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And now my very first interview brings me a positive result! A week later I went to work.

I am a simple but happy worker!

Here it is, my first success in this other and unfamiliar country. The criterion for achieving success can be completely different depending on the specific situation! Could I call it my success in Russia that I found a job as a turner? Of course not! I could not even imagine such a goal for myself. What determines this criterion of success, or the criterion for achieving the goal?

I believe that the criterion for success depends on the conditions and situation in which a person is at a given time and in a certain space! These conditions can change, and accordingly, the criterion of our success changes with them.

As time went on, in a few months I gradually joined the team and was already able to independently work in the area of polishing screws and cylinders. I must tell my readers a little about this.

Imagine a well-known worm mechanism inside a meat grinder, and now imagine it up to five meters long and three hundred and fifty millimeters in diameter. Of course, such orders did not come into production every day, but they did happen. On average, these were blanks from one and a half to three meters and a diameter of up to one hundred and twenty millimeters. Their complex geometry, consisting of several compression zones, made the work even more complex, varied and thus more interesting to me. Our department polished these screws in two stages: the first stage is the primary grinding of the raw metal after milling to the size according to the drawing data, and the second stage is the surface polishing to the required roughness level after the finished parts have passed the heat treatment process in special ovens. The company produced extrusion equipment and spare parts mainly for the chemical and petroleum industries.

For grinding and polishing parts, there was a simple set of tools, consisting of three special devices, a variety of attachments and sanding paper with polishing wheels. In addition, a set of personal protective equipment was needed: a long leather apron, leather gloves to the elbow, goggles and, most importantly, a breathing mask. I used four of these masks per shift on average. At the end of the work, I had to blow off a layer of metal dust with a compressed air gun, and when I removed my goggles, a bright light contour from the removed glasses remained on my face. These were the working conditions on this site. Our department worked in two shifts, sometimes we had to work at night if the order was very urgent.

What was the compensation for such a difficult, and besides, not harmless work?

According to my employment contract, I received 16 DM per hour net, excluding tax. The working week was 37.5 hours. In addition to the hourly rate, compensation for harm was paid – plus 25% to the rate, the surcharge for the second shift was 15% to the rate. Night hours, starting from 20.00, were paid with a surcharge of 50%, and the sixth, overtime night shift – plus 100% to the tariff.

I was waiting for the result in the payroll for the first month of work with great impatience. And now that day has come, and I receive my long-awaited payroll, in which, after all the surcharges to the tariff indicated above, the income tax was calculated at the rate of 24% of the total amount, and then, in a line below, the amount to be paid is indicated: DM 2950 ( in 2019 this amount is equivalent to the same, but only in euros). What could an ordinary working person afford with this money in 1994 in Germany? I’ll give you some examples:

– rent of an average apartment (three-room, 70 square meters) – from 450 to 600 DM;

– food per month for a family of three on average, without visiting restaurants – about 450 DM;

– utility bill per month – about 150 DM, electricity – 70 DM;

– petrol (1 liter) – 0.80 DM.

Our minimum budget, taking into account the cost of renting an apartment, food, clothing and other minor expenses, at that time averaged about DM 1,500 per month.

But my salary payments do not end there – I mean the calculation of the so-called “vacation pay”.

Vacation pay, as we all know, is the preservation of wages, which are calculated based on average earnings. But this is in Russia. And in Germany, the calculation is carried out according to a different system. The salary is calculated for all vacation days as the average salary for the period, that’s right. But vacation pay in Europe is not the saved average salary that you are paid in Russia, vacation pay is additional payments to the average salary saved during the vacation, and the amount of vacation pay is the average salary plus a 50% allowance. This is about one and a half times higher than the average earnings over the same period of time. Here it is, decaying capitalism, I thought then.

The calculation of payments for the holidays is carried out according to exactly the same scheme as the vacation pay: we have two days of rest for the Christmas holidays – we were charged an average salary, and to this amount there was also an additional 50%! It’s ingenious, this is even impossible to imagine in Russia.

