My micro-universe is bordered by Ștefan cel Mare Boulevard, Calea Moșilor, Carol I – Elisabeta Boulevards, and Buzești Street. Outside these borders are a few satellites in Giulești, where the grandparents on my father’s side lived, Bazilescu Park, where we moved ten years ago, and lately the Victoriei–Chibrit axis with its surroundings. Now I live in front of the Griro, and walking from here to either Herăstrău or Lacul Morii takes about the same amount of time, but the experiences couldn’t be more different. A professional quirk is to start everything by mapping the territory.

When the weather is nice, flâneuring becomes the first choice. Grivița is painfully dull up to Gara de Nord. I have to pass right by the Sfânta Vineri cemetery, and I always hear my father in my head scolding me for not lighting a candle for the grandparents, especially now that I live so close. I always mean to do it, but the fence has no gate anymore, or at least it feels that way, and I can’t convince myself to look for one. Most of the time, I take the trolley from right in front of my apartment building. It’s almost always empty. There’s something inherently comfortable about the trolley, more than, say, the bus. Once I approach Gara de Nord, my thoughts start to drift. I see the Dunărea Hotel, and I’m reminded of how badly I’ve always wanted to go inside. When I was little and we were driving back from my grandparents’, my dad would always tell me how beautiful the area used to be: the houses, the theatre, the cinema, now derelict. I even witnessed first-hand the demolitions for the widening of Buzești. Now, the last remaining stretch of Grivița feels like a rotting finger with the nail still painted bright red. I count on my still-fresh fingers the new chic spots wedged between the grimy façades, and wonder how much longer until I can grab a speciality coffee in the public toilet. The last functioning public toilet in Bucharest, and no one’s thought yet of restoring and repurposing it into a layered, gentrified pastry of a space with a French name pronounced with an accent? Dommage…

I get off at the intersection with Dacia and walk toward Piața Amzei, where it now smells like croissants mixed with that usual damp-mildew scent I’ve known my whole life. Back in my day (yes, I can say that now), the most interesting things around here were the Kyralina bookstore and the Igiena beauty salon. I didn’t know about Mița back then, and it never crossed my mind that the actual Amzei market would become a ghost of some pseudo-artsy architectural attempts at revitalisation. All I knew back then was that I wanted to go into the CiUFOlici hair salon, because I was convinced it had something to do with the Stargate Conspiracy-type books my dad kept stacked on the little stool beside the toilet. I pass by La Băiatu’ and suddenly feel tired, remembering the endless walks with my mom around the Romană–Amzei area, in search of the right exchange office. Now that I think about it, currency exchange was one of the first real-world concepts I ever learned in what we call the school of life. I was born in 2000, and my awareness kicked in around 2008, right in time for the global financial crisis. That’s probably why I still remember the best exchange spot is at the corner of Magheru and Enescu. So yes, childhood leaves you with something, at least. Has anyone ever wondered why they placed George Enescu’s statue looking so tired and sad, right by the crosswalk? Is he pissed off because he can’t get to the other side in peace?

Piața Romană, the cultural epicentre of Bucharest’s youth scene. My mom never let me eat at McDonald’s. Years of struggle later, I finally made it there, like any cosmopolitan, socially-thirsty teenager: to the stronghold that is Mec Romană. The Capitol of high schoolers from Centrală, Tonitza, Coșbuc, Goethe, Călinescu, Cantemir and all the others that put the effort into joining the sacred terrace. A place where everyone knows everyone, but each table isn’t a clique, it’s more like a bisericuță (or at least was). I never gave off “social butterfly” energy, but somehow I always had someone to sit with at one of those sacred tables. The real problem now is that I can’t even enjoy a McPuisor combo anymore, ever since it stopped making sense to pay for it with stacks of 50 bani coins. Inflation has quietly killed off one of the warmest memories of my youth, one I never knew how to properly appreciate. From the cute little terrace, the path I take seems etched into muscle memory. My feet always take me straight to Lahovari/Cosmonauților Square, past the Țăndărică Theatre, along the street I saw every day for at least seven years, and always forget it is called General Eremia Grigorescu. When I walk past the Shift restaurant, I get a chilling memory of the times we used to skip a few of the six weekly French classes, and the way Madame Cecilia would threaten to cut out our tongues with a razor blade she kept conveniently hidden in her pencil case if we dared pronounce the t in et. 

