I visited places like Cieszyn, Katowice and Sosnowiec when I was a kid, and anything beyond the most basic things had to be bought on the black market. You cou

I visited places like Cieszyn, Katowice and Sosnowiec when I was a kid, and anything beyond the most basic things had to be bought on the black market. You could have bread and milk in the official grocery stores, as long as you were willing to rise early and stand in queue. By 10 am, already sold out. Buying meat, IIRC, was already somewhat of a challenge. The authorities tried to "re-educate" people towards canned fish. But the black markets were huge. Impressively huge. You could buy a lot of stuff there, plus sometimes peddlers went door-to-door selling stuff from their backpacks.