On a Friday night, just before the New Year’s Eve rush, my boyfriend Thom and I found ourselves in the queue for the restrooms at Berghain, Berlin’s infamous techno club. The topic of conversation? Buddhism, of all things. While I often take Thom’s spiritual interests with a grain of salt, that particular evening, I felt strangely receptive. As Thom elaborated on some Buddhist principle, I noticed the man ahead of us deeply engrossed in his phone, his neck at an almost impossible angle. I sympathized with his posture, having often felt a similar urge to rescue fellow club-goers from the digital world that distracts them from the present moment. “Do you meditate?” I impulsively asked him, feeling a messianic impulse typical of nights spent in such a unique space.
Conversations struck up in the Berghain restroom line are notoriously unpredictable, with maybe a 25% chance of actual engagement. This low success rate is often attributed to the unspoken desire of one party to simply expedite their wait by joining the other in a stall. However, this time, the man looked up, breaking the Berghain restroom line conversational odds. “Not really,” he replied, his Slavic accent noticeable. “But I am jogging a lot, and this…” he gestured vaguely around at the pulsing techno and throngs of people, indicating that perhaps the club itself was his form of meditation.
“This is kind of meditative,” I agreed, surprised by my own earnestness. Surprisingly, Maxim, as he introduced himself, seemed genuinely interested in continuing the conversation. He was strikingly good-looking, in a slightly intimidating way. When he mentioned he lived in Warsaw, Thom smoothly switched to Polish. Maxim responded in English, a touch sheepish. He explained he was originally from Belarus, having moved to Poland only recently. Offering to bridge the language gap, I mentioned Thom also spoke Russian. But Maxim insisted on English, explaining with a hint of bitterness his frustration at barely speaking Belarusian, a language he described as being systematically suppressed in his home country. “If you take your high school exams in Russian,” he explained, “it’s basically a joke, you can cheat. But Belarusian? You’re on your own with the instructor.” He also revealed a love for reading. The intimidating aura, it turned out, was professional camouflage; he was a model – genuinely, the archetypal model – and his agency had convinced him to shave his head for a certain look. We, emboldened by the Berghain spirit of temporary community, even joked about joining him in his stall, a testament to the unusual intimacy the “Dance Factory” can sometimes foster.
After the momentary restroom rendezvous, we went our separate ways, swallowed back into the Berghain crowd. The party that night was hosted by Weeeirdos, and true to form, the music was intensely energetic and, as I later yelled to a blissed-out dancer on the floor, “kind of intellectual!” (He remained blissfully unaware of my pronouncements). Later, amidst the pulsating lights and relentless beats, Maxim reappeared nearby. Thom and I exchanged a dejected glance, assuming he wouldn’t remember us in the Berghain sea of faces. Ketamine-induced face blindness is a known factor in these encounters, a convenient excuse for potential social awkwardness, even if it sometimes stings a little.
“Of course, I remember you!” Maxim yelled over the music, a genuine flash of relief on his face. We hugged, equally relieved by his earnestness, and jokingly invited him for a return trip to the restrooms. We wanted to know more about him, we explained, genuinely intrigued. How old was he? What had brought him to Poland? He’d also mentioned something about Italy earlier.
He was twenty-three. Pulling out a holographic EU residence permit, he pointed to it. “Protection political,” he stated, emphasizing the phrase in Polish on the card. “Look! It says ‘protection political’!”
“Thom, does it actually say ‘protection political’?” I asked, double-checking.
“Yes!” Thom confirmed, reading the Polish inscription. “Protection political!” A wave of concern washed over me; I instinctively wanted him to put the precious document away, terrified he might lose it in the Berghain labyrinth.
Like so many models, Maxim confessed he was “not honored to be a model,” yet pragmatic enough to appreciate the income it provided. His real passion lay in DJing and party organization. His journey had taken him from outside Paris, to which he’d moved from outside Milan. Italy was initially for studies, but modeling unexpectedly took over after a model friend pointed out the obvious: “Man, you’re a model.” The move to Italy had been an escape from Belarus, prompted by his participation in the 2020 election protests against the long-standing authoritarian president, Aleksandr Lukashenko. The Lukashenko regime’s brutal response to these demonstrations – arbitrary arrests, torture – and increasingly draconian measures against dissent, including even the Belarusian language itself, had made staying untenable. UNESCO lists Belarusian as vulnerable, and it has become a potent symbol of opposition.