I have worked very intensively in this enterprise. On the second shift, I stayed two hours longer and finished my working day not at 22.00, as it should be according to the schedule, but at 24.00. On Saturday, if my work schedule coincided with the first shift, I went to work for six hours – from 6.00 to 12.00, this was an additional, if desired, working day on Saturday. If I worked the night shift, then I went out on the sixth, additional shift. Sometimes the schedule dropped in such a way that I worked the night shift for three weeks, one after the other, working also the sixth shifts. One day off a week was obtained in this mode of operation – Sunday until evening, since the new week and shift began on Sunday at 20.00. So, I worked so intensively in overtime not because the money was very necessary, but in order to make it physically difficult and not to get used to this type of work and stay here to work forever, or, what was more real, not stay at this level for a long time!

I used to say to myself very often one phrase that I used in difficult times and during my service in the army: “It does not reach through the head, it will come through the arms and legs.” And my legs got very tired, as I worked standing up the whole shift. But it was hard for me not only physically, but – and even more so – morally. Despite the fact that I had a decent salary, I did not receive complete moral satisfaction from this work. Over the years, my hourly rate in the company, gradually increasing, reached DM 25.00 per hour. Compared to my initial level, the result was 60 percent higher after five years.

After a year of work, I decided to study at the same time as a welder. Having successfully passed the exams after six months, I received my diploma as a welder and continued to work at the same company, only now in a different area and as a welder. There were three welders in the entire enterprise. I welded everything and by everything: I owned electric welding, gas welding, tungsten-inert welding, cooked with a plasma-welding machine and all types of metals – from high-alloyed alloys to aluminum and stainless steel – and even cast iron. When I worked at night, on the third shift, colleagues from other sites often brought from home all kinds of tools and utensils that I had to repair by welding. These were shovels, cast iron, old barbecues, aluminum containers, and so on.

A year later, I started writing programs for our CNC machines. At first, these were simple programs, and then I moved on to more complex geometries of parts, and also began to optimize the existing programs. I started doing this because of my activity in the welding area. The fact is that when I studied our plasma welding machine, on which we welded about 80% of all parts, I used methodological materials from publicly available sources, optimized the welding parameters to such an extent that the welding process itself not only accelerated twice, but the quality of welding has improved significantly. As a result, the company’s management decided to purchase a new unit for 600,000 DM to stabilize the process, as the old unit could not cope with the load and was malfunctioning. One employee turned out to be superfluous after the modernization of the process in this department, and I moved to the area of processing parts on CNC milling machines.

Three years later, I was already working as a programmer for CNC machines. After four years of work, I entered the evening department of a technical school in the neighboring town of Braunschweig for a higher technical education. For four years, I went to class twice a week in the evening and every Saturday from nine in the morning until one in the afternoon. In 2001, I received a diploma in “Automated Production Management Systems”.

Here it is, my victory! The second and not the last victory in Germany, I confidently told myself then.

Chapter 3. 2001 year.
And again changes

“Life does not stand still. We set ourselves tasks and goals, and then we achieve them”.

This year 2001 a new and rather difficult stage of my life began. After seven years of working in one company, I nevertheless decided to leave Theysohn GmbH and change my occupation. I have constantly nurtured this idea over the past three years, I regularly tracked vacancies in the region that interest me, sometimes I sent a resume, finalizing, changing its content and striving to make it as effective as possible.

“What was my motivator for change at that moment?” – I asked myself many times before taking this step. At the company where I worked for all these seven years, I became a rather valuable specialist and a respected person: I was entrusted with the most difficult and responsible tasks, from programming new generation CNC machines to metalworking and welding. The level of wages at that time completely suited me, everything was stable and calm!

