Views From East of Berlin

Mr. Trojna is electrician. He’s Polish, but has been living and working in Berlin for more than twenty years. He is known as an outstanding craftsman in builders’ circles, and he’s been making good money, especially since the renovation of thousands of historic buildings in East Berlin started after the wall had come down in 1989.

One of his sons is studying to become an economic engineer. He is going to Shanghai in October, for an internship with a company that pays him 3000 euros per month. 3000 euros for an intern, plus two flights to Germany during his two-months stay. Mr. Trojna finds that hard to believe.

He had planned to go back to Poland after retiring, Mr. Trojna says. Now it turns out that he’d rather stay in Berlin. Not only because of the children who grew up in Germany and don’t feel that strongly about a country they only know from summer vacations. The children might end up in China, anyway; who knows these days.

But Mr. Trojna himself has got used to Berlin and to German ways. The standard of living. The way of life, the way business is done. “We kind of don’t speak the same language any more”, he says of his friends and relatives in Poland. So he and his wife might spend their retirement here, after all.

Anna is a student. She’s Ukrainian, and she’s just about to finish her studies of biotechnology. When she came from Kiev as an au pair seven years ago, she hardly spoke any German. Now, she speaks it fluently, has learned English, too, and is about to start working for a Russian professor at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin.

Anna is married to a German student of economics, Florian, who is doing his Ph.D. in England after graduating from one of Berlin’s universities. With the help of his parents, they just bought a small flat in Berlin. But Florian dreams of a life on the other side of the Atlantic. He wants to work at the IMF or the World Bank, and that’s where he’s staying as an intern right now.

Anna just came back from a visit in Washington a few days ago. She kind of liked it, but she’s a bit disappointed, too. Somehow, she had thought the US capital would be more impressive, “maybe I expected too much”, she says. She couldn’t quite imagine living there.

But then, she’s ready to be pragmatic about moving if her husband won’t find the job of his dreams in Berlin.

Mr. Trojna tells us of a similar experience. America, the superpower that had defeated the Soviet Union, did not live up to his expectations. “The power supply system in that country – ridiculous. The state of the infrastructure – alarming.” He shakes his head. No country for an electrician from Germany.

But then, after moving to Berlin, he drove back to his hometown in Poland whenever it was possible during the first few years. Because Germany seemed such an alien place.

I look at our boys. They grow up in New Jersey now, and they will know Germany mainly from summer vacations, especially the little one. Their parents are planning to come back to Berlin in ten to fifteen years. To spend our retirement in our country, where we were born.

But then, it’s only been two years since we moved to the US.