Manage your dream. Your opportunities are endless

Chapter 2. First step into the unknown world…

Making an important decision

We decided to leave to live in Germany. At that moment, my mother’s three sisters lived there.

But what did it mean for me to leave everything and go to live in Germany, another country with a different way of life, different customs? But what about German, which I did not know? What about all this? I had to leave my startup business, my friends, my habits and go into a world still incomprehensible to myself! THIS were my FEARS at that moment, which I needed to cope with.

I thought that there should also be advantages in this situation, and began to list them: I am young at my twenty-four years old and, if necessary, I can get another or additional education in Germany, which will open up NEW, unknown opportunities for me.

I thought that for this I need to first learn the language, which will give me some advantages for my future. But that was not all. That time was very turbulent in Russia, my business involved serious risks, my safety was not guaranteed by anything. And it was not clear what Russia would be like in five or six years. My brother Dmitry, who was a year and a half younger than me, he worked in various places and earned very modest income, he had dubious friends and abused alcohol. I thought about him and worried about him. Departure from Russia should only benefit him.

And my father, to my proposal to leave for him with his mother alone, to Germany, replied that he would not go to Germany without me and my brother, and my mother supported him.

So, the decision was made, and we started the process of paperwork for the exit. Earlier in the family we did not speak at all about the fact that we have relatives abroad. Mom’s older sister went abroad in the seventies. She and her mother rarely corresponded, since in the USSR, living behind the “Iron Curtain”, it was dangerous to have relatives abroad. This could have far-reaching consequences – such a fact could significantly limit the choice of profession, career growth, self-realization as a leader.

But by that time, in 1993, all three of my mother’s sisters had already lived in Germany. My mother was German by birth, she was from those Germans who moved to the Volga region at the invitation of Tsarina Catherine II in the 16th century from Schlesia, the eastern part of Germany. Today these lands are part of Poland.

Russian Germans. Generational history

Immigrants from Germany during the time of Catherine II received land and could engage in agriculture. As a result, whole German villages with German schools, beautiful houses and good roads were formed in four hundred years. The inhabitants of such villages spoke only German, and this was their own little world for them. When we were about to move to Germany, we did not know that such villages existed in southern Russia.

Before the revolution, my ancestors owned a large farm, which in 1917 was taken away and passed into the possession of Soviet collective farms, and my great-grandfather named Rekovsky was shot by the Bolsheviks. But this was not the end of the ordeal for the Rekovsky family, as well as for many other Volga region Germans. 1941 came, the Great Patriotic War with fascist Germany began. At night, the entire village was surrounded by special services, and an order was given to evacuate the entire population. People could only take with them documents, which were later seized by the NKVD, and some clothes and food. All were put into a cargo train at the nearest station and taken to, but where – it is not known. These frightened people did not know how long they would take them and what awaited them ahead. And they faced difficult trials ahead: complete poverty, death of relatives from hunger or from work in the Gulag and “labor camps”.

The echelon reached its destination in about a week, it was the city of Novosibirsk. The people were put into trucks and taken to the forest about fifty kilometers from the city. There was no housing at all, and people were offered to dig dugouts. Yes, that’s exactly how – to dig dugouts and settle down, whoever can. (Further – from the words of my mother’s sister, aunt Mina.) The Rekovskys family had five children at that time, my mother was born after the war, in 1947. Just imagine: as soon as the family settled down, my grandfather Alexander Rekovsky (born on July 21, 1909) was taken into the labor army, grandmother Ekaterina (born on March 9, 1911) was also taken into the labor army, and a little later, three months later, the children were left alone. The older sister Mina, who was twelve at the time, took full responsibility for the younger sisters. The sisters were between two and six years old. Mina went from door to door, begged, got food and warm clothes, wandered through the garbage dumps, collected what could still be used for food, and, if possible, worked as a nanny. The two youngest sisters could not overcome the hardships of hunger and died one after another during the first year after moving to Novosibirsk.