Between Icoanei and Ioanid, there’s a personal conflict of interest, of a temporal nature. Ioanid is the first ten years of my life. Icoanei is my adolescence. The imaginary border between them was drawn for me by my grandmother when I was about three: “We don’t go to the other park, it’s full of dirty sand that will get in your sandals. Also, the kids are savage.” I’ve always felt a bit uneasy whenever I went to Icoanei. On the rare occasions when my grandmother was swayed by other ladies with kids to take us to Grădina Icoanei, I felt like I was stepping into a western: there was always that yellowish filter from the sand and dust, and the kids there were actually a bit savage… In my defence, I was never a delicate flower. Every single crevice in Ioanid knew complex recipes of mud soups and stews, and every bush had, at some point, served as an improvised wartime shelter. But being used to the tropical-level humidity of Ioanid, Icoanei felt like a different kind of safari, one my grandma never really let me adapt to. The first ten years of my life unfolded almost exclusively in that park. Grandma would come daily on the 133 bus from Giulești to the centre, and I was always shocked by how easily she made friends with anyone, regardless of age or background. I still follow a few of those girls on Instagram, girls she actually talked to more than I did. Her second most defining trait was that she never wanted to take an umbrella when going home. “I don’t need one, I walk quickly between the raindrops,” she’d say. I was left with the impression she was a kind of ninja who made endless trays of sponge cake and crescent cookies… and now I can’t even find the cemetery gate to light a candle for her.

Up until high school, we lived at the intersection of Dumbrava Roșie and Aurel Vlaicu, in a building full of securiști. I’ve only recently found out that, after the ’77 earthquake, the building was made on the former courtyard of the kindergarten next door, right where there used to be a single tree, obsessively dug at its roots by a little girl. I always knew why and for whom the block was built, but I’ve also been repeatedly reassured that my family simply took advantage of the opportunity like everyone else back then and solemnly promised that, at most, our phones were tapped once by mistake. A kid raised in a building full of old securiști and no other children grows up feeling older. Unlike most people who spent their summer holidays at their grandparents’ in the countryside, I spent mine in the park and the block courtyard, hanging out with the grandson of some neighbours who’d visit from time to time. So, this apartment remained, in my mind, the real home and even now, I still feel like there will come a time when I’ll move back there. I know it doesn’t look the same anymore, but I still remember how the dim light fell across the large hallway in the centre of the apartment, how the giant wooden zodiac paintings in a Goya style seemed to watch me, and how I somehow never had nightmares about them. I still remember the feel of every wooden door, and the size of the huge mirror I’d get so close to until I would’ve seen only my eyes, waiting for something to change in them. I remember exactly where my grandfather’s wooden chair sat in the middle of the living room, and how he’d watch sports seriously while I watched him watching sports. In the afternoons, we’d sit in his room and watch the crows fly in seemingly endless flocks, and he’d explain how I could always tell if the weather was going to change by the way they fly. Then he’d lie down on the left side of the bed and read the Gândul newspaper, and I’d sit on the floor beside him, pulling out the dictionary from his nightstand, the only book with pictures.  He’d fall asleep, and I’d stare at the botanical illustrations, while from the neighbours’ apartment, I could hear a girl practising piano for what seemed like hours and hours.

After he died, I spent a long time sitting on the left side of the bed, hoping at least his ghost would return, and we’d watch the crows fly again. Even now, I still watch the crows in the afternoon, and it feels like they fly faster and faster, and I can’t really absorb their movement anymore, and I wonder what it would’ve been like if he hadn’t died, and if we had never moved. But at the same time, I realise that maybe this way I wouldn’t have spent so much time linking all these fragments of childhood to just as many fragments of the city, and maybe, just maybe, that’s how I’ll finally convince myself to find that cemetery gate.