The big break officially lasts twenty minutes. Unofficially, it’s the only moment when students in Bucharest breathe a different kind of air than that of textbooks and tests. In those short minutes, an entire city seems to unfold: the street noise slipping through the windows, the buzz of classmates, phones lighting up at once, hunger, and the constant need to belong.

For a student raised in the capital, the big break isn’t just downtime between classes. It’s a social laboratory. In different corners, alliances form, friendships are negotiated, plans for the afternoon are drawn. Someone shares a pretzel, someone else shows a TikTok clip, two fight over the only outlet to charge their phones. Teachers withdraw, and for a few minutes, students rule the space.

The city barges in with all its force here too. The traffic jam they saw that morning, the neon ads, the chatter about what happened “in town” — all of it blends with the crinkle of snack bags. The big break becomes a miniature of Bucharest itself: noisy, diverse, competitive, but also full of raw creativity.

At the same time, each child searches for a refuge. Some take out a notebook to draw, others slip away with their best friend to talk. A few retreat into their music, headphones shielding them from the chaos. The big break turns into an exercise in intimacy within a city that rarely offers silence.

To an outsider, it all looks chaotic. To the students, it’s vital. In those twenty minutes they unknowingly learn how to adapt to a city that won’t slow down for anyone. They learn to negotiate their place in a group, to defend their space, to share what they have, or to protect their boundaries.

When the bell rings again, they return to class. But the big break remains — an invisible map of the Bucharest they are growing up in. It is their moment — brief, intense, authentic — caught between the city’s restless energy and their need to carve out a space of their own.