Time passed and the situation got worse. Mina found out the address of the camp where her father worked and wrote him the following letter: “Our beloved daddy, we live in our last breath. Our two little sisters starved to death three months ago, and now it’s our turn. Come to us as soon as possible, otherwise we may not wait for you! Your daughter Mina”.

When my grandfather received this letter, only one person could help him in this situation. This was one of the camp officers with the rank of captain. After the main working day, the grandfather helped the family of this officer, who lived on the territory of the labor camp, – he prepared firewood for them. In the evening, grandfather brought firewood to their house and stoked the stove. And so, he once again fired up the stove and handed this letter to the officer’s wife with words of help and asked to give him the opportunity to go to Novosibirsk to bring his children. It was unlikely, but he nevertheless hoped very much: he had no other opportunity to get out of the camp, even for a couple of days.

And the very next day, my grandfather received a three-day leave of absence from the camp director. These were the most cherished three days in his entire life!

He received two cans of stew, a loaf of bread and a little sugar on the way from the officer’s wife. My grandfather returned to the camp three days later and brought with him three thinner, exhausted, but infinitely happy daughters. My grandfather’s luck set a good example for other fathers who worked in this labor camp. They began to intercede for the children before the leadership of the colony and to bring them from dugouts near Novosibirsk, left not of their own free will.

The year 1945 came, my grandmother returned from the labor camp, and the Rekovskys family moved to Novosibirsk. Despite the fact that they did not have the right to leave this area for several more years, they were happy that they were together after four such difficult years.

In 1947, my mother, Lydia Aleksandrovna Rekovskaya, was born. The Rekovsky family continued to live in Novosibirsk, since the regime established by Lavrentiy Beria after the end of World War II did not allow the Germans to leave the regions where they were deported in 1941. Only in 1954, after Beria’s death, did German families receive passports. Now they, like all free people, could freely move around the territory of the USSR. After so many years of hardship and the cold of the north, the Rekovskys decided to leave for the union Republic of Kyrgyzstan, in the city of Frunze, now Bishkek. There they built a one-story house with snow-white walls, in which there was a garden planted with all kinds of fruit trees that grew only in this strip. In the seventies and eighties, my family and I came to them every summer from the Urals on vacation to eat fruit and homemade sweet German krebel, which my grandmother so willingly baked.

I remember very well this kind and very lively granny, who in her life never spoke Russian, but only spoke German with the dialect of the Volga region, the so-called Plattdeutsch. In the summer after work, my grandfather was constantly swarming in the garden, preparing dried fruits, soaked watermelons and preparing his signature plum wine. It was their new, calm and measured world.

Transfer to the city of Miass. Temporary solution

So, I made the final decision to go to Germany, abandoned plans to organize a pasta factory and moved with my wife from Yekaterinburg to Miass, continuing to engage in wholesale trade. In addition, before leaving for Germany, I decided to get a job at the Ural Automobile Plant (UralAZ), in the commercial service. In the nineties, almost all enterprises in the country worked without money supply and barely kept themselves afloat. The primary task for any enterprise at that time was to close its debts for the supply of raw materials and the necessary energy resources for production, and for this they used the so-called “offset” scheme. I went to work in such a unit, which is responsible for all offsets at the enterprise, and which called the “department of commercial services”. There were seven of us. For a relatively short period of work in the department, in addition to small contracts, I managed to conclude one large contract with our customer from Khanty-Mansiysk for 1 billion 100 million rubles and send it to our suppliers of components through Ural- and Mostransgaz. I also gained a huge and valuable experience of communicating with the general and commercial directors of the largest enterprises in Russia, and regular trips to enterprises of partners made me even more mobile, collected and sociable. After three months of work, I got a Volga-3110 service car with a driver. It was already a success. But the salary for this work was purely symbolic for me, and it was enough for me for about a week. My main income came from my commercial activities, which I carried out in parallel with my main job. For these purposes, I found a driver with a VAZ-2103 car and arranged it part-time as my personal driver. His name was Sergei. It was a partner, not just a driver. Sergei was in the indicated place on one my call always, at any time of the day or night. I could always rely on this person as myself. Sergey has always clearly fulfilled my tasks not only in our city, but also in Yekaterinburg, as well as in other regions. He did not drink or smoke, and, moreover, he could sleep little and not lose concentration on the roads. Here it is, the skill of an experienced person!

