Real conversations on WhatsApp with participants in the events
TRUE LOVE
Chapter 1:
Arrival in Paradise
I hope this confession will mark the beginning of endless discussions about our future. We will analyze every topic raised in this book and, inevitably, we will find a solution — for us and for our children.
In my story all names have been changed, except two.
Everything is gray. I can barely distinguish colors. It rains all the time. Yesterday I was looking at a mid-season jacket — for July. And today a lawyer refused to help me because he sees no point in starting legal proceedings to protect my intellectual property.
Defending yourself in Germany is not easy.
All the dreams about a lawyer who protects you and fights for your rights have turned into a fairy tale imposed by propaganda about a happy European democratic society. A lawyer in Germany is a person with a cold heart who only cares about payment. The outcome of your case does not interest them at all. The only thing that matters is whether you pay or not.
If you are late with a payment, you can instantly turn into an enemy. If you stay with me until the end, I will introduce you to a lawyer who, while pretending to represent me in court, was in fact always against me. As a result, I lost contact with my children. But that doesn’t bother her. There will be another court hearing — and new money. More about my lawyer in the second part of the book, On the Edge.
Rose-Colored Glasses
First Contact
Russians
Radical Feminism (Briefly)
At five in the morning, on December 2, 2015, Denis stepped off the train at Dortmund Central Station with cautious optimism in his heart. I brought my family to Germany — a family that would soon break apart into small fragments and would never again sit at the same table, as we once did in Odessa. Denis radically changed the fate of his closest relatives after almost two years of working on the sleeping consciousness of his parents and the passive unwillingness of his younger brother to move anywhere. It would have been better if we had stayed home. But life is only given once, and I decided to take the risk — so there would be something to remember, whether in heaven or in hell.
Dortmund station — suitcases, children, “everyone stay where you are!!!”
Kaufman was in charge. *He is an elderly man, a distant acquaintance of ours, who met us in Dortmund and helped us get to the hostel. Beyond that, he could do and knew nothing, because he lived in Germany, like 99 percent of immigrants, within a narrow Russian circle.
Rose-Colored Glasses
I stepped out of the station building onto the street. Alone. Tears started running down my face. The paradise I had dreamed of for three years was right in front of my eyes. I held my breath. I was afraid to move, afraid to wake up. It seemed to me that this picture would disappear at any moment. But it was the real Dortmund. On the left was the city library, on the right the famous Borussia football museum. Soon I would get to the stadium and cheer for my club, the club of my dreams — Borussia Dortmund. Everything looked perfectly even and flawlessly designed.
Life in Germany begins at five in the morning. I watched the first passengers running late for their trains. At first glance, they were ordinary people. What distinguished them from us was their careless appearance and a strange, angry look. But I thought it was just my imagination — I had traveled for a long time, was tired, and they had probably just woken up. They were running, stumbling, hoping not to miss their train. Afraid of losing their jobs.
A friend of Gurman gave us a ride to the hostel. He was saying something unclear about how he could help us. He was a heavyset man driving a very old minibus that smelled strange inside. A Russian emigrant who had left the USSR and never quite made it to Europe. I was surprised that he still hadn’t integrated. I would not get the answer to that question anytime soon. The hostel was clean, smelled good, and had freshly painted walls. We quickly took our beds. A Heim employee ran into our three-room apartment, shouted something in German, and ran out. After resting a little, we went to the nearest store. It was Aldi (ALDI). We bought food that looked similar to what we were used to and spent 30 euros (for us, it was a huge amount), but it didn’t bother us.
In my paradise, the sun was shining. Smooth sidewalks separated perfect asphalt from equally perfect pedestrian paths. Freshly cut grass was in a state of photosynthesis and bewitched us. One thing was unsettling — there were no people. In absolute silence, a hybrid Mercedes city bus suddenly appeared and quietly disappeared around the corner. It was new, beautiful, and full of electricity. It was happy too. It had never seen our Bogdan and had never heard his brakes. It worked in its own mode, counting the seconds until the end of the workday.
We were settling into the hostel, cooking food from local products, connecting to the internet, and feeling delighted. First evening, first trip to the city center. This was Europe. By chaotically pressing all the buttons on the ticket machines in metro stations, we easily bought tickets to any destination. We bought them at twice the price, but money didn’t matter. We tried not to lose the children. Everyone was using navigation apps and was very proud of it. We weren’t some villagers, after all. At that moment, a split between the families was already beginning, and the culprit was my ex-wife.
In the hostel, after some time, a conflict of universal scale broke out among all of us. Some members of my large family still do not speak to each other, and perhaps never will. Back then, I could not imagine that a couple of years later I would lose my wife forever and essentially be left alone. But Europe enchanted us despite everything. Passersby forced smiles at our children; everyone was polite. Hello, goodbye, have a nice weekend. My wife and I — she was obedient, but already planning a divorce — found an apartment in a good area of Dortmund thanks to her good German. We had to live only next to Germans. Back then, we thought they were a perfect nation without flaws. Or rather, that’s what my ex-wife thought. I, on the other hand, through those plastic smiles and insincere compliments, immediately sensed that something here was not right.