And nevertheless, I more and more often mentally returned to my previous goals, ideas and intentions, in those years when I was doing business. I remembered my friends, who have probably already stepped in the development of their business to a completely different level compared to the nineties. For these years I cut off all contact with the past world, I did not communicate with friends and did not come to Russia. My subconscious mind calmed me down from time to time, saying in an inner voice something like this: “Why are you worried, calm down! You are fine, you have a job, your family, your new friends (then I only had one friend, with whom we are very close to this day). You don’t need anymore, why would you risk changing jobs? What if nothing happens in a new place?” These were my worries and doubts. In a word, it was my fears.

But besides fears, I had a great desire and belief in what I could. I will be able to change my life and direct it in the direction that I was already going before 1994.

And I have done this step!

A new stage in my life has begun. But this time I started it of my own free will – unlike 1994, when leaving for Germany was the only option to save my father’s life! I was in doubt and anxiety; I did not know how it would be in the new place, but I found the strength to overcome myself, overcome the subconscious and move on to action.

Job change

My new place of work was a private retail chain N & D-Markt. Its owner was an emigrant from Russia who came to Germany in the early nineties. I got the position of Director of Marketing and Sales. In addition, all issues related to personnel, from the search for candidates to the hiring process, were also part of my responsibilities. At that time, the network consisted of about fifteen stores in the northern part of Germany, from Hamburg to Bremen and Hanover, as well as in the territory of the former GDR: in Magdeburg and Berlin. The head office with a wholesale base was located in Braunschweig. The one-way trip to work took about 40 minutes – I arrived at the office after driving 60 kilometers from Goslar on the autobahn.

In 1997, my family and I moved from Salzgitter to neighboring Goslar, 35 kilometers away. At that time, my parents lived in this cozy historical town: my mother got a job in a kindergarten as the head of the economic department and she was provided with a service apartment, which was located on the last, third floor of the same kindergarten. The city of Goslar can be called a fabulous town, its history begins in 990, and in 2003 the city celebrated its millennium! There are only 48,000 inhabitants, there is no industry, but there are always many tourists from different countries of the world. Completely preserved, even after World War II, the architecture makes Goslar just a unique place. The main crafts during the founding of the city were the production of copper products and its extraction, which was carried out five hundred meters from the border of the old city, at the foot of the Harz mountain range. Harz is translated from German as “resin”. The very same mountainous region, adjacent to the eastern side of the former territory of the GDR, is considered a resort place and is appreciated for its clean air. All mountain slopes, overgrown mainly with conifers, among which spruce predominates, give the impression of the hinterland of the taiga.

Goslar – the pearl of Germany

When we moved, we settled in one of the most picturesque parts of the city – Siemensviertell, in a four-room apartment with a huge balcony-terrace on the roof of the garage that belonged to the apartment on the ground floor. It was a small, cozy three-storey house, and from our terrace there was a beautiful view of the mountains. The historic center could be reached on foot in five minutes. We felt very comfortable in our new home. Son Max at that time was two years old, he was born in Salzgitter in the summer of 1996. My wife decided to go to study at Goslar as an accountant. We moved here precisely because of this opportunity. At the age of two, Max began attending the kindergarten where my parents worked. Everything went well for us.

I worked at N & D-Markt for about a year. During this time, I opened two more stores, hired staff, hired students for internships, was engaged in advertising and design of flyers, which I printed in the printing house, and our agents distributed them.

Am Markt Platz, Goslar, Germany

Harz Mountains, Goslar, Germany

I was on the road very often, going from one branch to another, and at the same time I got acquainted with the geography of the entire northern part of Germany. During this year, the sales turnover gradually increased, and the first sales in the month exceeded the figure of 1 million euros, reaching a record turnover of 1.3 million euros a little later. Before I came to the company, the maximum turnover was no more than 700 thousand euros. But despite the good results, the business owner was unhappy and came up with all sorts of reasons why he did not want to give me the company car that was promised to me, so I still used my MazdaKsedes for business purposes. Over time, I noted one feature of this man: he purposefully tried to deceive everyone and, as they say, “come out dry from water”, coming up with new stories and all kinds of reasons. For example, the owner of the company regularly underpaid the sales bonuses promised to branch employees, he delayed payments to suppliers for shipped goods, while Mr. Nortenberg himself drove around in a Mercedes500L and lived in his own villa on the outskirts of Braunschweig.

