Bucharest city tales: Celebrating Romania's National Day

Columnist Eleonore af Schaumburg-Lippe writes in her weekly column about life as an expat in Romania. This week she writes about how she celebrated the Romanian National Day on December 1st. One Monday morning as I was walking to work on Calea Victoriei, I saw military planes flying above me up in the sky: first three jets, then three more, then a huge helicopter and a military plane. It puzzled me a bit and different thoughts crossed my mind, as this was definitely not a usual sight, especially not on a Monday morning. I think: NATO forces, humanitarian aid planes or something like that. When suddenly two really huge military planes passed over Calea Victoriei, just above the apartment blocks, casting shadows that darkened the street. I started to think something was really wrong. Is this war? But who on earth is threatening Romania, and, well who would want to bomb Calea Victoriei? I must admit I began to shake a little, but no one in the street seemed to pay attention to the planes, which confused me, I even started wondering where to hide. I had almost reached the office, so I ran upstairs and stopped the first colleague I saw and, with a little shiver in my voice, I asked, "what is happening, what are all these planes doing?" My colleague smiled and laughed a bit, and told me it was a rehearsal for the military parade on Saturday the 1st of December. I began to laugh and answered: somebody should have told the expats, because I had just gotten a little shock. So this was how I found out that there was going to be a military parade on the Romanian National Day. On December 1, I was very interested to see how the Romanians celebrate the national day in Bucharest. I had been told the parade would take place near Arc de Triomphe, so I decided to head there and see what was going on. On my way, I saw four trucks, some sort of garbage or chemical trucks, they were all clean and covered in the Romanian flag, honking their horns while people from the shops were waving. I found the choice of garbage trucks a bit funny, but on the other hand, why not? As I walked towards Piata Victoriei, I stopped at a shop to buy some water, there was a TV in the shop showing live pictures from the military parade. Lots of people and a long caravan of cars and machinery. I was rather excited and just couldn’t wait to get to the parade. As I arrived at Piata Victoriei, I could see that the

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