nebulous

Care to tell?

In a bit since I aint home

Wish you was my kid I'd always have someone to talk to

Right so to start it off, we spoke basically about normal day to day life in the union. According to my mother, they thought it was the best life there can be, that in America there is unarrest, workers protesting, normal people needing to buy healthcare for doctors, no education, basicly a bad life and that the people under the union lived the best life they had.

"Its the only life we knew" she told me. She then remarked how people used to work a free day, just for free, that their money went to needed country like for example: Children in Cuba, she remarked how as a small child, she and her classmates worked a day in a scrap yard and sold the scrap to help Children in Panama(I think??) and the money actually went there.

That normal people worked for free sometimes. Then I just asked her about if people knew about the KGB, she just simply said we knew about them, but we also knew they don't do much with normal people anymore, they used to after Stalin at the start but due to the fact that the rich(Old rich) are either were killed off or just such a small number that they wouldn't dare speak, they just didn't do much with civilians.

We then moved to external stuff, like warsaw pact countries, she remarked how my grandmother went on a trip to Bulgaria during its socialist days.

How my grandmother had a really strict search, and background check. That she went on a tour, not on a trip, she could not go to anywhere she wanted it was a tour. Similar to how North Korea does today. It was probably cause Bulgaria was in a worse state and they didn't want people to speak. She even remarked how it was impossible to enter the GDR, only via worker permit. No tours, no nothing.

We then went on the subject of Afghanistan, that the reason they believed they went to Afghan was only cause they felt they are doing their duty, something about natio something, don't remember the name, helping the poor Afghan people. She remarked no one knew what was happening since unlike Vietnam for America, no one showed footage, no talks were about Afghan, the soldiers didn't speak much when they returned home

She did remark the soldiers bringing things from Afghanistan, probably from looting but she said no one will speak about it cause, as per human nature, no one will show themselves and talk bad about themselves. She still thinks it was a mistake to go into Afghan, it was an unwinnable partisan war

She remarks a film, don't remember its name, that showed soviet life one on one, it tells the story of a man going to America and coming back. She remarks how the main character told the people, if you went around with how you are going now(The normal wear in the soviet union) the Americans will think you are mentally ill.

The reason for that is cause there weren't a lot of colorful things to wear, men were gray suits most of the time, maybe some black and brown. Woman wore dresses, imagine America in the early 20th century. It was strict in a sense, you never had a hippy like culture with open wear.

She then remarks her friend, who is here in Israel, used to work abroad as a military nurse, that she was getting double the pay for working abroad, the thing was, the second ''Double'' payment was in Dollars. Yes if you worked abroad, they paid in Rubels but the second payment was Dollars. Only one shop took Dollars and it was in Moscow, it had according to my mother