I decided to speak to the owner of the business after watching what was happening. Once I went to his office and started talking, first of all, about demotivated employees in the branches who expect us to comply with the terms of the contract, working with full dedication, and in fact receive only promises about “tomorrow”. To which the boss replied as follows: “Do you know what your problem is, Vlad? You are very honest! And if I knew about this at the time of our acquaintance, I would not have taken you to this position”. When I heard such words addressed to me, I, smiling, answered rather shortly: “Dear businessman, if you call yourself that. We have to pay for everything in our life! Our past helps someone, but harms someone!” – and I calmly left the office. I quit a week later.

At the crossroads of seven roads…

Today is Wednesday 13 November 2019. I describe the events of my life in 2001. Last night we had dinner with a family who had come here to relax for ten days from St. Petersburg. We had already met on the coast for several days, sometimes had lunch and dinner together, but our interlocutors were rather laconic and reserved. In any case, so it seemed to us with my wife. We noticed, observing our new acquaintances from the outside, that they are silent in a sense consciously. If Evgeny, the father of the family, sometimes commented on something or told where they went to Goa in recent days, then his wife Irina only sometimes supplemented him, and his eight-year-old daughter Anastasia was always silent at all. But this did not bother us, and I continued to communicate on various topics. And yesterday, during the last dinner before the departure of our acquaintances to St. Petersburg, they “burst” into a conversation, I would say that!

Eugene started first: “We usually never talk about our work or introduce ourselves, but we decided that we can do it with you!” Then he smiled and seemed to breathe out his tension. Both spouses are psychologists: Evgeny is in charge of the department in the NPD, as he himself put it, and his wife is an employee in his department. I even asked what it means – “NPD”? NPD is a neuropsychiatric dispensary. Of course, I smiled broadly and added: “Well, you are my colleagues, given that I am writing a book about the influence of the subconscious on a person”. And Eugene continued, telling very funny stories about his patients. He, of course, did not give any surnames or names, but the very bright moments of practice in this area seemed to us rather unusual, and in some cases, rather ironic.

If in essence, then Evgeny answered my question very unambiguously, saying that the number of patients with mental illness does not depend on place and time – for example, on the size of the city and geographic location. But as for the deviations and disorders of our subconscious, or, to put it another way, the cases when people are worried about fears, doubts, experiences and great self-doubt, the number of such patients is increasing in large cities, and among quite successful and wealthy residents. The meeting with Petersburgers did not seem to me accidental, and I am sure that we will meet with these positive people again.

The day before the last dinner, Evgeny and Irina made a special order, and a whole baked stingray was brought to our table. It was very unusual and I have never tasted stingrays. After finishing dinner, we exchanged phones and shook hands. The next day, the family of psychologists flew to their place in St. Petersburg.

On my last day at N & D-Markt, I left my office and stopped by for a minute to say goodbye to my work colleagues and wish them good luck, after which I got into my beautiful car with a 6-V engine and drove home to Goslar. On the way home, I pulled off the Autobahn in the only possible place, stopped and got out of the car. Here, a beautiful view of the Harz mountain range opened up, and in good weather the highest mountain in this region was visible – Brokken, 1144 meters high. I stood and admired this landscape, thinking about how good it is to live where what you see pleases you. Over the seven years of my life in Germany, I fell in love with this country, and Goslar became for me the most beloved city from those in which I lived or visited. At the same time, I was thinking about this perhaps unsuccessful attempt to change my future or myself. “For what reason did everything turn out the way it is?” – I mentally asked myself a question. “But I myself have left this company now, because no one drove me out of there. I did not agree with the rules and principles by which the company worked. I lived according to other laws of my inner state and it was for this reason that I left. Yes, for sure: the reason for leaving was my thoughts about why everything is happening this way. So it was my choice, my decision, and nothing terrible happened”.

