The second winter
A lot has been written about the first minutes, hours, months and the first winter after the communist regime decided to give way to a two party system. Where the second party cake from is a question we will discuss another time. But what happened after the protests, tanks, changes?
The second winter was even worse. The previous one people were finishing off what they could find stored. The summer was bleak and short and the next winter brought a lot of uncertainty: What do you pay to whom? What utilities exist? Where will the food come from.
This is when her story starts. By now she is in her 30-s. Then she was almost 6 years old. When I spoke to her she already had lost many of her memories. She remembers the carrot juice from the German store - only one of them existed. It was located in the city center, where politicians and the upper class that was more equal than the others could visit it. A ways away from the working class.
The city was empty with only couple of cars at the end of the working day. And this was because in order to live in the city you needed a "citizenship". It was very difficult to get it - you had to prove to the government that they needed you. Not an easy task. Nonetheless the city kept growing and more space was needed. They annexed the villages near by. It was still not enough so the land was expropriated. People lost their fruit gardens and fields to huge complexes that could house up to 50 to 100 thousand people.
In order to qualify for one of the new units (apartments) you had to be a good communist, have old parents at home and at least 3 children. So her parents, who had her and her twin brothers applied for an apartment and actually got it but were not allowed to move in before 1989. By then the ownership was cleared and nobody could dispute it. The renovations were stopped as the uncertainty of the first winter was looming - only one room (the biggest one) was ready. There were no heating, no roads and zero infrastructure. No shops, no security.
In the following winter things made them move - they were living with her grandparents but the space was not enough, there were no daycare spaces and no available schools in the neighborhood. These and other reasons made them move into the new place. The apartment block was the last one at the edge of the field and from the windows you could see the Balkan, the grain growing, the road to the nearby villages. From the 216 units only about 10-15 were occupied. The others were empty and it was like this in all 50 buildings in the complex. In their part of the building there were: two bakers with their sons, a teacher with her family, a piano teacher, a village woman and a government official. All of them had to pull together in order to survive: The teacher's husband made strong doors for all, the teacher was babysitting all the children as she was the only one on maternity leave. The government official installed a fireplace and the hot air from it warmed the others via the shared chimney. So the others gathered wood once in a while to help keep the fire going the whole winter. The bakers had a bit of flour left over, the village woman found eggs and lard and with the home preserves from her parents - all the children got cake once a week. Compared to how others did others - this was luxury.
"We all used to live in this one room. All the kid's beds next to the chimney and along the inner wall. The parents were in the other corner. I used to come home from school and sit on a huge old fashioned metal heating unit. I was allowed to turn it on for a very short time. Then I picked up my brothers from the day care and left them with the neighbor for them to play and went home to cook - usually potatoes and study. I'm very good at boiling potatoes!
There were no toys - not only was there no space but toys were a luxury. Nobody had money for them. No plastic ones were imported either. The only thing we had were books, the field, some trees and whatever grandpa had created out of wood in the summer. So not very much.
And there were no knives - we did cut our part of the cake with one of father's screwdrivers.
People were so hungry this winter, and it was a very long, cold and with a lot of snow, that they were looking for the light in the windows and then went and broke into people's basements and stole preserves, canned food and even leather. In one of the farthest buildings there was a young man preparing the apartment for his family. He was the only one coming in and out in the whole apartment block and usually went home at the end of the day. This one night he was so tired that he decided to brave the cold and stayed. The thieves were late and presumed he had gone home. His throat was cut while he slept.
Slowly and in the span of several years this all changed. But my first Christmas I remember very well - I got a huge rag doll. A university clerk was creating them from old clothing in order to make ends meet. Everybody did something on the side and in the gray area economy for the children to not be hungry or cold. Villagers sold whole pigs that the fathers split between the families so from an young age I had to know how to skin and prepare meat for storage. The city people provided lessons in languages, transportation etc.
Sometimes there were old-ish people on our doorstep. They were asking only to be let inside to be able to sit for an hour or two away from the wind and cold. Or a piece of bread and cheese and a tea were needed. One of these was an old woman. She reached our complex in late fall and asked for bread and water. My grandma made me stay home and went downstairs to personally bring the woman some food, tea and a cardigan. She came back up and said only: 'She is also from the villages and is searching for somebody in the city.' Nobody explained but later I found out that in some villages the hunger was so bad that people just started walking. They did eventually end up in the towns and cities where people like my grandparents provided as much as we could spare and sent them on their way to the town square for help. Some of them must have survived although everybody insists they do not remember them."