It was done by everyone, from UTC (Communist Youth Union) members to engineers. Students would do it on holidays too. They had a week available for that. I carried blocks on today's place of Heroes' Cemetery in order to be turned into a green. I also went to sort potatoes at Flora and to ITM (Techno-Medical Institute) to sort syringes or something like that. (O.S., 120)

Patriotic work was somehow a comical question because we could not start the academic year until we went to potato or maize picking or to other autumn activities.

It was ridiculous for us, as students at the Academy of Music, to pick potatoes with our frail hands. We had to bear this for three weeks. But we were cleverer as we made a deal with the peasants to do our work. In the end, we had to deliver our production quota to the chief engineer who was satisfied that things were going very well. But it was an opportunity to make a mockery of all that. It was something like: "We pretend to do hard work/ All is nothing but a joke." (O.S., 169)

We were under terror during that period. We were supervised by the local authorities. If we put a rotten potato near a good one they screamed and shouted at us. We were high-school students at that time. We would have given hell if we hadn't done practical training. (O.S., 166)

On Sundays we would sort potatoes on the platforms near "Laromet" Enterprise. The 40-year-length-of-service researchers were bent down and afraid that something might have fallen over their heads. The sound engineer from the Folklore Institute, a very witty guy from Scornicesti, got used to hearing during work report meetings that every group should include someone with a Ph.D., saw us carry the wattle baskets filled with potatoes and shouted at us: "I don't want to see two Ph.D.s carrying a basket!"

Other time we were called to plant trees in Herastrau Park. On getting there Sunday, of course, when the day broke, we found out there were no trees, no shovels as there were no rags and water when we mobilized ourselves to clean the apartments of the recently finished blocks.

The most comical part was after the 1977 earthquake when the Folklore Institute had cleaned the loos of the cinema on Magheru Boulevard. While we were scratching the debris and rinsing filthy scraps of fluffy cotton clothes in filthier buildings, the three char women of the cinema watched us carefully, showing us where to scratch faster and more heavily. When we complained to our party secretary and he, very shyly, complained to the party headquarter we belonged to, we learnt that it was not true that we had washed loos. We did wash them, believe me!