Making up Stories

And finally, there was the magazine section, where my parents usually read the current German and international press after they had finished all their other work. Everything was quiet, you couldn’t hear anything except the rustling of the newspaper pages. A calming, sleepy boredom set in. I loved to watch the people – who came from all over the world – read the newspapers, which also came from all over the world. Many readers came regularly, people knew each other. In other words, this was not only an invitation to studying the faces of the world, this was also an invitation to study the alphabets of the world. The wild squiggles of Arabic, the strangely geometric letters of Hebrew, the neat squares of Chinese. There was also Japanese, which never seemed to be able to decide whether it wanted to be neat and square or scribble wildly. And then there were the Cyrillic letters, which I was particularly fond of. I spent a lot of the pleasant boredom staring at the letters on the front page of the “ПРАВДА” (I knew what it said and what it meant, because my father had told me) and making up the stories that might hide behind these mysterious and beautiful letters.

That was certainly an important key to my enthusiasm for Russia. And then there were my parents’ friends who came from that mysterious country in the east. The woman had her birthday on the same day as me – that connects us – and was one of the nicest and most humorous people I knew. For one birthday, I think it was my eighth, she sent me a birthday card that said: “This day is the birthday of very special people”. I thought that was very funny.

Onion Domes and Daughters of the Tsar

Finally, there was the Time Life series “Kinder entdecken” (“Children explore”). In the volume “Sehenswürdigkeiten der Welt” (“Sights of the World”) there was, among other things, a double page showing the Red Square in Moscow, including a large illustration of St. Basil’s Cathedral with its colorful onion domes … By then, I was completely hooked and demanded that we travel there … immediately. However, at the beginning of the 90s, my parents found that trip still a bit too strenuous and inconvenient, so for the moment, that trip remained a distant dream.

Nevertheless, my enthusiasm for onion domes and tsars remained, and truth be told, it was actually strengthened rather than diminished by the inaccessibility of the destination. It added to the mystique. Well, you can see: Stereotypes also produce a lot of positive things.

Of course, there were countless other “enthusiasms”, especially from the USA and Canada, where we regularly visited – fueled by my love of country music, among other things. And then there was my love of Paris, fueled by my enthusiasm for French chanson. You could say that several of my passions have a musical origin …

But back to Russia. In year 11, I finally had the opportunity to get closer to the language. In cooperation with the second grammar school in the city, we were offered Russian as a 4th foreign language – albeit completely voluntarily. But I was free to do so. Unfortunately, I had to drop the subject because I already had too many lessons – but at least I had laid a few small foundations, which I built on in the following years with courses at university and Russian friends who taught me a little.

Where the Wind was Blowing

So when I started thinking about leaving Germany in 2019, 2020, I already knew the basics of the language. This also played an important role in choosing my emigration destination, because it was clear that what drove me away from Germany came from the West … from the very place where I had been drawn to more in my youth than anywhere else, indeed, what seemed like paradise on earth to me at the time. How often did I wish in the 90s that we would emigrate to the USA or at least to Canada…! Looking back, I have to say, with the famous song by Garth Brooks:

“Sometimes I thank God
for unanswered prayers
Remember when you’re talking
to the Man upstairs
that just because he doesn’t answer
doesn’t mean he don’t care
’cause some of God’s greatest gifts
are unanswered prayers.”
(Garth Brooks, Unanswered Prayers)

Yes, that’s exactly how it is. Because now the bad wind was clearly coming from the west, from the transatlantic direction – and blowing me … eastwards.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. In 2017, I traveled to Moscow for the first time and finally saw the famous onion domes that I had been waiting to see live and in color for 25 years. But I had already been to Russia before, in 2010, when I traveled to St. Petersburg for a language course.

And that’s where our story begins …