Mr. Mieles, you moved as headmaster from Lessing-Gymnasium in Frankfurt to Sofia at the German School.

How was the first time?

Florentine Fritzen

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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I've been working here for four weeks now.

After a week of preparation with the teachers, the school has been running with the students for a week.

Overall, I feel very comfortable here at school, in the city, in the country.

Do you have to imagine everyday school life like in Germany, with masks and tests?

Dealing with Covid is different here.

Since the Bulgarian schools are only starting their operations these days, the Bulgarian guidelines that we are following are not yet entirely clear.

What is new is that children are now also wearing masks in class in primary school.

A test procedure like the one in Hessen is not yet conceivable because there is a certain skepticism towards tests.

If 90 percent of parents would agree to a class, it could be tested there.

But as my experienced staff at school have assured me, such a quota is an illusion.

Is everything otherwise similar to the Lessing Gymnasium?

No, it really is a completely different world.

It starts with the structure: preschoolers, elementary school children and high school children learn at school.

When I walk across the courtyard during one of the breaks, which are of course offset, I have five-year-olds, sometimes ten-year-olds, and sometimes nineteen-year-olds in front of me.

A big difference to the Lessing-Gymnasium is that it is an encounter school, open to children from Bulgarian and German families.

The proportion of children from Bulgarian families is 85 percent.

So much?

To put that into perspective: At the German School in Rome, where I was previously the deputy headmaster, 50 percent came from Italian families and 25 percent each from bicultural and German families.

The fact that there are predominantly Bulgarian children here has a huge impact on the lessons.

Why do they want to go to the German School so much?

After my first impressions, I would say that many Bulgarians have an incredibly positive attitude towards Germany.

They would like to enable their children to participate in German culture.

The opportunity to learn German very well opens up opportunities for them to study at German-speaking universities.

We had an alumni meeting on Friday.

The school has only been around since 2008, so there aren't that many high school graduate classes yet.

But without exception, all of the young people I spoke to there study in Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt or at other German-speaking universities and feel very well prepared.

How well can the students speak German?

Always better with age.

In the preschool classes they learn the language on a playful level.

In elementary school they can already speak German quite well.

The oldest class I now have in class is an eleventh, which means that I will finish school next year.

They really have astonishingly good knowledge of German.

Do the 15 percent of German children have parents who work in Sofia?