Ukrainian teacher Rissling is helping adult learners understand her country better at the adult education centre in Trier. Photo: Birgit Reichert/dpa
Language teacher Liliya Rissling writes some words in Ukrainian on the blackboard as her students wonder what Laskavo prosimo means.
It means "Welcome" – or "Tenderly we ask", if you translate it literally," says Rissling. She's giving the first session of a beginners' course in Ukrainian at an adult education centre in Trier, western Germany.
The class was primarily created for anyone who wants to help the Ukrainians arriving in Germany to escape the Russian invasion of their country.
The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) estimates some 8.3 million people will flee Ukraine this year. So far, while the vast majority of Ukrainians are staying in neighbouring Poland, hundreds of thousands have also come to Germany.
The Ukrainian class is the first to be offered at the public adult education centres in the south-western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, which borders Luxembourg, Belgium and France.
"I want to teach culture and language," says Rissling, 38. Usually, in the past at least, she was teaching English and German as foreign languages, but she said yes right away when she heard there was a job available teaching Ukrainian.
"If you show people that you are interested in their culture and language, and it doesn't have to be much, then people open up," she says.
More than 5,400 children and young people from Ukraine are currently enrolled at schools in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Photo: Frank Rumpenhorst/dpa
Rissling wants her students to be in a position to say and understand the most important things after her course – as well as having learned the Cyrillic alphabet.
Margret, a 61-year-old from Trier, joined the class as she wanted to get involved helping Ukraine – wherever she is needed, she says. She wants to learn the basics before asking the city how best she can get involved.
Meanwhile fellow student Hiltrud Helten, 62, says she thinks how you interact with people is very different if you speak at least some of their language.
"I could imagine that people would have a completely different impression if you just greeted them in their own language," she says.
The pilot class that's on offer in Trier is likely to be a model for similar courses offered throughout the state, says Ute Friedrich, who runs the Rhineland-Palatinate Association of Adult Education Centres.
"We will definitely have more courses in the second half of the year," she says.
While Trier moved fastest of all, elsewhere, the centres are still looking for experienced instructors. Friedrich is confident they will be found."The adult education centres are also hungry to do something," she says.
Ukrainian language courses are being offered across Germany, in cities from Dortmund in the west to Erfurt in the east to Mannheim in the south and Luneburg in the north.
Demand has spiked worldwide, with universities and education centres in the United States and Britain also noting an uptick after years when the Ukrainian language was overshadowed by its more widespread Russian cousin.
Adult education centres have also created political and social education programmes to help attendees learn more about Russia's war on its neighbour.
Among Ukrainians, meanwhile, there is "huge" demand to learn German, says Sina Djemai, language and integration officer at the state association of adult education centres. 
The table of a student who has fled Ukraine during German lessons at the Gymnasium am Kurfurstlichen Schloss school. Photo: Frank Rumpenhorst/dpa
Some refugees want to start learning the language just two or three days after reaching the country and those courses started a while back.
The federal government also offers integration courses, official language and orientation classes that cover work, shopping, education and television and other everyday issues to help newcomers navigate their new country.
Participants learn how to deal with administrative offices, to write emails and letters and handle job interviews.
German culture, politics and values also feature.Refugees from Ukraine can attend these courses free of charge, according to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees.
In Bingen, for example, around 60 people have applied to attend the courses, and a similar number is waiting in Kusel, says Djemai.
"If everything is approved, we can start immediately."Legally, Ukrainian refugees are entitled to take the integration courses and all the approvals are just flowing in, says Friedrich.
For newcomers who may be lonely or uncertain, such classes also offer an opportunity to meet like-minded people.
There is a high level of demand for the classes among Ukrainians, reports the Trier adult education centre.
The abolition of protective measures introduced to contain the pandemic also means more people can be fitted in the classrooms, says Manuela Zeilinger-Trier, who runs the integration, culture and education section there.
All the Ukrainians wanting to learn German is "a positive challenge" for the adult education centres, says Friedrich from the state association. The centres want to welcome everyone and do the best job they can, she adds.
So far, not that many people have signed up to study Ukrainian in Trier, says Zeilinger-Trier, adding that maybe word of the class has not spread very far.
One member who is studying Ukrainian says he expects to use the language professionally. Freight forwarder Stefan Schneider, 59, has already been to Ukraine several times and has attended trade fairs there.
"I could imagine going there again. It could come again."
Hiltrud Helten meanwhile has relatives connected to Ukraine, with a daughter-in-law from the country, and now her sister from Kiev having come to join her.
Lecturer Rissling, who comes from the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia and has lived in Germany since 2006, is happy to share her language and culture, although she says she would not have wished for the current situation, with tears in her eyes as she reflects on the war. – dpa