I stood for a few more minutes and went on to my favorite city. It was early fall 2001. Despite the fact that I was “at the crossroads of seven roads” and did not know then where to go next, I was very calm. Confidence in myself and in the future, incomprehensible to me then, made me so calm.

Additional knowledge

That autumn it was a year since I, in parallel with my main job, began my four-year evening study at a private higher school in the city of Braunschweig with a degree in “Automated Control Systems in Production”. The lack of a recognized higher education in Germany haunted me, and I constantly thought about how I could fill this gap. And now such an opportunity appeared. That’s right – this opportunity itself found me! When I was working at Theysohn Maschienenbau GmbH, the production manager came up to me and told me about the new program that has been in effect this year for those already employed who are ready to invest their time and get a higher education. Without hesitation, I asked where and when I can get it.

These next four years of study here in Germany reminded me of my student years in Yekaterinburg. I met new people who were interesting to me, who in their goals and views were much further than those with whom I was familiar until now, working at the enterprises of this country. I quickly improved my German, and I had a passion and interest in higher mathematics and mechanics. In higher mathematics classes, I solved any mathematical problems with great pleasure, and especially complex equations seemed to me entertainment. I and one of my classmates, his name was Frank Witte, began to compete in who would solve the problem faster, and all the students closely followed us. At some point, I was even nicknamed “professor” for my success in our group. It was a very friendly company, especially when after the first year of training there were only 14 of the 24 participants left. When I came to study on Saturday, sometimes after the sixth night shift, which ended at 6:00 in the morning, I was already at 7:00 on the campus, and I reclined the back of my seat in the car and fell asleep. At 8:30 sharp, Eric, my classmate, woke me up by knocking on the car window. He was holding in his hands freshly made coffee from the cafe of our institute. “Vlad, get up! How did you sleep?” – he said and smiled cheerfully. All my groupmates knew that I was sleeping in my car at this time. After drinking coffee in the circle of our comrades and discussing the latest important events, at exactly 9.00 we went up to our classroom, where classes began.

In the next six months after I left N & D-Markt, I managed to work in two more firms – four months in one and two months in the other, and somehow everything was wrong! In the first company, I worked with small parts of the multi-batch production of photographic lenses of the famous Rollei brand in Braunschweig. At another firm, my team of colleagues consisted, in my opinion, of people-“bears” with very limited communication, and the production of brake discs with a small set of simple metalworking operations turned out to be a very boring activity for me. And despite the fact that the last enterprise was located only five kilometers from my house, in the forests of that very mountainous region of Harz, I resigned from there too.

How did I become an entrepreneur:

success or complete failure?

By that time, after seven years of work in Germany, I had some savings, sometimes I bought securities and shares in small packages. But my past drew me to those activities where I could fully realize myself. I began to hatch plans for how to start my own business here in Germany. Germany is not Russia, the market is dense here, it is very well developed in any area, with intense competition. But that didn’t stop me. I considered various options and collected the necessary information. And at some point I decided that I would devote most of my free time from May to September to making ice cream!

A few years before that, I met a family of immigrants from Russia, they had an ice cream parlor in a neighboring town. I received from them all the necessary recipes and ice cream production technology. The trading base for this market was in Hannover, and the suppliers of ingredients just wanted to come to you and show you how it is better, cheaper or more expensive, and most importantly, how to prepare this sweet product tastier and faster. I want to say that the cost of producing one kilogram of ice cream, even from very high-quality ingredients such as whole milk, natural cream, frozen natural strawberries from Poland and fresh, ripe bananas, seemed very attractive to me.

From the end of January, I began preparations to open my own ice cream production in May next year with its further wholesale. I rented a suitable space in the very center of the old city, bought a Mercedez Sprinter and started refurbishing it. I needed a special freezer and other equipment that still needed to be made. And I also needed everything I needed to get permission from special bodies of technical sanitary and hygienic supervision for the transportation and storage of ice cream. I also bought a used Italian mechanical ice cream machine, two large freezers for storing the finished product, and other equipment for making products.

