Sonya. Hamburg
– Where were you born?
– I was born in the city of Leningrad and lived there until I was 14 years old. St. Petersburg was the whole world to me. No other cities exited for me.
– Where did your parents work?
– My mom is an engineer-economist. She worked as a programmer. But during the Perestroika time it was hard to earn money as a programmer, she went to work at customs. My dad is a civil engineer, hereditary.
– What projects does he work on?
– They design the metro, most of the projects are in St. Petersburg, they design new subway lines, new stations. Now they are trying to get into the Moscow market. In addition, they are engaged in the inspection of existing tunnels, not only in St. Petersburg. Papa traveled to Tajikistan, to the Far East, to Sochi.
– What did you like in St. Petersburg? What were your impressions, memories?
– In St. Petersburg I liked everything. I love this city very much.
– Where did you live?
– We lived in the Moscow district. Then it was still a very green area, many trees, parks, buildings in the the Stalin Empire style. It was very nice to live there. In winter, ice-rinks were created, all life took place on the street. There were many children in our area, everybody were friends and played with each other. When in the summer I was taken to my grandmother’s dacha for three months, I suffered a lot because I missed the city. For me it was a nightmare, to be in some village, to breathe this stupid fresh air, I loved the exhaust fumes.
– What subjects did you like at school?
– In school I liked those subjects where the teachers were the most strict and demanding. I adored such subjects, for example, the history of the city. For each lesson we had to learn the descriptions of buildings, ornaments, atlantes, etc., etc. We were supposed to learn by heart the description of the Admiralty building, the Winter Palace. I prepared for each lesson, I waited for it to answer with the top grade (which is five in Russia), such a nerd. Our chemistry teacher was also demanding.
– In addition to school, did you participate in some activities?
– There were a lot of clubs around. My parents brought me to many places: dancing, gymnastics, music. In my case, everything was in vain. Now it seems to me that it would have been cool if I got into some team sport, volleyball or football. I really like team games.
– How did you decide to move to Germany?
– This is a very funny story. I have a sister, she is 11 years older than me. As a teenager, it occurred to her that she did not want you to live in this Sovok anymore. She got married at 20 and infected her husband with this idea. They decided to apply for a residency in Germany as Jewes. Their documents came to the rich land of Baden-Württemberg, There, as far as we heard, the documents are considered for a very long time. In poor lands, such as Schleswig-Holstein, documents are considered quickly, because they have an outflow of population, such lands were interested in attracting people.
In Baden-Württemberg, the processing of documents lasted a very long time, during which my sister got a divorce. Our mom decided that she could not let her girl go alone to Germany, she had to go with her, to support her. So she applied for herself and me as well. At the same time there was an economic crisis, the default of the 98, which also helped the decision to move to Germany.
The answer came very quickly: after a year and a half, permission came to move to Lower Saxony. My sister still had no answer. She said: “Go, go, you will settle there, then I will come to you”. We went, while my sister eventually met a new husband and decided that staying in St. Petersburg is better. It is interesting that we didn’t strive to go anywhere and ended up here, while my sister, who really wanted to move, stayed there.
– Lower Saxony, this is where Hannover?
– Yes, this is the second largest land in Germany after Bavaria. Very dull, no mountains, no sea. We first came to an immigrants camp near Osnabrück. There were a lot of refugees from Albania, Syria, Afghanistan, and Africa. They were mostly single young men. Many of them were just hooligans and organized fights in the dining room, harassed girls, and generally behaved provocatively. Once I woke up at night from a wild noise, mother says “sleep, sleep”. It was one of these hooligans who came again to crash the bathroom. That is, the dude already came that night, he was looking for some girl whom he liked in the dining room. He did not find her and decided to smash the toilets. He really broke everything: sinks, mirrors, toilets. Then he calmed down, left, but returned for the second time. The police arrived. We were told that since there was no blood, he did not attack anyone, the police could not do anything. Mom immediately realized that we had to leave quickly. She took the first apartment that she was offered in the suburb of Hanover. After Petersburg, this apartment, this stupid suburb, was a nightmare for me. I love big cities, beautiful houses, high ceilings. But we got to a village, low buildings, gray people, ghettos, a huge Turkish diaspora, not to mention that there were no theaters or museums whatsoever. It was not easy there. We lived in this apartment with my mother for 10 years.
