Avers and reverse in Berlinsky

I want to be like Berlin old women, shaggy children and plan everything a year ahead. Or not, I don't want

During our last visit to my homeland, I met with a childhood friend. It so happened that she did not graduate from the university, where we both went brilliantly. I worked all my life in different places. And now the crisis and unemployment in our hometown have led to the fact that she cannot find a job. No. A friend said that she actually dreams of working as a fitness trainer and even found inexpensive training courses. Six months later, she could get a diploma and work of her dreams. Could, but would not.

- Why? This is a great plan!

“Well, do not go to study at thirty -five together with eighteen -year -old students.”

Life without age

And at that moment I realized how much Germany changed me. We moved just two years ago, and then it seemed to me that life was half passed. And if you didn’t have time to learn something to your thirty-three-now it’s definitely too late. And now in the German language courses this is me - youth. Because a forty -year -old Turkish woman - the mother of four children, and the sixty -year -old Spaniard sits with me at my desk. After German courses, I am going to receive secondary vocational education in Germany. I will have a diploma and a new specialty for a forty -year anniversary. In this prospect, a lot confused me: how I will study in a foreign language, how I will be managed with studies, lectures, economy and two children. But I no longer have doubts related to age. And for this new attitude towards myself, I am very grateful to Germany. It was here at thirty -five years that I became young again. It was here that she ceased to be afraid of old age. And I want to save this German gift for life.

And something else.

Happy, shaggy, independent

“Martha has become a real little time for you” - I am increasingly hearing from friends. When in the Kaluga maternity hospital we gave our daughter a typically burgher name of Marta, we could not imagine that in five years we would live in Germany.

I compare the photos of Martha before moving and now - and I see the difference. When I brought my daughter for the first time to the German kindergarten, she was a very Russian girl. As in the picture in the primer - tight neat braids, dress, white tights, a handkerchief in a pocket. Now, instead of pigtails, she has loose hair below her shoulders (we cut off the braids on the anniversary of our move), jeans with a dress, rubber boots, different socks on the legs, a jacket of a backbone and multi -colored snood on her neck.

I heard different from German mothers on playgrounds. But never, never once, nowhere in Germany I heard: "Caution, you will fall - you will get dirty!" German mothers pay great attention to children's safety: on a scooter or a bicycle - only in a helmet; on children's backpacks - reflective flickers; In all cars - car seats and seat belts. But at the same time, parents show a striking calm for us about stained clothes. German children are lying on playgrounds, on the ground and in the leaves, crawl on their knees along the sand, spank the puddles. From May to September at all sites, children run barefoot. The kids who do not know how to walk, calmly crawl around the floor in cinemas, museums, cafes. In the summer, I saw even one slider on the playground: he sat in a diaper in a puddle, slapped his hands on it and laughed joyfully. His mother laughed too. "I get dirty - I'll kill!" - I heard such a shout in Russia very often. In Germany, I cannot imagine this almost the same as jokes about Hitler. Sometimes everyone has washing machines, so the matter seems to be not at all in washing, but in "what people say."

German children have a lot of freedom. Freedom to run, climb, jump, fall, crawl and get dirty. Freedom to wear loose hair and not comb. Freedom to go in costumes of your favorite superheroes to kindergarten. German parents take care that in the children's backpack there is a useful breakfast so that the child does not forget the magic words “thank you-please”, do not interrupt adults, have fun and benefit with the benefit during the day and went to bed early (hinges for German children at 19: 00-19: 30). In this scale of values ​​there are no perfectly clean pants, smeared dresses and tight braids with ribbons.

And this attitude towards children, attention to the internal, and not to the external, is the second gift I received in Germany, which I carefully keep.

Wir Sind anders Als ...

I am very glad that my children here from childhood absorb a calm attitude towards people who are not like us. In a variety of manifestations.

Once March, on the way from the garden home in paints, told me how Mael from her group does not eat anything at all at lunch!

“Nothing at all, can you imagine, mom?” Only bread!

“Mmmm ... Who is Mael?”

- Well, mom, his box in the locker room stands next to Anton's box!

- AND?

- Well, he still has a backpack with dinosaurs!

As a result, when we reached home and opened a photo of Martina’s group, it turned out that Mael is the only black child in the group. And my daughter, who lived in Germany for two years from her five, did not even occur to him to describe him like that.

Then I found children's encyclopedias in the doctor’s waiting room, which tells that the family can have a mother, dad and a child, or maybe mom, mother and child. I saw how the marathon with one iron foot finished on the annual running marathon. And once on the playground I met a boy of about ten in football boots and ... a dress. Yes, it was definitely a boy. And the most amazing - no one laughed at him and showed his finger. “We are all very different. Someone is black, someone is white. Someone fat, someone thin. We are all different. And this makes our life multi -colored ” - our children sang such a song in kindergarten at a summer holiday. I listened and cried. And I was not even ashamed.

No, for nothing, never, no

It sounds stupid, but least of all I want to adopt from the Germans to their manner ... to blow my nose. Who at least once was in Germany in a restaurant or in public transport should understand me. Once in the subway, a pretty decent uncle, who was sitting next to me, took out a handkerchief and turned off so that I almost fell from my place. This trumpet voice probably heard the train driver. Then I noticed that everything was done by this: in transport, at a lecture, on a romantic date in a cafe - they calmly get a scarf and deafeningly, with a relish, they are abused several times in a row.

I am also afraid to succumb to local influence and start eating sandwiches and buns. In the subway near the kindergarten, to which my daughter goes, there is a confectionery with a huge selection of a variety of inexpensive baking. When we pass by in 8:30 in the morning - there is always a crowd. Parents buy rolls and sandwiches for breakfast. There I also meet half of the children from our group, who buy donuts and croissants with me to the garden. Only in the first year of emigration kilograms help me cook porridge in the morning, collect useful lunch boxes to the garden and school for children and bypass confectionery with a cheerful morning flea market. Although codlons and sweet buns with fillings from a neighboring “beekraiki” are for breakfast now much more often than in Russia. A friend, working in a company with the Germans, says that representatives of other nationalities bring to work a wide variety of “quarrels” - meat, fish, salads. And the Germans are sandwiches, sandwiches and sandwiches. There is also a famous German tradition - to have dinner with bread with sausage, cheese and various prayers. Even in the German name of dinner, Abendbrot, there is the word "bread". But for our family traditions, I stand a mountain. In the evening - only together, only a hot dish with a salad and candlelight tea.

One of our first purchases in Berlin is a huge calendar on the wall. Having plunged into the cycle of bureaucratic cases upon arrival, we quickly realized that if pedantically not to record all things and meetings here, then we would entangle and forget half. And the missed visit to the doctor in Germany costs money. My friend paid a fine of 200 euros for the visit to the dentist later abolished later in a day. And at our first German Christmas, my husband gave me a diary. Now he is my best friend. Diary, not a husband. In this diary, my whole life. The days when children are recorded to the doctors, and when I am. Children's birthdays that are invited to us in a month or two in advance. Concerts for which tickets were bought very in advance. Record to the tax consultant and to the hairdresser. Parental meeting at school and Christmas party in the football section. It records my meetings and things six months in advance. This is very convenient, it is right, it is so ... in German.

But sometimes I feel scared, how clearly our life has become planned here. I want to keep in myself at least a little madness! When you can call a girlfriend and say: “I am going with wine and marshmallows, put your children and go drink wine in the park!” Sometimes I want to not know what I am doing in the next weekend and what - in the following. Here at this point I still want to compete. So that there are fewer German Ordnungs, more surprises and spontaneous solutions.

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