Hi. I’m Iana.

I’m Ukrainian, I’ve been living in Germany since 2014, and I have ADHD and anxiety — which means I experience expat life with approximately 40% more overthinking than the average person.

I’m also a little introverted, occasionally awkward, and somehow unlucky situations find me wherever I go. The kind of situations where you think: this would only happen to me. Spoiler: it happens to me a lot.

But I’m a good listener. And I started this blog because I kept looking for someone writing honestly about what it actually feels like to build a life abroad when your brain works a little differently — when the bureaucracy pile makes your anxiety spike, when you’re lonely but also kind of relieved to be alone, when you love your adopted country and still cry on the train home from the Ukrainian consulate.

I couldn’t find that blog. So I wrote it myself.

How I ended up here

It started in the summer of 2011. I was 19, my German was A1 (meaning I could say Guten Morgen and not much else), and I arrived in a tiny town called Felsberg in Hessen for a language course. I was terrified of people talking to me. I was terrified of people looking at me.

I fell in love with Germany anyway.

Two years later I came back — this time to do a summer course in Kassel, and then to pursue my Master’s degree. And somehow, more than a decade later, Cologne is home. It’s where I drink my coffee, navigate my Ausländerbehörde appointments, take my photo walks, and occasionally get on the wrong U-Bahn in the wrong direction for 20 minutes before noticing.

That’s pretty much the Iana experience.

What you’ll find here

This blog is a bit of everything — because my life is a bit of everything, and I’ve stopped apologising for that.

Expat life — the practical stuff (how to survive German bureaucracy, job hunting, finding a flat) and the emotional stuff (homesickness, belonging, identity, what it means to be Ukrainian in Germany after 2022).

Mental health — I write about ADHD and anxiety not as a trauma narrative, but as part of who I am. What it’s like to get diagnosed in Germany as a foreigner. What actually helps. What definitely doesn’t. The intersection of living abroad and having a brain that won’t quiet down.

Photography and travel — I see the world slowly and quietly, which is exactly how I prefer it. Photo walks, day trips from Cologne, seasonal galleries. The details other people walk past.

Personal growth — not the toxic positivity kind. The honest kind. Habits that sort-of work. Lessons learned the hard way. Life as a continuous work in progress.

A few more things about me

I’m married to a wonderful Indian man (yes, we got married both in India and in Germany — the paperwork in Germany alone deserves its own blog post, and it will most definitely have one). I have a small son who is currently the most chaotic thing in my life, which is saying something.

I work in brand management and communications, which means I spend my days thinking about how to tell stories — and then come home and do it here too, for free, because I genuinely can’t help it.

I speak Ukrainian, English and Russian, and functional-but-rusty German. I understand so much more than I can say.

I am coffee addict just as my mother (guess it runs in the family) and have a daily need for couple cups of tea.

Why I write

I don’t write to inspire you. I write so you feel less alone.

There’s a difference.

Inspiration implies I have something figured out that you don’t. I absolutely do not. What I have is a decade of expat experience, a diagnosed ADHD brain, a camera I take everywhere, and an inexhaustible supply of slightly chaotic situations that apparently make for good stories.

If you’re an expat who sometimes feels like everyone else got a manual you didn’t receive — this blog is for you.

If you’re living with ADHD or anxiety and wondering why the ordinary stuff feels so much harder — this blog is for you.

If you just like honest, warm, occasionally funny writing about real life — also for you.

Pull up a chair. Grab something warm to drink. You’re very welcome here.

— Iana 🤍

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