I will tell you about one interesting case that happened to us in Yekaterinburg.

When I arrived in Yekaterinburg, my friend Miroslav Nitkovsky called me (I changed his name and surname for several reasons), he worked in the department for combating economic crime and asked me about one service. We met with Miroslav, and he explained what exactly needs to be done. Someone was selling freight cars according to an ad posted in a newspaper in Yekaterinburg. We had to call the seller and make an appointment to inspect the goods after the fact, then clarify the price, and this task was completed.

The next day we did so. The seller made an appointment for us at the “Sorting” station, we arrived. The car had Chelyabinsk license plates, everything looks believable. We met. The seller in a suit, very intelligent, showed us the cars, we bargained a little more and parted on the fact that we would inform about our decision by phone in the evening. Of course, we didn’t call him. My friend only needed the car numbers to track them after they were sold and set off. A week later, the operation ended, the cars were arrested after the illegal sale. As it turned out, an employee of the Yekaterinburg railway administration was selling them. The big boss with stars on his shoulder straps invited Miroslav to his office, thanked him for the excellent work and signed a report on his promotion and assignment to him of the next rank. And the boss briefly added before Miroslav left the office: “Miroslav Mikhailovich, you bring this matter into my office. We will deal with this comrade further ourselves!” This is how that system worked in the nineties.

2018 year. India, Goa

Today is Saturday, November 11th. I am writing the book for the sixth day, immersing myself in my memories to such an extent that I think and scroll through all the events of past years constantly in order to choose the most important and interesting for the reader and write about it right away. I start thinking early in the morning, when I wake up and am still in bed; I think when I swim in the pool with my incredibly active daughter Vlada, when I walk and talk with my beloved wife Catherine. My thoughts are completely immersed in those past years.

Sunset on the coast of Goa

In November, Goa is very comfortable in the mornings, the air temperature at eight in the morning is about twenty-five degrees. But as soon as the sun starts to warm, it gets pretty hot within an hour and the temperature rises to thirty degrees. I write every morning, sitting on a cozy semicircular balcony, planted around the perimeter of green plants in flower beds. I can smell a pleasant fresh scent of flowers, brought by a gentle breeze. Sometimes tobacco smoke from the neighboring balcony suddenly interrupts him. We have a spacious room overlooking the garden, behind which the pool of an unusual shape with a well-equipped adjoining territory is located.

Yesterday our three-year-old daughter took three new steps in her knowledge of this world. These were three discoveries for her.

– First: she learned to immerse herself in the water with glasses and hold her breath while doing so.

– Second: we climbed with her by parachute and made a short trip along the coast. We both shouted with delight: “How cool, we are flying!”

– And third: when we returned from dinner at a coastal restaurant, Vlada learned to find hidden crabs in the sand and pull them out of the shelter, taking them by the shell with her little hands! It was something! She screamed so much with pleasure when the crabs ran away from her on the sand, and she ran after them, illuminating their path with her phone.

Here it is, happiness – when we see and experience with our loved ones such moments in life. This is my new life, which began only six years ago.