His first brush with leaving Belarus, at eighteen, had landed him and a friend in trouble for working illegally in China, teaching English. Deported back to Belarus, he then pursued university options in the EU. Italy eventually became too heavy; he felt he was “melting [his] brains” alongside the Ukrainian community he encountered after the 2022 war. Their collective depression was palpable, and his own anxieties were amplified in that environment.
However, the Ukrainian community inadvertently became his music mentors. “You don’t know shit about music,” they bluntly told him, invoking the legendary Kyiv club K41. That summer, his first visit to Berlin, to a club called Æden, solidified his resolve to make a change. He appreciated France – the free museums in Paris were “really, really amazing” – and had learned a lot crate-digging for records there. But the Parisian club scene was “shit,” and modeling work was scarce. Warsaw in 2023 felt like a fresh start. With only two weeks left on his student visa, he applied for asylum, citing his involvement in the 2020 protests. Even masked in protest photos, the fear in Minsk had been constant. “Any day, the police can break the door and take me to prison without any explanation,” he recounted. Warsaw offered a sense of relief. Polish bureaucrats, he found, were surprisingly efficient and “fucking nice,” especially compared to their Italian counterparts. “They process five persons in fifteen minutes,” he exclaimed, as we edged closer to the front of the bathroom line yet again. In five years, he declared, he would become a Polish citizen. “My kids will have EU passport!”
Maxim saw Poland’s welcoming stance as a strategic move to combat its own looming brain drain and critically low fertility rate. Economists had been warning for years about Poland’s need to attract migrants to avoid a workforce shortage. A recent study projected a potential seven million decrease in working-age residents by 2060. Since the war in Ukraine, around a million Ukrainian refugees had sought refuge in Poland. Belarus, too, had witnessed a significant exodus since the election protests. From a Polish-nationalist perspective, Belarusians were considered “ideal migrants,” according to a 2020 article on Onet. Another article on Na Temat from the same year playfully dubbed Belarusians “the Canadians of Eastern Europe,” highlighting their politeness, even noting they remove their shoes when protesting on benches (a photo provided visual evidence). The shift in Polish politics, with the liberal Civic Coalition replacing the right-wing Law and Justice party, had further amplified this pro-migrant narrative. The Venice Biennale even saw Poland replacing its anti-EU pavilion with a Ukrainian collective at the last minute.
Maxim, however, offered a different perspective, pondering, “What will Poland look like in ten years?” with a hopeful tone. He envisioned a new, multinational Slavic Poland within the EU framework. Optimistic rumors even circulated about Poland potentially surpassing the UK’s GDP by 2030. Part of his attraction to Poland was a yearning for “Slavic culture”—distinct from Russian or Ukrainian, he clarified, but Slavic: the shared food, the forests, the cultural undercurrents. While the Polish far-right and center-left might clash on EU matters and broader immigration policies, they found common ground in the appeal of someone like Maxim.
The Berghain clock crept towards four in the morning. It felt surreal to be discussing the geopolitical future of Eastern Europe within the distinctly post-socialist, almost industrial setting of this “dance factory”—no truly comparable techno clubs existed west of Berlin. Returning to the topic of Slavic culture, Maxim promised a story for when we left the restrooms.
“I know you like story!” he exclaimed to me, a perceptive observation. How had he picked that up?
His parents, he recounted, met in their youth—younger than he was now—performing the kozachok and gopak, energetic folk dances, in a touring company that traveled across Europe. He had to raise his voice above the thumping music to be heard.
After the Soviet Union’s dissolution, Maxim’s mother started another… group?
“A troupe,” I offered.
“Yes,” he agreed. “A troupe. But it was sexy, not traditional.”
This troupe soon found themselves hired to dance at the grand opening of one of Turkey’s first casinos in the early 90s. A member of the troupe and the casino owner fell in love. Eventually, she brought him back to Minsk, where the troupe was based. Seeing a gap in the market, the Turkish casino proprietor envisioned Minsk’s nightlife potential. Maxim’s father helped launch the first nightclub of that scale in Minsk. He managed a club there until around the time Maxim left Belarus. This was where Maxim began DJing after his return from China, before his move to Italy. “I had to play fucking disgusting Russian music for disgusting people,” he later confided. “You know, the clubs where people bring in champagne with a firework.” One day, backstage at that club, he had a breakdown. He felt he couldn’t endure it any longer. “I was crying and saying, like, ‘Maxim, you have to resist. Stop crying like a bitch. In four months, you will be in Europe.'”
