A magical afternoon in Obolon
The sixth in a series of ten posts about my recent short trip to Kyiv
My Monday afternoon was unexpectedly free, as another volunteer (Alex, you will read about him later) did not have time. I opened my phone and saw a message I had received at 1am the day before, from Andrey, whom I first met at the train station when the war started. He had since taken a job with Caritas, and always tried to go the extra mile to help Ukrainians in need. He still does. Andrey wrote me:
Dear Tanja, I hope that you’ll meet another Tanja, Tatiana in Kyiv, she’s a grandma speaking really good English, had been helping us a lot at the train station before falling really ill, then receiving, visiting the TAZ (day center) at Arsenalstraße, and after losing her accommodation in Vienna, going back to Kyiv. She’s a bright and somewhat timid person, could be a great story. I told her long ago in Vienna to ask you for a Hofer card but she was to shy to do so, I believe.
I pick up the phone, and call Tatiana. I explain who I am, and ask if she might have time for a chat. Tatiana is pretty clear she does not want to give an interview per se, but she is more than happy to meet me. I offer to come to her neighbourhood, and she tells me 2pm would be fine. The time then was noon. Amazing. I quickly get ready and study the metro map. I will have to take the subway to the blue line northern end station, “Heroes of the Dnipro”, to a suburb called Obolon which runs along the Dnipro River. I had been there once before, during my previous trip, when I came back from visiting Yanukovich’s hideous mansion-castle. I remembered a wide avenue of endless Soviet-era apartment buildings and a small indoor shopping mall above the subway. My memory had not failed.
I had picked up a few French pastries in central Kyiv, but it was so hot in the sun, I began to hope they would not melt before I arrived. I walked about 10 minutes, past outdoor market stalls selling fruit, vegetables, honey, just about everything homemade one can imagine, down the wide, dusty boulevard in the direction of the river. I had an address, but none of the buildings were marked. I studied Google maps, crossed the huge road at a traffic light, and walked up to the first granny I could find sitting in a courtyard. I was lucky. I was standing in front of Tatiana’s building, the concierge explained. Concierge is a term for a retired man or woman who earns a little extra money by essentially working as a doorman by day, not to sign for Amazon packages but rather to keep an eye on everyone coming and going from a building. This concierge asked me which floor and who I was visiting. I seemed to have passed the test.
I stepped into the elevator and again felt the urge to cross myself. I don’t know why I have such an irrational fear. I think it goes back to childhood when my sister and I got temporarily stuck in some Yugoslav hotel elevator, floating between floors, and ever since I get slightly nervous about the idea of being trapped in a small space in a foreign country. I quickly reached the 7th floor, and Tatiana greeted me with a large smile and invited me into her spacious apartment. We took a seat in the kitchen, and Tatiana began to tell me about herself: her life story, how she ended up in Austria, why she is now back in Kyiv. I listened for hours, and then admired her incredible collection of English-language (and not only) books. I could not believe the woman I was speaking with is 76 years old. It felt like talking to a peer. I do not know how Ukraine has so many incredible people, who themselves perceive their lives as ordinary. But Tatiana is anything but ordinary.
Tatiana is a professional synchronised interpreter from Russian/Ukrainian to English. She is a widow, and had three children. One of her sons died years ago, and her other son and daughter remain in Ukraine with their own families. They did at first leave for villages, before returning back to Kyiv. Tatiana was brought to Vienna by a Japanese journalist she had worked with during the Orange Revolution. She had hoped to find employment in her field with the World Bank (yes, really). She had been hosted by two different Austrian families, but in each case the time ran out on those kind offers. Finding paid work was much harder than Tatiana expected. I think, and this is my impression, she really did not believe her age would be an impediment. I believe Tatiana when she says she is one of the best synchronised interpreters, with detailed knowledge of topics such as energy markets, agriculture, economy, etc. But knowing the EU job market, and also the bureaucracy of international organisations, I was a bit surprised she had thought it would be possible to find a job in her profession.
Tatiana learns languages because she loves it (and still does — she loved going to German class and would like to continue onto B1 should she return to Vienna, should she find a place to live here), and also because languages opened new career doors. Tatiana learned Bulgarian fluently in order to work as a tour guide. Her first career was as an instructor in an aviation institute, but eventually she left academia for the private sector, for translation and tour guiding. You can tell how much Tatiana loves working with people, how talkative she is with a stranger. In Vienna, Tatiana kept herself busy with German courses, going to museums, she loved life in Austria’s capital and met so many interesting people.