In May, as planned, I opened production. Sales were strong, but the weather had a huge impact on them. There was practically no demand on rainy and rainy days. Goslar and his tourists only saved me. All the cafes in the old part of town were filled with them. I have delivered ice cream to several cafes in the city, cafes at summer pools and all kinds of outdoor events. The summer was successful, I made good money.

Autumn began, and I began to look for an opportunity to organize something else additionally that could bring profit all year round, regardless of the season. I have had connections in Russia since the days when I bought the products of the “Sweetly” factory in Yekaterinburg. Since this all started.

I renewed contacts with the sales department of this candy factory (of course, these were already other people), requested a catalog of goods and prices to assess the possibility of importing to Germany and selling in bulk. When I worked in Germany in the same N & D-Markt, I already knew well what types of products of the candy factories are in demand in Germany. In addition, I had information about the purchase prices for Germany of well-known factories in Russia, such as “Red October” or “Rot Front”, and some other factories from different regions of Russia. The products of the “Sweetly” factory were not yet available on the German market at that time.

In Yekaterinburg, they were very interested in my proposal, and my friend, who lives there, became the representative of our German company. We studied together at the university. He negotiated on site and we got a decent discount on the factory’s wholesale sales prices. And so the first truck with forty tons of “Sweetly” products was shipped and went to Germany.

By that time, I had rented a warehouse with a small space, in which I planned to set up my office and hire a sales manager and accountant. But I also needed a small truck to transport products to customers directly to the stores. To do this, I turned to a former colleague with whom I worked at N & D-Markt. I offered him to work with me as a partner. Delivery on request from retail stores should have been his responsibility. My former colleague knew very well all the shopkeepers in our region. Alexey Pyatkin listened carefully to my proposal and a week after our conversation he accepted it. We invested in the opening of our enterprise in equal shares of 50 x 50 and opened the VolkWestGbR company. VolkWest translated from German means “People of the West”.

At first I had the idea to name the company a little differently: VolkOst, which in Russian means “People of the East”, but the theme of “East” is associated in Germany with the eastern part of Germany, or rather, with the former GDR, which I have not seen especially warm attitude from the people of the West at that time.

Subsequently, Alexey carried out purchases of fruits and vegetables at the wholesale market in Hanover, which also brought good profit when selling in parallel with the main product.

We hired an accountant and a sales manager who offered our assortment to stores by phone. Our company worked as a small team of four people in a friendly manner and together, each doing his own thing. We clearly assigned responsibilities with my partner and did not overlap, organizing quite effective and well-coordinated work. We sold 50% of the first delivery in two weeks and ordered the next delivery, adjusting the assortment and order volumes. The second car quickly passed customs control and arrived at the warehouse two hours after arriving at the customs terminal, already using the experience and contacts at the customs office in Goslar. At the factory in Yekaterinburg, we were given the green light: “VolkWest” orders were shipped out of turn. Delivery by a transport company to our customs terminal in Germany took seven calendar days.

The interest rate for customs duties mainly depended on the sugar and cocoa content and averaged about 25% of the value of the product itself. Sales were gradually growing, we successfully coped with competitors, bringing orders exactly on time and selling vegetables and fruits in parallel. At the request of clients, I began, together with the “Sweetly” company, to develop special packaging for the German market for certain types of goods, and I also began to invent my own names. In addition, the factory itself began to print stickers with information on the composition of the ingredients included in these products in German. This was a prerequisite for complying with German trade rules and very convenient for us: we no longer spent our resources on translating and printing this huge number of stickers. Our business started to develop. During the month we sold on average about 80 tons of “Sweetly” products, about 20 tons of fruits and vegetables, and I began to develop, together with Polish suppliers, pickles according to my mother’s special recipes: pickled tomatoes and cucumbers in cans, as well as canned vegetable salads.