After I returned to Russia from Germany in 2005, where I lived for eleven years, I worked for five years in Moscow, then for two years in the Moscow region, and in 2012 fate brought me to Nizhny Novgorod, where my ancestors come from father. After moving to Nizhny Novgorod, for the first year I lived in a two-room rented apartment in the Seventh Heaven area. I met Ekaterina by chance one Sunday afternoon. This happened in the “New Age” auto center, an official dealer of one of the European brands. I drove there that day after work to wash my car, and I drove out forty minutes later in high spirits after a short acquaintance with Ekaterina. It was actually Sunday then – at that time I often went to work on weekends, as new projects required it. I invited Ekaterina for coffee during a short meeting at the auto center, and we exchanged phones. She moved to Nizhny Novgorod from the Perm Territory with her parents ten years ago. In the city of Chernushka, where they lived before, the volume of oil production began to decline sharply since 2002, and later the prospects in their native land became less and less.

Forty minutes after our meeting, I was leaving the auto center and was already making plans on how to meet this bright brunette again. We began to meet on weekends, traveled around the outskirts of the city, went to the very village of Berezovka, where the story of my great-grandfathers begins. I was getting to know the city and at the same time looking for a suitable area on the outskirts, where I planned to buy a piece of land and build a small house from natural solid wood. At that moment, I assumed that I would stay in Nizhny Novgorod at this stage of my life for at least five or six years. That’s what I thought in 2012. As a result, I lived in this city, or rather, on its outskirts, for a full six years and four months. This place on the outskirts of the city has become another dear place for me, where I want to return again.

1994 year. Ural. Start into an unknown future

We submitted all the necessary documents for registration of our departure to Germany, and after six months a confirmation came, on the basis of which we handed over our foreign passports to obtain a visa for permanent residence. And then the moment came when it was necessary to get ready for departure. We had to sell our four-room apartment in Miass, all the furniture in it, a Niva car, a land plot for building a house near the village of New Andreevka, and it was not clear to us what to do with a huge amount of everything that had been accumulated over the past nineteen years and remained in the reserve at the cordon: agricultural machinery, all kinds of tools, boats, outboard motors and the like. We distributed a huge amount of all this to our relatives, including Father’s brother Nikolai. He lived in the village of Turgoyak, in his private house on the shore of a unique lake with the same name – the pearls of the South Ural. My father had three brothers – Gennady, Victor, Nikolai – and a sister Tamara. Only Nikolai and Tamara survived until the nineties. Gennady died in a fire, and Victor died at the age of 52 from tuberculosis. Tamara’s husband died at the age of 40 due to a heart attack, and ten years after his death she moved to live in the village of Upper Crucian Carps, in the house of her parents.

My ancestors on the line of my father moved from Murom to the South Ural, to the village of Upper Crucian Carps in 1938. In these, at that time deaf, lands, it was possible to feed the entire large family by hunting and fishing. The village is located on the shores of one of the largest lakes in the Southern Ural – Big Miassovo, and the southern border of the Ural Mineralogical Reserve lies seven kilometers from the village.

In the late summer of 1994, I quit my job at the UralAZ automobile plant and was finishing my last unfinished business deals. I sold the apartment to one entrepreneur, collected all my cash and agreed to buy currency at a special rate thanks to my friend Vadim, who was then working at a bank in Yekaterinburg, in a branch of this bank in our city. The amount for us at that time was considerable. My brother and mother and I arrived at the bank in two cars. My brother and I had the same sports bags with us. Despite the fact that no one except the bank employees and our family knew about the deal, I prepared and implemented some security measures. Times were not very calm. They were waiting for us at the bank, we promptly completed the transaction, packed the currency into one bag. I put my jacket in the second bag, which I was wearing in the bank. We left the bank and got into two different cars with my brother. Mom got into the third car, which was parked at the bank and was waiting for us even before our arrival. The road to the reserve was calm, no one followed us, everything went well. Two weeks remained before our departure at that time.

The next day – I don’t even know how to express my feelings – the default happened in Russia: the ruble exchange rate collapsed four times in one day! If we had delayed even for one day, we would have lost a colossal amount of money for us at that time.

What was it for us then – luck or accident? Today I would say – a pattern, or, in another way, our thoughts, goals and actions led to the outcome of these events.