When the war started, she had called her adult children, and they had decided to head 300 km south of Kyiv, to a village, where her son’s wife had family. The drive took eight hours instead of three. The internet connection was stable and that was important — Tatiana was still working on projects for which she was interpreting, and at first she was more concerned with being able to keep working than with what was unfolding round her. After spending some time in the village, Tatiana and another pensioner set off for Europe, the other lady remained in Hungary, while Tatiana continued to Vienna, armed with recommendation letters she truly believed would lead to employment with an organization like the World Bank. After all, Tatiana has not only an excellent command of English but also knows Bulgarian and has studied Portuguese, Spanish, Czech, French, Polish, Japanese and Arabic (!). She has crawled through coal mine shafts as an interpreter from Ukraine to UK. She has a deep knowledge of the electricity sector and its terminology, having worked on many of the projects over the years as Ukraine was developing its domestic market. She did her first synchronised transition for a conference in 1995. She talks to me about how there is no proper translation in Russian or Ukrainian for the term “unbundling” so they say just that, spelling it in Cyrillic.
At this point my jaw is dropping from the table. Tatiana talks about the Silk Road, about projects in Georgia, Belarus, and then about the transition to Ukrainian as the official working language. She can interpret from Ukrainian to English but not the other way around. She tried to take more classes in recent years…
Tatiana talks about how she is reading books in English (adult books!) over Zoom on a daily basis with her grandchildren. She is worried about this winter. The electricity might go out more often. Then how will anyone work online? She misses Vienna. She had such an exciting time there. She asks me if I have watched the operas available for free on YouTube from the Staatsoper and the New York Met. She recalls her love of the museums of Vienna, the tours they took with her German language teacher, the Roman ruins, KHM…
She offers me homemade chicken pie, slices open a huge watermelon, we taste the cakes I have bought (they have indeed melted slightly).
My head is just spinning at this point. Tatiana is such a brilliant woman that it is hard to get in a word edgewise. I thank her for her time and ask for directions to walk to the beach. I have packed a suit and a towel, just in case. It is so hot. I figure I might cool off a bit before a 7pm pedicure appointment I have, purely by coincidence, apparently booked online for not too far from this neighbourhood. “Oh!” Tatiana exclaims, “I’ll happily go swimming again!”.
I still cannot believe she is 76.
We quickly get changed, and set off, on foot, towards the river and the informal, sandy beaches which are well used on this very hot Monday afternoon. The approach towards the water is a steep walk down concrete platforms. I look at Tatiana, not fully understanding how exactly we are supposed to get down to the beach without stairs. She just walks forward. And I feel like the old one, I worry about slipping, I am thirty years younger, and it embarrasses me to be so clumsy on sharp angles. We walk down, sideways, and put our things on a log in the shade. Tatiana waves at friends on the beach. Many of them are regulars. They all know each other. We take turns cooling off in the water (browner than the Danube but so very refreshing), and Tatiana introduces me to her friend Lida. Lida, a petite, sporty brunette probably also in her 70s, with a friendly smile and open personality, tells me a life story which is a metaphor for 20th century Ukrainian history. I’ll try and recount it for you as best I can.
Lida’s mother was an orphan. She was orphaned, like so many other Ukrainian children, during the Holodomor. She was taken in in a central Ukrainian village by an aunt, and raised by her, but had to work from a young age. From the age of eight she was helping on farms and doing odd jobs to try and put food on the table. Lida’s mother was 17 when the Nazis came to the central Ukrainian village. They arrived at the house and asked for Yevhenia. This also happened to be the name of the aunt’s daughter. The aunt told them Zhenya is at work, she will come back soon, and set up Lida’s mother to be the one taken to Germany, thereby protecting her own daughter.
Lida’s mother was taken to Germany and given to a farmer as his indentured servant. He beat her, terribly. She had to sleep in the barn with the animals and was always hungry. One day, she drank some of the milk in her hands which she had milked from the cow, and he kicked her, and then the bucket, and beat her up badly for daring to drink some milk. Lida’s mother decided to run. She ran, three times in fact, and each time the man found her and dragged her home. On the last attempt, Lida’s mother was walking in a village, where she met another Ukrainian girl (Lida explains that there were not only stars for Jews but also pins for Russians and Ukrainians, and her mother, and the other girl, both had Ukrainian pins on their dresses). Lida’s mother told the girl the story in Ukrainian, and the girl brought her back to her employer, a German woman who was alone with her children, whose husband was at war. The woman took Lida’s mother in, fed her, and treated her well. When the war ended, she went to Czechoslovakia, looking for work. There she was hired as a farm hand, and the woman even wanted Lida’s mother to marry her son. But she declined the offer of marriage. She wanted to go home, to Ukraine.
