I also remember a really funny story from my friends dead about his visit to Cuba. He went there in the early 80s, I am guessing. He went there with a delegation on some kind of diplomatic mission. Up on arrival he bent over to pick up his bag, and, as luck would have it, ripped his pants. Now, as you might imagine, being a proper Soviet and all, he was only traveling with that one pair of dress pants. So he asked their translator if there is any way they could go to a store of some kind to purchase another pair, before his fancy diplomatic meeting.
So they went to the store, supposedly the main fashion store in the center of the city. When asked, the clerk told them: "Oh, no, we haven't had dress pants in for at least 3 weeks." My friends dead, desperate, asked: "Well, what about just needle and some thread?" Clerk: "Well, we have thread, but needle? Hmm, we haven't had those in years now." Eventually they ended up finding a seamstress who fixed the pants, but it was all very hush hush, because it was a crime for her to offer a private service, or for them to solicit it.
Yeah, so communism rocks indeed :)
> Could be mil, could be beer, could be kvas (not sure how to translate)
Kwas seems to be just "kvass" in English.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvass
It's more popular further to the East (than Poland), still I remember we'd brew it at home back in the day, as a little boy I liked to pretend it was beer
Speaking of beverages, everyone from the former Soviet bloc surely remembers these machines :)
http://img.interia.pl/biznes/nimg/1/k/Woda_saturatora_534387...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Saturato...
The reason for asking is occasionally I read about stories of people who are sad that they no longer live in a communist country. There was a movie made about that storyline as well.
I always thought that - given the mass movements of people after the borders were opened - everyone would have seen it as a gigantic waste of years of their life and would hate the very mention of it. But I've only met a handful of people who lived under communist regimes and usually they don't want to talk about it.
My grandma, on the other hand, loved the communist party. She was always well taken care of by the system, and she thinks communism is awesome, or at least that's what she says. In reality what she is missing are the good days, when she was younger, had lot's of friends, and had a generally good life. She never experienced the really horrible side of the Soviet union, so she only has good memories. That said, if I was to ask her if she thinks I would be better of in a communist state, he answer would be "God NO!" She is a realistic woman. She knows intellectually that the Soviet government was evil, but their current situation in Ukraine is very bad as well, and she can't help but be nostalgic.
Lines formed nowadays for buying a newer version of iPhone remind me those days back in USSR. No kidding. :)
As far as standing in line for the latest iPhone: no thank you indeed, been there done that :)
'Ration cards' were even the main form of government identification till they opened up the economy, streamlined tax, etc. in the 1990s. They still are, for older people and in rural areas.
This is definitely a story to tell (someday) your kids and grandkids during summer breaks, around the fireplace.
Thanks for sharing.
Cashiers usually did not have to use an abacus since the cash register worked as a calculator but the clerk had to calculate the price of your purchase and for that she often used an abacus though some stores had an electronic calculator at the counter.
The whole system was very bizarre. I am not sure why they had to do this. One theory was that it was to prevent people who were handling food items at the counter from touching money but this also happened in the stores that sold non-edible goods. They did minimize the number of the cash registers I imagine, since one register could be shared between multiple counters. Could be easier to account for fewer registers?