Anna Piasecka

The trauma of her childhood when she had to manage everything on her own had given her the ability to assert herself but she was also naive. Without money and without language skills, she decided to make her way to Germany to study business administration. A few sentences learnt off by heart would have to do for a start. The author tells so prosaically and frankly of her experiences at the German Embassy in Warsaw that you would think that her accounts were satirical if only they weren’t so true: The controls in the bus at which the jars of bigos and pierogi stowed in her luggage aroused the suspicions of the border guards, her arrival in a shared apartment at her place of study where she didn't know her housemates, who were helpful but who didn’t know where exactly Poland was, and finally the sometimes ludicrous procedures at the Aliens’ Authority in the medium-sized north German town.

Young readers could think that what she experienced was a long time ago when the Internet was still in its infancy for everyone, hardly anyone had a notebook and tablets were not yet available in the shops, when no social media platforms existed, mobile phones still had buttons and you rang home on the landline. Today, you would like to think that all foreign and German students can communicate easily in English, communicate with home via the Internet and find cooking recipes, transport connections or language modules in the worldwide web. However, anyone who has had a lot of dealings with foreign students or has themselves worked abroad knows that not a lot has changed in the psychological and financial situation, the language and learning problems or the experiences with agencies and authorities in foreign countries. It actually makes you want to tell the author a wealth of your own stories. This is because historical events and subjective perception form a very special combination in autobiographies and give cause for one’s own reflection.

For the author as a student, the ZOB became a place of longing for all departures. Every four to five weeks, she travelled back to her family in Poland taking her dirty washing with her, even though there was a washing machine in the shared apartment. She simply wanted to have a feeling of belonging with her homeland. Back in the town where she was studying, she had to face her first exams. Accounting, investments and business information systems were on the timetable. She compensated for her still sizeable language deficit by learning books off by heart, without understanding their contents. In the end, she realised with embarrassment that this tactic had helped her achieve one of the highest scores amongst her fellow students. The author has enough self-irony to not see this as a model for future generations of students. It took Anna two years for her German to become reasonably reliable.