EXBERLINER Issue 170, April 2018

CONFESSIONS
Alyona Baranova
Why I married my German wife
It could be a Brazilian beach flirtation turned happiness ever after, but it usually isn’t. It’s
harsh Berlin winters, cheating, lying and eventually divorce. Four Brazilian guys told us
whether marrying German women for the visa is really worth it. By Alice Klar
Sitting at a bar in Mitte, Leon* is the prototype of a
“Latin lover”: neatly combed and gelled hair, freshly
shaved, sharply dressed, a tad too much aftershave
that you smell only when he’s sitting closer. When he’s
talking to you, he looks at you like you’re the only other
person in the world.
No wonder his wife Eva* fell for him. They met during a
semester abroad in the UK, he coming from a small town
near Brasília and she from Munich, both studying pedagogy.
“Where I come from there is not much, honestly,” Leon
begins. “I have three siblings, never met my dad, and my
mum struggled all our lives to provide for us.” Education in
Brazil is free, but he had to finance the study abroad programme
himself. “I was bartending before I came to Europe
so I had some savings. Once my money was gone, I started
borrowing from other students, but I couldn’t do that forever...”
says the 28-year-old with a smile. “Ever since I was a
boy, my mother would tell me how good-looking I was. She
thought I should be a model, but I didn’t really want that. I
find it very gay… But when I got to the UK, I realised the effect
I had on European women. They were all after me, they
believed everything I told them and they were very outspoken,
thinking they could be braver with the Latino guy.”
And so Leon decided to marry himself into a better future.
For months he waited for the right girl, trying with many,
sleeping with even more. When the fairly inexperienced Eva
arrived to the programme, he knew he’d hit the jackpot. “I
was done with my semester and stayed on a few weeks when
she arrived – she came early to work before her studies. I
thought she was cute, very serious, self-disciplined but innocent
at the same time. I chatted her up at a student party
and by the end of the night I knew she was falling for me.
“Monogamy is not for
men. Especially not for
Brazilian men.”
She played hard-to-get for a few days, but two weeks later
she told me she loved me.” Leon returned to Brazil afterwards.
Eva visited twice in the next six months and asked
her parents to pay for Leon’s visit to Germany; in between,
they were busy planning a future over Skype. “I kept telling
her that the only real chance we had was to get married and
although her parents were really against it, she eventually
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EXBERLINER 170