I often feel nostalgic over the past which I never had. I was growing up in a house with a garden, which belonged to my grandma and later in a new apartment block with birch trees all around it. I was never bullied, and I had friends, I even liked school, and I  didn't mind having a baby brother (for about two days, after that it was all downhill). Every New Year's Eve we had a decorated Christmas tree with  gifts under it. Everybody at the time seemed to live in a "nice suburb", because there were no "bad suburbs".

Phones were scarce so people had to visit each other, host dinner parties and cook yummy things. I never experienced food shortages, or hours of queuing for the essential; my parents were never sent to Siberia for work and my grandma had a fruit orchard. I guess I had it lucky. Not everybody else did, though. This is what this new blog is about. The USSR,  the largest and one of the most resourceful countries on the planet, was a fantastically inefficient place. Sending people to space was one thing, and it was easy.

Providing kids with toys was totally different, and boy look at those toys. They managed to build cars of the finest caliber, yet fashion was sooo behind, it makes me feel teary just to look at it. In one word, very controversial. Yet it is very dear to me, maybe that's why I so feel enthusiastic about it. See you there.