– Did it took long to learn the language?
– It was an interesting process. When it became clear that we were moving to Germany, we began to attend German courses near the house, then we had a private teacher. The teacher was amazing, she explained the entire grammar, I still remember everything. If I suddenly begin to doubt, for example, in an article, I recall her schemes and explanations. But grammar is one thing while the colloquial speech is another. When we arrived, I could not understand when someone was talking. For the first two months that I went to school, I did not understand anything. In addition, I ended up in a mediocre school, not in a gymnasium, where children are slightly more intelligent, but in a realschule. Everything is mixed there, there are normal children and children from the ghetto. You try to say something and they laugh at you because of the way you speak. Then the summer vacation came, during which I stayed at home for six weeks and watched TV continuously. My mom went to language classes and I was at home alone. I sat and watched TV, because I had no one to talk to and no place to go. When I went to school after the holidays, I began to understand individual words. My class teacher, she was very supportive of me, said: “You are such a good student, you have been studying the language during the holidays. You will now succeed.” I did not explain to her that instead of studying I watched stupid television shows. This was the first step.
Second phase. German language reminds me of the game Tetris. There are several prefixes in verbs, sometimes they are put at the end of a sentence, sometimes at the beginning. I really wanted to understand this system and at some point understanding, or rather a feeling, came to me by itself. In less than two years, I learned to communicate normally. This is a clear advantage of children over adults: they learn languages much better and faster. In Germany, I studied at school for 5 years: 2 years in the realschule, then three years in a gymnasium.
In realschule, I couldn’t understand how students were able to make so many mistakes in dictation, some guys managed to make 10 or even 25 mistakes! When my classmates noticed that I write dictations with almost no mistakes, they disliked me even more: “she cannot speak but she already writes dictations with grade 1 (this is the highest mark in Germany), she is definitely cheating.” In the end, I finished the realschule at the top of the class, but my classmates did not like me till the end.
In the gymnasium it became easier. There I felt already not that smart. We had students who read Goethe and Dante, no one demanded them, they did it for themselves. There was one dude who told me about Russian classical literature. At that time it was not at all interesting to me: “what do you want from me, why do I need it?”. He read Gogol, he only called him “Kokol”. For a long time I could not understand who he was talking about, who is “Kokol”. There were really smart people there. If in the realschule I felt smart, now I realized that there was no limit to perfection and there was much more to strive for. There is really a large variation in the German schools.
– Was it difficult to study in the gymnasium?
– No, not difficult. It was nice that something is demanded of me. I love it when something is demanded, then I am ready to give the maximum. There was absolutely no difficulty. I just compared myself with these children who surrounded me and realized that I was no longer the smartest.
– Was it motivating?
– Yes of course. It was very nice to have them around to learn something.
Once I had a little cultural shock. One boy from our gymnasium invited me to a theater. Very good boy, from a very good family, intelligent and pleasant. I thought: finally, I was invited to the theater by a German guy! Of course, I went to the theater in St. Petersburg. My dad took me to theaters quite often, as well as to museums, all my childhood. But I did not see any culture of going to theaters or museums while I lived in the village and studied at the realschule. There was not even a talk of this.
And here we are meeting with this boy in the center of Hanover to go to a theater! I went home, changed clothes, dressed very Russian style: nice pants, blouse, a coat with fur out. I stand dressed up, waiting for him to go to the theater. Then he comes, apparently, after school he went to a friend, not home. In the same clothes as he was at school, he comes on a date with me. Well, that was half the trouble. We came to the theater and there everybody was dressed like that, as if in the morning one fell out of bed, pulled on something that was around, went to work and then to the theater. I didn’t like the play either.
– Was it some kind of modern performance?
– Yes, modern, I do not remember well, a half-naked man was running around the stage.
– Very German?
– Yes, very German. After that, I tried to go to the theater in Hannover a couple of times, but I didn’t like anything. It is a different story in Hamburg. There are really good theaters here, good actors, but I still prefer the theater in Russia, in St. Petersburg (I haven’t been to other cities).
– Was it mostly Germans in the class in high school?