Lida’s mother managed to get back to Ukraine but in the village found no one was waiting for her. There was no money. There was no work. She went to Kyiv, where she found work in the post-war reconstruction of the city. She was hired to pour cement on construction sites, and was given accommodation in dorms set up for workers. An all-female dorm. In Kyiv, Lida’s mother met her father. He too had grown up an orphan. His parents too had died in the famine. He was working as a bricklayer. He too came from a central Ukrainian village. He was of small stature — Lida explains he never got to eat enough as an adolescent to reach his full physical potential. The couple courted and fell in love, and married, yet had to live apart at first. Lida’s dad was housed in an all-male dormitory for workers.
Eventually, the young couple were given a corner in a barrack near the train tracks in Kyiv. They had a six square meter corner, with two cots, one for themselves, one for Lida and her brother, both of whom were born and brought home to the communal barracks which had no indoor plumbing and no running water. Lida jokes she doesn’t even know how her parents managed to find enough privacy to get pregnant with two children in that space. Lida has happy memories of her childhood. A gang of kids of all ages essentially running free in those years before school started. Her mother teaching her at the age of four (!) how to light the kerosene container on which a pot could be placed for heating up food. The family would bathe during weekly trips to the banya. It was not until 1962 (!) that Lida’s parents, who continued to work as cement pourer and bricklayer, respectively, were finally assigned their own two-room apartment in Kyiv for the family.
Lida recalls evenings with the adults all gathered round, after an exhausting day of manual labor at work, singing Ukrainian folk songs, the children watching with awe. It was a communal life. Lida’s parents, both from villages, spoke Ukrainian with each other, and Lida and her brother did not know any Russian until they were sent to school. The nearest school to where the family lived was a Russian-language school (as most were), and Lida’s parents were even summoned by the teacher to explain why their child does not understand any Russian. Lida says she then quickly picked it up, and later in life had to relearn the Ukrainian she heard in her early years.
Lida herself went on to study at university and have a prestigious career. Her daughter and grandchild are now in Germany. Her daughter is working at a chef in fine cuisine, having trained in many such restaurants in Europe and having worked on cruise ships.
This entire story was recalled to me as we stood in our bikinis on a sandy beach while Ukraine is at war. I ask Lida and Tatiana what we will do if an air raid siren were to go off, now, while we are all enjoying the late afternoon sun near the water, no shelter in sight.
“Nothing,” Lida says. “I am a believer”, she grabs her cross on her neck, “We will be fine.”
I explain to the ladies, rather embarrassed actually, about my pedicure appointment, and Tatiana assures me it is walking distance, and insists on walking me down the embankment. Google maps tells me it is not walking distance, and I offer to call a Bolt, but Tatiana insists, and I don’t want to be rude and argue with a local. We walk and walk and walk and walk, past first old apartment towers then new apartment towers, the entire neighbourhood with easy access to the river and its beaches. A new giant park with swimming and outdoor playgrounds and sailing has been opened in recent years by Kyiv’s mayor. You see so many young couples out for walks, so many kids and babies and toddlers. Demographically, you do not observe the war has stopped young, middle class Kyiv families from having more children.
About ten minutes before my appointment, I start to slightly freak out, realising we will not get there in time. Tatiana sweetly tries to ask every man in sight with a car if he will drive me, and I order a Bolt, thinking this will simply be easier and faster. I thank Tatiana for the wonderful afternoon. My head is racing with so much information. So many interesting stories.
I apologise to the salon, arrive late but not too late, and begin to make a few calls for my journey the next day, to Bucha.
Overnight, we have another air raid alarm at 2am and it is a long one, two hours. I feel like the mother of a newborn who doesn't get to sleep through the night. I get talking with my neighbour, the only other Russian speaker. She is in her 50s, from Mariupol, now living with her son in Batumi, Georgia. She has come to Kyiv for medical care. The bus ride from Georgia via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania took two and a half days. Two and a half days. We scan Telegram news channels together at 3am while waiting for the alarm to go off. The other residents crawl into the beds in the garage. We wait in chairs. Finally, at 4am, the all clear is given. This is what the map looks like on the app when there is an air raid alert for the entire country:
I hope Tatiana might find a way to come back to Vienna. Housing will be the biggest challenge. I can see she found so much intellectual stimulation here, she met so many interesting people, she attended German classes. To be fair she has an apartment in Kyiv and is not in any direct danger per se right now, not more than any other resident of Ukraine’s capital, but I understand how someone who had such an interesting life and is now alone is yearning for another adventure. That, I understand all too well.
Yesterday I received a phone call from an Austrian man asking me very politely how to buy a bus ticket to Kyiv. I told him all about the bus and the horrors of the Hungarian border. He didn’t seem phased. He said he was going to visit Tatiana…they had met in German class.
I do not know how you could keep it together, Tanja, telling the story. The last couple of paragraphs have me filled with emotion, joy and wonder, hope and faith, which is spilling out into tears. The world we inhabit is small; people who touch us are always close by, unexpectedly around the next corner. As always, many thanks.