found at a confectioner?s, one had to queue for 4 or 5 hours! At the ?Unic? supermarket, opposite ?Scala?, one could find natural coffee and coffee with chick-pea (called ?nechezol?), and all one could get after queuing for 5 hours was maximum 100g of natural coffee and 100g of ?nechezol?!!! It was awful! The smell was maddening! These are scenes that one cannot render in words! (V. C., 150)

There was a bar - Catanga?s - where, to crown it all, there was an ad covering the whole block with steamy coffee, here at Scala, even after there was no coffee left in Bucharest. But the ad with steamy coffee remained where it was. They took it down, later on, when there realized the stupidity of it. (S. R.-B., D. R.-B., 137)

Once as I was passing by Bucharest Hotel, I saw that they brought coffee: I saw somebody go in with enormous boxes of coffee, real coffee, not surrogate one like we could find in our stores. All that Viennese coffee, in big metal boxes, impressed me. They looked like gold bullion to me. Later on, I said to myself: ?figure that, now, I can be impressed by the sight of coffee only!? (G. S., 161)