Mareike and Ino Lindemann are used to having people around them. But this situation was a special challenge for the couple: in March they took in a Ukrainian family of four.
When the call comes, Mareike Lindemann is sitting in a conference at school. She teaches history, music and politics at a high school in Bielefeld. It was only in the morning that she had volunteered to host Ukrainian refugees.
Now it is time. It’s 5 p.m., and the Ukrainians are supposed to be with her husband Ino and her at around 8 p.m. Mareike storms out of the meeting, drives home and prepares everything. Three hours later, the guests are at the front door. Four people, three generations: Anzor, Ludmilla, Anna and Oxana.
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Ino and Mareike made food, their son Thimon came home from his flat to help. But the Ukrainians are completely exhausted, they just want to go to bed.
Just before grandfather Anzor goes to bed, he takes Thimon aside: “Father, mother, family, good,” he says in the few German words he still knows from school. “I got goosebumps,” Thimon recalls. “Everyone was totally unsettled, but these four words in German were super strong.”
The Lindemanns live in a house in Bethel, a district of Bielefeld. The two adult sons Thimon and Jakob have moved out and are studying. Parents Ino and Mareike have always liked having people around: Whether exchange students, musicians or interns who needed a place to stay in Bielefeld – there was space in the Lindemann home.
That’s why they didn’t think twice when the question came up in February as to whether they wanted to take in Ukrainian refugees. However, the couple does not have much time to take care of themselves. Ino and Mareike both have full-time jobs – she as a teacher, he as a lawyer.
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Anzor and Ludmilla Kidasheli, aged 69 and 67, are retired. Host mother Mareike affectionately calls them both “grandma and grandpa”. In Ukraine, they lived in the small town of Olevsk, three hours north-west of Kyiv – as did daughter Anna (39) and granddaughter Oxana (13). For the grandparents it is already the second escape. In 1994 they left their home country of Georgia with their daughter Anna.
Now the war has also torn her from her new homeland. Anna organized the escape within just 24 hours through a family friend who lives in Bielefeld. On March 9, at 6 a.m., the family takes the bus across the Polish border, then takes the train to Bielefeld via Dresden. Her friend picks her up at the train station. “She was like a star in the sky that gave us hope,” says Anna.
Now the family of four lives in Thimon and Jakob’s old children’s room in the basement. As a welcome, Mareike and Ino hung up a large poster: ‘тепле привітання’, it says, that’s Ukrainian and means “Welcome”. “That was so nice and beautiful. I knew it came from the heart,” says Anna, the Ukrainian mother.
From day one, the German couple treats the Ukrainians as part of the family and not as guests. “I wouldn’t have time for that either,” says Mareike and laughs. The grandparents and Anna take care of the housework and go to the authorities.
The head of the family, Anzor, is often outside: he rides his bike, trims the hedge or sits on a bench in the host family’s garden. That’s where the tomatoes grow, which he planted himself immediately after his arrival.
Ino compares everyday life with the Ukrainians with a flat share. Most families live side by side and shop separately. “That’s right,” says Ino. “They get paid for it.” As pensioners, Anzor and Ludmilla receive basic security, Anna unemployment benefit II. As in a flat share, the two families share the kitchen.
The living room remains a retreat for the German couple. And that is important to them. When Mareike comes home from work at 4 p.m., she needs a few minutes to herself. In the beginning, Anna or Grandpa Anzor would often come running towards them with questions. However, the Ukrainian family quickly understood that they had better leave their host mother alone at the end of the day.
They all celebrated Easter like a big family. There was a big breakfast, a candy hunt in the garden and a round of Viking chess – a game of skill where the aim is to knock over the opposing team’s wooden blocks. It was great fun, says Thimon and laughs. Although the Ukrainians play for the first time, they win hands down.
“They wiped the floor with us. Ludmilla is blind in one eye and still hit everything.” Anna also has fond memories of the afternoon: “I didn’t know that my mother was such a good sniper.” Grandpa Anzor dreams of being able to celebrate Easter like he does in Germany. “When we get back to Ukraine.”
Despite all the harmony, it is a temporary coexistence, just like with the exchange students. They cannot estimate how long the Ukrainian family will live with the German couple, says Ino. They certainly won’t throw the family out.
“But we don’t necessarily have to celebrate Christmas together,” Ino clarifies. So far, the Ukrainian family has lived with his wife and him free of charge – they don’t want to charge rent. “We’re not doing badly either,” says Ino. But because the additional costs have risen sharply, the Lindemanns are considering charging 50 euros for water, electricity and gas in the future.
The Ukrainian family can imagine staying in Germany longer, says mother Anna. Her parents are here now, she is divorced from Oxana’s father anyway. There are also more opportunities in Germany – especially for daughter Oxana.
Since the Easter holidays, she has been in eighth grade at a secondary school in Bethel. But until they have their own apartment, the family will feel very comfortable with Ino and Mareike. “If everyone were as kind-hearted as Ino and Mareike,” says Grandpa Anzor, “then there would be no war in Ukraine.”
