Customs Management
I’ll be back
A train from Wismar-Hamburg, with one change in a small-town Schwerin, to Hamburg airport, 2 hours at the airport with a huge anti-depressing pack of gummy bears, 2.5 hours on the plane and here we go, "you're arriving at St. Petersburg, the hero-city Leningrad. The temperature outside is 16 degrees Celsius. Thank you for choosing "Rossiya Airlines.'" Welcome home.
Exchange is a wonderful world. It’s like another life or dream. Maybe I was just lucky but I have no doubt to say that for now, it was the best 6 months of my life. During this semester I met hundreds of amazing people, wrote a paper about the topic I was interested in, literally found soulmates, realized that the world is full of opportunities, became more open and less shy, found out that different countries also have different pros and cons, learnt how to speak in public and respect myself. I am very thankful for that experience. But it’s time to go home.
People always ask me: "You've been to France, Spain, Netherlands, you lived in Germany for half a year, is it better there?" And I keep saying that every country has its positive and negative sides. Germany has cheaper beer, Russia has cheaper milk; Germany has stable financial politics, Russia has a convenient internet bank system (in Germany people are afraid of something personal being stolen through the internet, but they never close their curtains and have "naked politics" in saunas). The list can be endless.
The answer is "every place can be good or bad, the most important thing is to find the right people and even the North Pole can be a resort." Home is not home without people inside. I’ll be back to Germany not because of the stable economy but because of the amazing people I met there. I’ll be back to Russia not because of great service at cafes but because of my friends and family. The world is full of thousands of opportunities to meet a friend, a soulmate, love. We just need to be braver and not to chicken out. Now I know that for sure.