It all starts on March 5, 1953, when Alex was five years old and Stalin died, and on a certain day and at a certain time a moment of silence was to be observed around the world. And little Alex was outraged to see that the chickens in the yard kept rummaging through the garbage, as if they did not give a hoot about the divine decree. Then as a student, at the age of 19, he was investigated by the Securitate and experienced a revelation: the action of crippling and mortifying people was organized and institutionalized. And thus it was that instead of letting their faces be flooded with sunshine and laughing heartily, people walked down the street, frowning. Instead of talking to each other with pleasure, glad to have met, they answered questions cautiously or did not answer at all. In this volume Alex offers the reader the most diverse stories, recollections and remarkable portraits of illustrious people, writers, artists, tricksters or simple people who marked the decades of his life and events like those that we all went through during communism.