Our first trip to Germany

Talking about Yuriy Nikolayevich’s international trips, so far on this page the narration was only about trips to Italy, but in fact everything started with another European country- Germany, the first country that we visited together.

There, not far from a small town — Kreuzau (North Rhine-Westphalia), was located the summer residence of Heinrich Böll, the famous German writer, translator and screenwriter. After Böll’s death in 1985, this place became a haven for artists from all over the world, and everyone who needed it was welcomed there. At some point, for example, Alexander Ivanovich Solzhenitsyn lived at Böll’s residence after he could not stay in Russia any longer.

In July, 1992 we also had a chance to visit that place.

The idea arose almost a year earlier, in 1991. We were visiting Mishka Slavutskaya. We were sitting in the kitchen. And suddenly our wonderful friend (and I’ll tell about her separately!) Asked “Dear Yura, would you like to go to Germany to visit Heinrich Böll’s summer residence?” A few days later, in the midst of the August 1991 protests, the writer’s son, his beautiful wife from Ecuador and two wonderful children visited Yuriy Nikolayevich’s studio, and six months later, an official invitation came — Yuriy Nikolayevich was elected a fellow of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung.

It took us about half a year to get our passports and visas done. At that time, crowds were besieging the German consular office. Predominantly, these were Germans from Kazakhstan and the Volga region, seeking to leave the collapsed Soviet Union. The invitation from the Böll Foundation worked flawlessly, there was no need to stand in line, the only thing that remained was to collect materials for the work.

And at the end of June, we finally set off on our first trip abroad.