– In the gymnasium, there was a bit of diversity. There were about 20 percent of Russian-speaking students. These were mainly emigrants like me, mostly Jewes from Tashkent, from Ukraine and so on. There were a few immigrants with German heritage. There were also a few others: an Italian, a Croatian, and, if I remember correctly, a Moroccan.
– Then you entered the university in Hannover?
– Yes, then I entered the university expecting a cool life, the fun would finally begin. My mother told about their colorful student years. I entered the university and it turned out – not at all. In my class there were mostly Germans and they were all on their own. There were some small companies of snobs, apparently from good families. I felt that the folks like me should not even try to approach them, they would not by interested in me. It was completely impossible to make friends with someone, to find any company. The first two semesters I talked with some people, but it was solely for study, to discuss a lecture, to do homework. In the third semester, I found friends, also Russian-speaking, it became somehow easier. The university is large, but in my class there were no people with whom it would be nice to communicate outside the classroom.
– What was your specialty at university?
– I learned to be a civil engineer.
– You followed your father’s footsteps?
– Yes, I thought for a long time what to do. I considered the profession of a teacher of mathematics but thought that it might be quite boring to tell the students the same thing every year. Then I decided to continue the dynasty. My grandparents were both engineers, their sons, my dad and the uncle, are also engineers. But among the five grandchildren no one followed their footsteps. I thought: why not? I had a strange understanding of the profession though. I saw in my childhood how my father stands at the board, draws something, but I didn’t realize that he also had to calculate the strength of all the structures, I did not understand that. When classes began, especially the course on strength of materials, my hair stood on end. In the first semester, I failed almost all the exams. I was not ready for such a technical side of the profession and for the fact that the during the semester we did not need to study very hard, but you have to prepare for exams, not at all like at high school. I guess I was very naive. I did not understand why you need to learn these stupid properties of concrete and what components it consists of. Who needs it at all? When I failed all this, my grandmother from St. Petersburg called me and screamed at me very much, she was still alive then, she was 93 years old. She said: “You should be ashamed, now all the professors know that you are a worthless fool, that you cannot do anything!” I said: “Grandma, we have 400 people in the class, nobody cares about me”. “No, you have disgraced the family”. I was very sad. Of course that was stupid, but I decided to prove to myself that I can do everything. In the second semester, I retook all the failed exams, for some I even got the top grade. After that things went better. Probably in the first semester, I was knocked down by the fact that no one demanded anything. I understand that now. You come to the lectures anonymously, during the semester you did not have to pass anything, no control. Whether you study or not, nobody is checking you. It is only necessary to pass the exam at the end of the semester, but the exam is very difficult.
– Were there problems at the exam?
– Yes, problems and theory.
– How did you find work? What are you doing now?
– I graduated from the University of Hannover. I liked the specialization of underground construction.
– This is also what your dad is doing?
– Right. This topic was very interesting and sounded easier for me, one has fewer incomprehensible coefficients, which have been empirically derived by someone, and you just have to combine them correctly in formulas. I did not like that at all: a bunch of little things that you can forget and make a mistake. I started writing resumes for underground construction to companies in Hamburg and Berlin, because I really wanted to go to a bigger city. But nobody took me, now I understand why. In this area you need to have more experience. This is really a complex subject, tunnels and so on.
Suddenly, I stumble upon an announcement from the company WTM in Hamburg, about which I did not know anything then. Prior to this, for three months, no one had ever invited me for an interview, refusals came a couple of times, and even those were very sluggish. And here I send my resume at 12 o’clock at night, and the next day at 10am I am invited to an interview!
I came to Hamburg for the interview, I was very worried. I find myself in an old beautiful building in the center of the city overlooking the Alster Lake with the fountain and the most beautiful historical buildings. At that time, all three chefs were present at the interview. Two weeks later they called and said that they were ready to take me on my terms. It was the only place where I was called for an interview and they offered me a job. As it turned out, I was very lucky, because the company is valued in different areas, it has a diverse portfolio and a good internal atmosphere.
During the interview I said very clearly that I want to do underground construction and I don’t want to build any houses. I come to work on the first day, and where did I find myself? In the department of ground construction, where they build houses and… houses. Probably, they did not listen to me very carefully.
– Or maybe they thought: the girl is good, but she does not know what she wants, we will take here anyway?
– Yes, but now I am happy that I ended up in this department, I have a very good boss, I am lucky.