Page 202 - The Mirror of My Soul. Vol. 1

Nicolai Levashov. The Mirror of My Soul. Vol. 1. Born in the USSR

It was a great pleasure for me to meet this couple. They were neither haughty nor

neglectful towards poor Russians. In fact almost all Soviet people, except for the Soviet
elite, had nothing. Norst Bauling showed me his pride and joy—his car collection. An
enormous hangar was full of antique cars, some of which existed only in one copy!
Mercedes, Rolls-Royce, Porsche, Jaguar, Ferrari and other brands which had got into his
collection due to one or another unique feature. Any citizen of the Soviet Union of 1990
could see these cars in films, at the very best, and there they were right before my eyes!

Certainly, I enjoyed them very much! Show me a modern man who does not love
cars! Men have their own “toys”—weapon, horse or car. There were different “toys” in
different epochs, but they were always there! So, men will understand, what I felt when
I found myself among such an amount of “toys”, and their owner simply shone with
pride in his collection. And he had every the right to be proud of it! He not only gathered
this collection but also repaired every one of them, using original details. It was a real
treat to see new shining parts under the hood of a fifty- year-old car as if it just came
down the assembly line. In 1990 the total cost of this collection was about three hundred
millions Marks!

These ten days in Bamberg told me a lot about Germany, much more than all the
rest of my time there. After this initial ten days course we planned to continue the

treatment later, but it did not happen. On my return to the “base” I took part in several
other meetings, but there was nothing of interest. One weekend Norbert Steuler asked us
to go to a German village with him to help his foster-brother in grape-gathering. It was
very interesting to become acquainted with the life of a German village and I agreed, as
well as the other.

And..., here we were—in the German village, cutting ripe bunches of grapes. The
work was not hard, but required certain skills. You should cut a bunch of grapes with
special scissors and pass to the next, etc... Grape-gathering in Germany differs not at all
from grape-gathering in any other country. However, I have never gathered grapes, so I
found a certain romantic appeal in it. But that, which I experienced after the work, will
not be found in any other country. On finishing the vintage, our host, a good-natured
burgher, laid the table and invited all us. The presence of an interpreter gave us the

opportunity to talk about different things and, somehow we began to talk about fishing.
It would be quite an ordinary subject, if it were not for one little BUT...

The owner of a tidy German cottage revealed to us, with complete seriousness, that
in order to become a fisherman it was necessary to do a special course and pass an exam
which contained about a hundred questions. That alone was a little strange to hear, at
least, for me. But later I heard something even stranger when he began to explain how a
fisherman should act when he caught a fish. A fisherman should have a special stick with
an iron ball in it. When he pulled out a fish, he should kill the fish with this stick in order
that the latter did not suffer! Indeed, the highest degree of humanism! My opinion about
Germany and its citizens would remain rosy until I asked, what would happen, if a
fisherman pulled out a fish, but did not kill it with the stick!?

The answer to this simple question was really shocking. Probably, it shocked only
me, I can-not talk for the rest, but when I heard that a fisherman who saw how another
fisherman did not kill a fish in order to save it from suffering, should get to the nearest
telephone (mobile telephones were not so widely spread then) and report the incident to

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