On his bus ride from the Ministry of Defence, Ion passes the Romanian capitol building, Casa Poporului (the "House of the People"). In 1995, when the story takes place, the building was still unfinished and would be surrounded by construction cranes.
Until 1996, Corneliu Vadim Tudor had never been a candidate of the Romanian presidential elections, so aging war veteran Ion I. Ion couldn't vote him instead of Ion Iliescu in 1992.