Thursday 7 July 2016

"Let's go" by Nadja Golbov


A couple of weeks ago, it was a Friday, I woke up in the very early morning. It was the morning of the Brexit polls. Following the vote counting, my heart started to tremble. It felt as if the world had suddenly started to shrink and my idea of life as it used to be was beginning to fall apart. I don’t want to go into political details or elaborate on my view on this disaster that was created by single people and their bottomless idiocies, people who created borders between countries, borders that do not exist. People who created a breeding ground for intoxicating ideas and a decline of values that is terrifying. But I do want to follow the urge of raising my voice, of making some noise and the urge of collecting the stories of fellow Europeans.

And this is why I bring this blog into being. I would like to portray single people in order to depict the heart of an entire continent - to visualise tangible stories of real people. And since every collection needs a first entry, I am going to start with myself.






My name is Nadja. I am 38 years of age. My passport is issued in Germany. My heart is European. My dad is of Russian origin, my mum fled the Eastern part of post-war Germany with her family in the early 60ies - just a couple of days before the wall was up and finished. I grew up in Bavaria and had been living in Munich for ten years when in 2009, the Bavarian capital failed to keep on working its magic on me.


So, I decided to move to the UK. As easy as that. I sent out a couple of applications and was lucky enough to find a job in the city of London. I emptied my flat, sold almost all of my belongings, grabbed two suitcases, booked a one-way ticket to London and off I went. This was the beginning of a wonderful adventure. Living abroad is exciting and easing for a bored mind. You are exposed to a wealth of firsts and a wealth of novelties for all of your senses, your heart and your brain. London is a playground for everyone with a tiny bit of curiosity running through his or her veins. Creativity, innovation, tolerance, opportunities grow on the streets and flow down the Thames. London’s people are colourful and often adorably crazy. In Munich, one of the first questions you hear when you meet new people is “What are you doing for a living?”. In London it’s “Where are you from?”. I just loved the atmosphere, my personality felt very much at home in this vivid and vigorous context. I developed a new understanding of what freedom and tolerance really mean and a real understanding of their power.


When I had spent a couple of years in London, life led me to Italy. I grabbed another plane and settled down in the Northern part of Italy, where I set up my own freelance business. Just like that. No stumbling blocks, no restrictions, just hell of a lot of admin and countless visits to the Italian authorities. Today, I live in my home country of Germany, just outside Munich. I am mother to a wonderful daughter who is half Italian and when I speak on the phone its mostly in English and with people across Europe or on the other side of the big pond. In the mornings I listen to BBC’s online Radio 6 and when I cook I browse the internet for inspiration from across the globe. My friends are certainly the most amazing people and most of them live outside of their home countries - in London, Barcelona, on Mallorca, in Rome, in or outside London, in NYC, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Stockholm or in the middle of the European or global nowhere. Tolerance to me means freedom of exposing myself to the entire world and its fantastic people. I am a lucky person! I am free to be myself and free to be tolerant. I have an abundance of opportunities spread out in front of me and all I have to do is to ponder and make choices. When you become a parent, you instantly and carefully examine your own value system. Afterall, it's what your offspring is going to be exposed to for quite a while. It will shape your children’s characters and their own ideals. And obviously you want the best for your kids. You want them to become good people and to have the same opportunities as you - or even more. You want them to explore this globe freely with a backpack full of open-mindedness and tolerance and you want them to be treated with just the same curiosity and tolerance. At least, this is what I want. Intolerance, hate and ignorance deserve nothing more than zero tolerance and this is why as of today, I am going to start collecting stories about other Europeans. Europeans who travel, Europeans who stay home. Europeans of all genders, generations, professions and nationalities - European and Non-European. Europeans with a voice and a solid value system. And while doing so I am going to make sure that any violations of a spirit of freedom and any violations of the appreciation of diversity and tolerance will be dismissed as what they are: sheer cowardice and idiocy.



I am looking forward to talking to many people, to listening to and sharing their stories and to introducing my fellow editors very soon. And certainly, you are more than welcome to get in touch and share your feedback or your story! We can't wait to hear it.


I'm closing today with the quote of a very smart man whom I admire a lot: “And so now I'd like to say - people can change anything they want to. And that means everything in the world. People are running about following their little tracks - I am one of them. But we've all got to stop just following our own little mouse trail. People can do anything - this is something that I'm beginning to learn. People are out there doing bad things to each other. That's because they've been dehumanised. It's time to take the humanity back into the centre of the ring and follow that for a time. Greed, it ain't going anywhere. They should have that in a big billboard across Times Square. Without people you're nothing. That's my spiel.” ~ Joe Strummer

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