You ate three meals a day at a canteen, all included in the ticket price. The train ticket was also included. You could also go there without a train ticket and paid everyhting there.

A doctor issued the treatment record. You showed it at all treatments and those who consulted you filled it. At the end they made an inventory of your treatments and days spent there. You came to Bucharest with that record, gave it to your factory leading board and then you went to the workforce office that had issued your holiday ticket. They signed you had been to a certain resort and you kept the record. (M.V., 156)

2 Mai is the southern village of the seaside where, in summer, the natives offer accomodation to the tourists. Though the conditions were miserable (today they have been improved a bit), with poorly furnished rooms, WC in the yard near the pigsty, with an improvised shower provided with a basin of water warmed by sunbeams, all this "bohemian" people of Bucharest (and not only) populated the village to the full. This was a kind of Bucharest for the same friends met there, making themselves at home. (129)

2 Mai was more beautiful than a resort or a hotel. The comfort was not the same but, anyway, we had cold and hot water eleven months a year. We were friends here and tried hard to have a good time and get rid of problems for a while. (P.P., 152)

In the 80s the agri-touristic pensions and the hosts' attitute towards tourists changed a bit. Thogh we went to the same host all the time, becoming part of their family, then they warned you in the evening that they were troubled by the noise of the parties. The head of the family would tell you that he worked the following day and could not sleep because of music. In the 60s and 70s they tolerated everyhting lest they should lose their clients. In the 80s they had an excess of clients, so that's why they made scandal. That was a reason (apart from the economic one) why many tourists stayed in tents set up on the beach, though customs officers patroled at night and forced you to deflate the water cushion on which you could allegedly run to Turkey?

As nudism was allowed in 2 Mai and Vama Veche as well, the number of tourists gradually increased. Those who basked in the sun in bathing suits were contemptuously nicknamed "textile people". (129)

Dan Hurmuzescu was the emblematic figure of 2 Mai resort. Over 80, white-beared and always puffing a pipe, this ex-magistrate, sentenced fourteen years to jail for political reasons, was the favourite of the young girls who were proud and pleased to give him their arm and walk on the Main Street in 2 Mai. His body did not fit his age but, every morning at 6 o'clock he practised naked and then swam 200 oe 300 metres off shore. In the evening we sat on his host's house fence and watched him fixing an awful glass of wax cherry brandy which we all drank afterwards with pleasure and were pleased about his stories. He was a charming guy. He died at "Dobrogeanul" restaurant one cold evening, on July 14 (1983, I think) because he choked with a puece of steak. Unfortunately he was not buried in 2 Mai where he liked so much. (P.P., 159)