MSometimes Olga dreams of a job as a half-cleaning lady, half-writer. Instead, she looks for work that can be combined with the war. Or with the bus schedule.
“Olga, what do you want?” asked the woman from the job center. Olga's answer was honest: “I don't know.”
The reason for this is in a text message that Olga translated from Ukrainian with Deepl and revised with her language course German: “Every success in Germany takes me away from the man I love.”
From the small town the bus drives through scrubby fields past pine and birch trees to Olga's small, quiet village. It is a good area in the outskirts of Berlin, where Olga moved in the summer of 2022 when she realized that the war in Ukraine would last. Clean streets, friendly people, an excellent butcher. It's a five minute walk to the next lake.
There is enough work. But Olga has accepted the job offers in the area. Restaurant service? She can't leave her ten-year-old daughter alone every evening. The factory in the neighboring village? After the late shift there is no bus connection and she has to cycle five kilometers – something she doesn't dare do in winter. Caregiver in the retirement home? How can she be flexible as a jumper if the bus only runs every two hours? She had to cry during a job interview: receptionist in a physiotherapy practice. A dream job, says Olga. But her velvety German with the perfectly conjugated verbs was apparently not enough for the telephone service.
She is at war, like her husband – only in a safe place
For around 700 days, Olga has been living 1,700 kilometers away from the man to whom she lost her heart 25 years ago when he played jazz for her on the piano. How do time and distance change love?
“This is a war,” says Olga. She was also at war, just in a safe place, a soldier by profession, like her husband, a soldier's wife. Fortunately, her husband is not in immediate danger either. How is she doing with it? “My heart is made of stainless steel,” says Olga. And her husband? Olga smiles. She not only has a sense for language, but also for the madness of love in war. Her husband was finally able to afford an EKG in Ukraine with his officer's salary, she says. Diagnosis: His heart is fine.
The Russian attack on Ukraine has torn couples apart. While men of military age were not allowed to leave the country, many women and children fled. Two years of war is eating away at relationships. Very few Ukrainian women talk about it themselves. When they go to counseling centers, it's about concerns about the children, the school, the job center. Or about the situation in Ukraine. If you listen more closely, you will learn that women who were already dissatisfied with their relationships have separated. Women who could not endure everyday refugee life without a husband have returned. Some women in Germany have also entered into new relationships, sometimes more, sometimes less happily.
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