FT intern Sofija writes: A visit to the Ukrainian Free University in Munich relieves homesickness

Created: 09/18/2022, 09:00

A special place: In the library of the Ukrainian Free University in Munich, Sofija (right) and her friend Marta found valuable books for her.

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Sofija Weremeienko (16) escaped from Irpin and now lives in Freising.

At the FT she could now get a taste of newspaper air.

Her third column deals with a special place in Munich.

Sofija Weremeienko fled from Irpin to Germany at the beginning of March.

The 16-year-old now lives with her mother in Freising.

Her dream is to study journalism in Munich.

At the FT she sniffs newspaper air and reports in a column about her new life.

She writes her texts in German.

Freising

– When you come to a foreign country as a refugee, you not only feel very homesick.

The confusion is also great because everything is new and unknown.

And of course because the language is completely different.

I'm lucky: Since I've been learning German for six years, I can make myself understood here quite well.

But that's not the case for everyone: for example, my friend Marta, with whom I was in a class at high school in Kyiv.

I write "Kyiv" because that's the Ukrainian spelling.

I don't want to use the Russian one, which is also used in Germany.

Marta always wanted to study at a Ukrainian university.

She never thought that she would ever need the German language.

But fate decided otherwise: Marta now lives with her mother in Munich - in a city that is completely foreign to her.

Surprisingly found out about a "treasure".

Because she misses Ukraine a lot, she tried to find something here in Bavaria that resembles our homeland.

And after a while she really found something: the Ukrainian Free University.

This is - apart from Ukraine of course - the only place in Europe where you can study the Ukrainian language and literature.

I am grateful that Marta told me about it.

Otherwise I wouldn't know anything about this treasure.

(By the way: everything from the region is now also available in our regular Freising newsletter.)

The last time I visited my girlfriend, we wanted to take a closer look at this university.

Or to put it better: Our goal was the university library.

It is at Barellistraße 9a near Nymphenburg Palace.

From the outside it looks like a normal house.

The library contains more than 30,000 books by Ukrainian writers from different periods.

You can also find many translations in other languages ​​there.

A valuable book for Ukraine - and one from Grandpa

The library has two departments: classical and modern literature.

The classics section is about ten times larger than that on modern literature.

Unfortunately it is only open until 1pm.

So I didn't have much time to choose a book to read.

I chose "Na koni voronomu".

In German, the book is called Auf dem Krähenpferd, written by Ulas Samtschuk, a 20th-century writer.

I would like to briefly explain why the book is valuable for Ukraine: After the First World War, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in Ukraine.

One of their aims was to suppress the so-called Ukrainian intelligentsia.

These included, for example, teachers, writers or politicians.

However, Samchuk and many others fought against it.

This is what “Na koni voronomu” tells about.

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Marta also borrowed a special book: It's called "The Nativity Scene - Ways of Historical Transformation".

And the man who wrote it is Marta's grandpa.

He worked as an ethnographer.

Now that I know it exists, I will more naturally visit this library more often.

I think it's a shame that so few people know they exist - many Ukrainians don't even know that.

When Marta and I were there, we only saw one person.

So I'm happy to be able to tell more people about this Ukrainian treasure in the middle of Munich.

Also read:

In her first column, Sofija reported on celebrations in Bavaria.

In the second episode she dealt with the start of school.

You can find more current news from the district of Freising at Merkur.de/Freising.