There are places that do not remain in memory just as scenery, but as an extension of one's own being. For me, such a place is the neighborhood of my childhood: the world around Calea 13 Septembrie, Dealul Spirii, Uranus, Puișor, Sabinelor, Sirenelor, and Izvor streets.
For a long time, this neighborhood remained for me just the background of family events: Great-grandmother Lina's house, the veranda, the trams, the yard, relatives, and neighbors. Only later did I understand that the place where I grew up was not just a domestic setting, but a space loaded with history, social contrasts, and dramatic urban transformations.
The material gathered here has three main threads, which I try to keep together: the history of the place, the history of my family in this place, and the neighborhood as I knew it in my childhood.
The core of this section is now the full text "My Neighborhood", in its current form. It combines urban history, family memory, and the direct evocation of childhood lived on Dealul Spirii, at Uranus, and on Calea 13 Septembrie.
Table of Contents
My family in the neighborhood
All this history of Dealul Spirii would remain for me just a page of Bucharest's history if it weren't directly linked to my family's history. In this neighborhood, on Calea 13 Septembrie and the surrounding streets, Lina and her kin were not just residents, but active participants in its transformation: they bought, built, rented, raised children, and crossed through wars, refugees, and regime changes.
From this point on, the history of the neighborhood can no longer be separated from my family's history. What up to here appears as urban evolution becomes, from now on, the concrete space of a family life and, finally, of my own childhood.