Ms. Arlamowski, you are a freelance journalist and are raising your eight-year-old daughter alone.

Ten days ago you took in three women from Ukraine.

Some of your friends said: 'How can you do that: Strangers in the apartment, aren't you afraid that they will rob you at night?'

So how is it with strangers in the apartment?

Karen Truscheit

Editor in the “Germany and the World” department.

  • Follow I follow

That works fine!

Of course it's cramped, we live in a three-room apartment in Munich with a bathroom, but anything is possible.

Where do the women sleep?

You sleep in my daughter's room.

What did your daughter say about that?

She suggested it herself and cleared her room.

When we prepared the beds, she put chocolate on the pillows for the guests.

You currently have a 79-year-old woman with her 44- and 49-year-old daughters.

The three women are from Kyiv.

How did they get to you?

When the war started, it quickly became clear to me that I really wanted to help.

If only so that I can better cope with the situation and the associated fears and helplessness.

On February 24th, a Thursday, the war broke out, on Sunday I registered on the website of the association “Munich Volunteers – We Help eV” and stated that I could offer three beds.

And on Monday I was given the phone numbers of the women.

They were already on the run then, and then we communicated via Whatsapp.

And in the evening they were there.

Were you surprised that it happened so quickly?

Yes, I actually wanted to go away with my daughter during the carnival holidays.

We then canceled that.

Which escape route did the women take?

The mother and one of her daughters actually wanted to stay in Kyiv, but the other daughter was able to convince them.

She said: 'If we don't flee now, it will be very difficult to get out later.'

She was right about that.

The three were then taken to the border with Hungary, where volunteer helpers received them and took them on to Budapest.

From there they took the train to Munich.

How did you prepare for the guests?

Everything had to happen quickly, we made the beds on Monday, a pull-out couch and a bunk bed.

Then I did a lot of shopping and cooked a big pot of soup.

In the evening the women came, they were very exhausted, and we ate something, then everyone fell into bed - so did we.

We were also very excited all day long, had asked ourselves: 'How are they?

Will we all understand each other?'

The next morning we had breakfast together and first went for a walk in the English Garden to get to know each other better: We told who we are and they talked about themselves.

How's the communication going?

Actually better than expected.

One of the daughters speaks very good English.

And I have Polish roots, which helps, too, because Ukrainian and Polish are quite related languages, like Spanish and Italian.

You just can't have any inhibitions, we usually just start talking, then you understand each other somehow.

Translation apps are also a great help.