Hello everyone!
Since this is my introductory step amongst you and it feels like joining a party as a belated guest, I believe the proper thing to do is to tell you who I am. My name is Raluca and I am from Constanta, Romania. Romania is a country situated in south Eastern Europe with a very old history. It is a small country and as such it was often caught between the stones of history: enslaved by the Ottoman Empire, by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, part of the Communist Block, always fighting for freedom and unity, its territory being torn apart repeatedly. A story about the Ribbentrop –Molotov pact between Stalin and Hitler had a powerful impact on me – Romania lost a huge part of its territories, on top of that some more miles because of a blunt pencil used to draw the map of the “new” world.
“Dracula” must ring a bell for most of you though. This is because Bram Stoker’s novel, even if fictional, became popular and the world found out about Romania’s Vlad the Impaler and Transylvania. Castle Bran became an attraction even if Vlad spent only a few nights here, while Poenari, his fortress, built in a breathtaking landscape, on Transfagarasan road, is less known.
I plan to develop the topic and write further stories about my country, but for now I thought about sharing my memories on the communist times with you. I was 13 on Revolution’s day: December 22nd 1989 when Nicolae Ceausescu was forced to flee and the communist regime was overthrown. I know Communism is just a notion, a political, social and economic system for a big part of the world, but for me it was a reality. I realized only later that it was far from the reality that the grown-ups were facing.
Food was hard to find, clothes were scarce, but my parents did their best to ensure me and my sister had what we needed. Electricity was cut off every night and apart from feeling scared of the darkness, it was hard to do our homework. It was the moment when all my family sat in the same room playing word games, laughing and having a good time. My dad invented a system to help us have the decent light, not one of a candle, to write our homework. So, he took a car battery and he connected some wires to it, pulling them inside the house and connecting them to light bulbs. There was no heating so we had to wear warm clothes and I remember having to put on a hat every time I washed my hair. There were no TV channels, but the national one showing every night news about Ceausescu and the Communist Party. Cartoons were censored and time limited, so we watched Romanian productions and Pink Panther because it represented no threat…no words spoken.
Censorship and fear were the ruling words. No ties to any person outside the borders, no connections with the outside world, no access to music, movies or news but the ones that the Party and Ceausescu approved. People were listening to “Free Europe”, a radio station broadcasting news and allowing them to feel connected to the rest of the world out there that they were very well aware of but that was forbidden to them. Cars were allowed to be out in the streets during weekends by turns: one weekend was for the even numbered cars, the other was for the odd numbered ones.
I used to sit in huge lines for hours to buy oranges or bananas around Christmas time. It was the event of the holidays! And bananas were always green, so my mum wrapped them in newspapers and stocked them in dark places to let them ripe. We never had the patience to wait, so bananas will always taste like cucumbers to me…In order to buy bread and milk we used a card and it was marked so we won’t exceed the allowed daily quantity.
”The agrarian labors”, organized activities for gathering the crops on the fields, were compulsory. We were thoroughly checked upon working day’s end not to take home any of the harvest. We had to spend days rehearsing for parades on different occasions to put on a perfect show for the “beloved leader”. Megalomania itself was ruling.
Youngsters were pioneers and later members of The Communist Youth Union. When I was eleven I was amongst the pupils chosen to offer flowers to Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, who were visiting Neptun, a sea-resort close to Constanta. I had to learn a speech: “Comrade General Secretary, we thank you for the happy childhood you’re offering to us!” I remember waking up at 5 am and my mum preparing an instant coffee and allowing me to sip, for the very first time of my life. I remember the huge bunches of red carnations which seemed to me the most wonderful in the whole world and the torture I had to go through to have a thin, tiny silver ring removed from my finger because I was forbidden to wear it when offering the flowers to Ceausescu. I remember I felt very nervous but I was able to articulate my speech, Ceausescu placing his hand on my shoulder and then not knowing how to adapt the words when offering the flowers to his wife, Elena. And I also remember all of the family watching TV that evening like never before or after, waiting to catch a glimpse of me…and there I was, for a few seconds the star!
Raluca, the ex-star, thanks all of you for reading her story!
