Weltschau

Alina Brusniak, 26-year-old

Hello, I am Alina, and I came to Germany in March of 2022. It was definitely a challenging journey. But my story did not start on the evacuation train. My world completely changed when I was sleeping in bed on February 24. The loud explosion woke me up. At the same time, my father tried to fill the car. He called me by phone and said, “The war has started. Kyiv is under the Russian bombs”.

But I was the only one in the family who didn’t believe the war would start. I tried to keep my mother and grandmother calm. I was like that before the evening came, when my mom asked me to tape the windows with strips.

The next 10 days, my family was in the basement. You know, the scariest thing about which you think there is: “I will not sit near the wall. If the rocket broke it, maybe parts of this wall would not cover me at all, and firefighters might find me faster.

We had the documents with us. With those documents, a pair of socks, and fish, my mom jumped on the train, which evacuated us to… No one knows where the train was driving. It was the first day of my journey to another life. The road takes five days. In the train were not only people. There were animals. Someone tried to rescue a lovely dog, while someone else tried to rescue parrots.

There was no light or cold. 500 people in the same wagon. To be honest, it was the hardest journey in my life. In two days, we arrived in Poland. Volunteers helped us along the way. But we should go ahead that way. From Poland, we should travel to Austria and then continue our journey to Germany.

Briefly, I have been in Germany for one and a half years already. I am here, but other members of my family are in Ukraine. My father takes care of my granny and helps the Ukrainian army. We try to be in touch.

Russian troops currently occupy my region. Rockets are flying through the city. I try to make my life better again by learning the German language. It is hard; you need willpower to do that, but I need to say thank you to the German government for the opportunity.

I speak English and Korean. German is my third foreign language. Moreover, I have experience as a graphic designer.

Try to renew my life.