>You will not believe this.
>Back in the days, under commi regime, a VCR was worth almost a brand new car or a small apartment. It was such a rare thing..So some people who managed to get a VCR were making money by arranging their home/apartments in small movie theaters. Among the hot titles of that time were "Dancing with the wolves", "Police Academy" and "The Bachelor party" with Tom Hanks.

I believe. I stopped with the small-time smuggling somewhere around '80, and haven't visited Romania since. But I remember stuff. I smuggled some books for a guy in Timişoara once - he couldn't get into college because his father was once branded (and prosecuted) as Titoist. Nothing can surprise me.

I figure the guys from Securitate either went in for free on these projections, or were providing the tapes.

On a lighter note, I still have one small leather suitcase here, which I bought back in 1979, made in Ceauşescu's Romania. And a trouser belt of the same age and origin survived until 2001. It was actually still usable, just started looking really ugly.