On October 10, 1994, the whole family boarded the train at the Miass station and set out for our new life. We didn’t know what it would be like. We drove with the hope of saving our father – that was the first. Everything else will definitely be there – I thought so, I spoke about it aloud, reassuring my parents, who, for their part, also worried about us in the first place.

Hello, Germany!

Germany greeted us on October 14 with wonderful weather in the city of Braunschweig, located in the northern part of Germany, a hundred kilometers east of Hanover. When we got off the train at nine o’clock in the morning, the platform of the station, to my surprise, was practically empty. Mother’s sister Mina with her husband Victor and son Vladimir were already waiting for us at the station. We drove off with our suitcases loaded into two Audi cars. I didn’t remember my aunt at all, since her family left for Germany back in 1978 from Latvia. They specially moved there from the city of Frunze in the early seventies for this purpose. Since then, the sisters have not seen each other.

We drove along an incredibly flat autobahn to the neighboring town of Salzgitter, which translates as “salt grate”. It was founded in 1937 by General Goebbels. Here is one of the largest and to this day in Germany, the Prussian Metallurgical Plant, and the city has grown since its foundation due to the construction of standard housing for the families of the workers of this plant. I watched the extraordinarily well-groomed and colorful farmland as I drove along the Autobahn. Some of them were already plowed, some were full of different shades of green and yellow. These sections, with incredibly flat borders, were tightly adjacent to the freeway and gave me the impression of a neatly drawn picture. We were driving, it seemed to me, not fast, about a hundred kilometers per hour, and I checked with Volodya, who was constantly telling something and laughing merrily at what speed we were moving. To my surprise, the cousin exclaimed: “What are you, I do not go so slowly, we are now moving at a speed of one hundred and eighty kilometers per hour!” – and he laughed out loud. He was a very positive, open and cheerful person in his forties. Not bad, I thought then.

We arrived at the site about half an hour after we left the train station. We arrived at the two-story small but very cozy house of my mother’s sister, where she placed us for the first time, until we find ourselves an apartment. In addition, my mother’s sister accompanied us to the administration of the city of Salzgitter for about two weeks, as we had to draw up a lot of documents.

On the very first day of my stay in this country, I realized that I was not just in another country, but in another world. Incredibly clean streets, sidewalks, houses of various colors – it was like a picture in a magazine that I would call “New World”. Everyone always smiled at us on the streets and in the city administration, which seemed very strange to me: at first I felt a little uncomfortable, as if they saw in me a person asking for help. On the very first day, we were given a food allowance – about 250 marks per person per month, and in addition – another 500 German marks as a one-time allowance for clothing. I thought that we could save what we brought with us, since the money will still be useful to us.

The father was examined at the local clinic in a week. This was only the beginning of all subsequent analyzes and examinations for him. A little later, doctors told us that the father’s disease in Germany had not yet been fully understood, and there were no more than ten patients with such a diagnosis throughout Germany. Each patient was considered unique and was not just a patient of a medical institution, but also an object of study of the process of development of the disease, both the microorganisms themselves, penetrated from animals to humans, and all the changes that occur with the patients themselves.

A month after arriving in Germany, we already began to regularly attend language courses, which began at nine in the morning and ended at three in the afternoon every day from Monday to Friday. Our group consisted of fifteen people – representatives of different parts of the planet: Sri Lanka, Poland, Turkey, Albania and, of course, Russia.

We, like other participants, received a referral for language courses from the employment agency (Arbeitsamt). The time spent attending courses was counted towards our work experience. During this period, we were assigned unemployment benefits, which, although not much, were still higher than what we had since our arrival, and now amounted to 450 German marks. In the classroom, we were taught not only German, but also history, politics and some articles of legislative law. During these courses, I first learned what a resume is, which we also learned to write according to our training program. We also organized field trips on our own initiative and with the consent of the teachers. We got acquainted not only with classmates, but also with the teachers themselves at a barbecue on the shore of the lake. So we gradually, over the next six months, got used to the new life.