Emerging from the restrooms, the three of us rejoined the Berghain dance floor. Thom and I had a brief, unspoken conference. What was the vibe here? Was this heading towards a Berghain hookup with Maxim? This question often hangs in the air when meeting someone in a Berlin club. But Maxim felt…too young. He was more like a son figure in our temporary Berghain family.
I let Thom walk ahead and caught up with Maxim. “I’m straight,” he stated matter-of-factly. I pretended not to hear. In retrospect, it was probably an accurate reading of the unspoken body language Thom and I had just exchanged, a silent dialogue that in less subtle couples would have been a clear “we saw you from across the bar…” signal. Later, Maxim shared his culture shock encountering Ukrainians. Belarusian sexual culture, he explained, was conservative. Ukrainians, in contrast, embraced the “Swedish family,” a Russian term from the Seventies, now somewhat derogatory in post-Soviet contexts, referring to polyamorous or even incestuous friend groups. “My mom told me, before I moved to Europe, like, ‘Man, you have to know one thing: Ukrainians like to fuck. A lot,'” Maxim recounted. “Only after I met Ukrainians, I realized how true it is.”
Towards the night’s end, we found Maxim again. He was genuinely impressed by the music. “Absolutely decent,” he declared. Who was DJing? I told him it was Lolsnake, the party organizer, playing back-to-back with someone else.
“This doesn’t sound like Lolsnake?” he countered, correctly identifying a subtle shift in DJ. I wanted to express my admiration for his discerning ear, his ability to identify a DJ by sound alone, a testament to his growing expertise in this “dance factory” environment, but my words were beginning to fail me.
Maxim followed us to the bar. I felt a pang of guilt declining his youthful offer of vodka shots.
We smoked. Thom inquired about Maxim’s exercise routine. The response was a somewhat hazy mix of Haruki Murakami, martial arts, and jogging. Desperate for a graceful exit to finally get some sleep, Thom offered, “Maxim, you are a really special person. Most people can’t stay so put together in this place when they’re twenty-three.”
“I wasted my youth filling out papers!” he replied, a poignant summary of his bureaucratic struggles.
As we gathered our energy to leave the Berghain “dance factory,” he frowned, a sudden thought striking him. “Haruki Murakami isn’t a very good author,” he asked, a hint of genuine curiosity in his sleep-deprived eyes.
By 2:30 pm on New Year’s Eve Sunday, Thom and I were back at Berghain, collecting wristbands for the club’s epic sixty-hour New Year’s party. We headed straight to the main dance floor. The music, courtesy of a DJ named Arthur Robert, was exceptionally good. Almost instantly, Thom nudged my shoulder, eyes wide with surprise. “Look who’s here!” he exclaimed. Maxim’s unmistakably shaved head bobbed in the crowd. He had been there since 4 am, a true testament to his stamina within the “dance factory.” We left after a couple of hours, promising ourselves, and Maxim, that we’d be back.
We then transitioned to a house party, a change of pace from the Berghain intensity. The next morning, after a mere three hours of sleep, I woke up in a distinctly foul mood. Our friends, already back at Berghain, were demanding snack deliveries ASAP. The thought of returning to the “dance factory” so soon was unappealing. They sell snacks there, after all!
“Babe, get up,” Thom urged, spilling coffee on the bed. “It’s time to clock in at the dance factory.”
As our taxi pulled up in front of the club, there he was again. A man in a bomber jacket appeared – Maxim. He was just leaving. An unbelievable coincidence. We excitedly told him we’d definitely see him in Warsaw, expressing our hope to attend one of the parties he was organizing with a Georgian friend, aiming to bring a resident DJ from Tbilisi’s Bassiani club to play in the spring. “My eyes, they are shaking,” he said, a charmingly quirky farewell, before departing. “Next time,” he added later via message, “we one hundred percent have to go into nature.”
