On a beautiful crisp morning in September 1973 I arrive back in Bucharest by train to collect my clothes before moving to Cluj. My mother is waiting on the platform. She gives me a radiant smile. Her daughter has passed the university entrance exams. She tells me that when she was a girl she would stand in front of the big gates of Babes-Bolyai University, that huge enticing campus near Mama Draga’s house, watching students coming and going. Now her daughter has earned a place there, the first in my grandmother’s family to reach so far. My free education as well as my hard work have made this
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