A new turn of events

Almost immediately after our arrival, my wife and I translated our diplomas into German and sent them for recognition to the Ministry of Education in Hanover. Six months later – we had already completed our language courses by that time – we received an answer from this department, which put us in a difficult position: we were denied recognition of our economic diplomas. The specialty in which we studied in Russia was called “Economics and Organization of Production”, and the diplomas of engineering economists we received could now be put on a shelf.

If the higher education we received in Russia had a technical direction, and not an economic one, then diplomas in Germany would be recognized. Therefore, I decided to look for a job, using the experience and special technical education I received at the training and production plant. I got it when I was in the ninth grade of a comprehensive school.

A month later, I received an invitation and could enroll in free tuition at the University of Hanover – immediately to the second year, without passing exams. My wife, unlike me, did not get the opportunity to study for free, as she had the status of a foreign citizen in Germany and for a long time lived with a Russian foreign passport, in which her visas were renewed every year for five years.

“Now what? – I said to myself. – Then I will look for a job, because I will not go to Hanover alone”.

Everything that I had in my twenty-four years, I left in Russia: friends, business, my favorite places, my habits. I left everything there. And now I have also lost my education. What did I have left at that moment? This question I asked myself, thinking about how I should be now. What do I have? – that’s what I thought, analyzing my position and morale. I won’t get anything back. So I have to accept this, calm down morally and not torment myself with all sorts of doubts and resentments.

But, on the other hand, everything is not so bad: my father now has the opportunity to receive the medicines he needs and undergo further examinations, the medical insurance company pays all expenses. And that’s great!

Further: if I find a job, I will be independent of the circumstances and will be able to change something over time. I thought this was true.

I am still young at twenty-four years old, and I have time to start from scratch! And, most importantly, I had a great desire to become again who I wanted to be in life!

I almost managed to achieve this in Russia, which means that I can do it here in Germany!

There was a certainty inside me that I would be able to become successful, become independent of circumstances, and become myself. I immediately took action.

The past does not pass without a trace

My past helped me in this situation. While studying at school in the ninth grade, we got industrial training. It was a full day once a week, throughout the year, when our whole class attended a training and production plant organized on the basis of the UralAZ automobile plant. I chose the specialty of a universal turner from the list of blue-collar occupations offered to us in the program. We received a working specialty and the corresponding document confirming qualifications at the end of the training program, having passed exams. In addition, we had to undergo an internship and for a month we worked at the plant. I got a job in a press shop for bodywork and worked there for a month, receiving a salary of seventy rubles, and a month later I received an additional bonus of thirty rubles. This was my first self-earned money. How did I spend it then? – one of you will ask. I bought a guitar for which I paid sixty rubles. Up to this point, I have played my father’s guitar and have always dreamed of my own instrument. I invested the first money I earned in my hobby: music was and is something special for me. Music is a part of my inner self.

I translated into German this certificate of a general-purpose turner of the third category ten years after its acquisition, and began to search for a suitable vacancy. I prepared my resume as we were taught in the courses, I looked at about twenty vacancies in the city that I could apply for. I selected three firms after thoroughly reviewing each company profile on the Internet and sent in my first envelopes with a resume, photograph and translation of my humble testimony.

The result was not long in coming, and a week later I received the first invitation from Theysohn Maschienenbau GmbH for an interview. How worried I was then – I still remember it. I prepared for the upcoming meeting thoroughly, I memorized some sentences in order to briefly but constructively tell about myself. The most important thing for complete success was to substantiate for what reasons I am applying for this particular specialty. In Germany, it is very important that the applicant’s profile, education and work experience match the requirements of the open position. If a candidate is retrained for a given vacancy or his work experience does not meet the requirements, the chances for the applicant to be in demand for this vacancy are minimal.