As a mildly-regular user of Bucharest’s Baneasa Airport, we know what utter chaos looks like when we see it (as does anyone unlucky enough to have been at said airport when two planes land within a few minutes of each other).
Nothing though could have prepared us for, nor compares with, the utter chaos, carnage and general mayhem that was the First Day of School.
Oh yes. For what seems like just a month or two since we stopped wearing short trousers ourselves, offspring number one started school today.
And in Romania the first day of school means the pointless welcoming ceremony. It goes on for close to two hours, and quite frankly serves only to increase apprehension amongst kids and parents. Besides the natural and understandable welcome from the headmistress, it also included an unnecessary 30 minute speech by the men in black (the school is right behind a monastery so they didn’t have far to come).
We were at least spared political speeches, though we had been expecting one: Crin Antonescu (our preferred presidential candidate who alas doesn’t really have a chance) was there, but said nothing. We left assuming that this ‘turn up be seen but say nothing’ tactic was some kind of brilliant, subliminal marketing master stroke, but found out later he simply has a kid at the school and was there as a parent.
Beyond the pointless ceremony and the scary presence of priests, the school seems relatively rather good at first glance. We’re lucky. When you see some of the horror stories on the news about schools elsewhere in the country you realise why – though we complain about Bucharest all the time – the dream we occassionally have about moving somewhere in Romania less stressful is simply not an option until the kids have been packed off to university.
