“My German isn’t great but my boss, my colleagues and the clients are all very understanding,” Vysotska, 54, told AFP.
As far as Chancellor Olaf Scholz is concerned, Vysotska is an example he wished he could see more of.
Among the Ukrainians who have arrived over the last two years, only 170,000 have since found work.
Scholz recently himself pressed the newcomers to stand on their own feet rather than rely on social handouts.
“We have offered them integration and German classes. Now they must find work,” said the German leader.
The urgency is prompted not only by financial reasons.
The cost of welcoming newcomers is certainly heavy — between 5.5-6 billion euros ($5.4-$6.1 billion) have been earmarked this year alone for Ukrainians.
But Germany is also suffering from a serious manpower shortage and can do with more hands on deck.
And there is a political imperative for Scholz’s government to achieve more integration success stories.
Immigration and integration are hot button topics in upcoming European elections, with the far right driving the argument that Europe’s biggest economy, currently ailing, needs to take care of its own first.
Mindful of the fact that the far-right AfD party had entered parliament in 2017 on the back of popular anger over the influx of a million Syrians and Iraqis in the two preceding years, Scholz’s government is wary about what a repeat of that fury could spell for the EU polls.
To take the sting off the far right’s arguments, the government recently moved to toughen rules for asylum seekers.
Among them is the introduction of a new payment card that provides social handouts to refugees as credits that can only be used locally — essentially scrapping the possibility for migrants to send cash back to their home countries.
But for Ukrainian refugees in particular, key in the government’s strategy is to inject them into the job market, which is sorely lacking workers.
Vysotska’s boss Civan Ucar recalled the relief to have found the Ukrainian, who had worked 35 years as a hairdresser back in her home country, at a job fair.
“It is very difficult to find qualified personnel,” he said, pointing to Germany’s ageing population.
Ucar shrugged off Vysotska’s imperfect German, saying it could only improve while she is in work.
“We learn German faster when we’re working because we are required to speak with our colleagues,” he said.
But language is only just one of many hurdles for Ukrainian job seekers.
