(the date is wrong, it's a sunday and most probably the day after the birthday... which I really don't remember... so this could have been on 21st)
Trip to Timişoara. It seems we were into it more frequently these days, as I was available to drive so dad could concentrate on looking for shops where we could find what we were after. It was mostly canned food or winter preserves, or tools or whatever was a good deal. And most of it was, because we got the romanian lei cheap. Previously we were going as any other small time smugglers did, bring along some stuff to sell (vegeta spice mix, nylon stockings, cigarettes, chewing gum). Sometimes we'd simply exchange dinars for lei, but dad got burned on the transaction once - paid the tuition for the oldest trick in the book. The guy would count the wad of lei, then dad would count the dinars, and when the transaction was just about to happen, the assistant keeping guard would just say "police!", and the guy would quickly exchange the wads and vanish. Except he had another wad in his other hand, where only the outside was money, inside was neatly cut newspaper.
So we devised a counter - we'd get the guy into the car, he and dad would take the back seat, I'd drive them around the block, the transaction took place while he couldn't run away, and everone happy (except the guy had to do regular business instead of fleecing the mark).
And by this time it all changed, because we found a better solution, or it found us. Some friend of dad's, I guess work related, had a brother in Romania. The guy there was marked as titoist, and did some jail time, was sentenced to death which was then revoked, and eventually had to just work off his staž as some lowly clerk or worker somewhere, and then finally retired for health reasons. Which was regularly rechecked, so he had to bribe the doctors and health officials every couple of years. Which then was no problem, because now he reconnected with his brother, who'd send him gifts from time to time: a color TV, a washing machine, a big freezer box, whatever. Which he then sold at outrageous prices to his worst enemies, the officers of the apparatus, who had more money than they could spend - the status symbols being scarce. So we'd visit the guy on our side, agree on the amount we'd take, and he'd write us a tiny note telling his brother to give the named bearer "8000 saplings" (that was the codeword). We'd appear in Timişoara the next day, visit the guy there, endure the awful no-excuse of a coffee and get a thick wad of lei, which we'd spend in a day. We'd keep a few boxes of cigarettes to bribe the border patrol (actually there was a guardian soldier at some sort of checkpoint near the border, alone in the dark) and/or the customs officers and went home with a full trunk of stuff. The škodilak had the engine in the rear and no power steering, so it sometimes took some muscle just to get it out of the parking lot behind the department store. I soon learned to park backwards, to maneuver while I'm lighter.
Few days later we'd visit this side brother to clear the accounts - we took 8000 lei (a teacher's salary then was about 5-6000), which at the current course was so-and-so in dinars. Dad would cash out and everybody was happy. Including the scum from Securitate over there, who'd have a color TV like nobody else did, the hell with the cost, he'll extract bribes to cover it.
That's how it worked.
15-XI-2020 - 27-XI-2024