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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

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