A river of pain
Some days, most days, it feels like there is just one story after the other which makes your draw drop, eyes weep, head shake in frustration, shoulders shrug in response. There is no end to it.
I fully intended to write this yesterday. I packed up my envelopes and my laptop, made appointments to meet Ukrainians in front of a cafe so I could work there afterwards. What I expected to be a five minute conversation turned into two hours of side conversations, one after the other, and in the end it was only 6pm and I felt like I had been run over by a truck. I was so physically exhausted from hearing all this pain. So please forgive me, I have to put some of it back on the page here. It lightens my load to make it public.
For three days in a row I met with residents of a dorm in Vienna’s 11th district where approximately 200 Ukrainian residents are not given Meldezettel — the document confirming one’s residential address in Austria, which is the basis for blue card, health insurance, school, social payments, child benefit, opening a bank account. Basically, without it, you don’t really exist. These residents have rooms and are fed at meal times, but that’s where it ends. Some of them are able to see doctors because they were given insurance numbers by the police (don’t ask, I know, super weird way of handing out insurance), but only if they could prove they have a serious illness, like cancer.
So you have to imagine the scene. I am standing in front of a Starbucks in central Vienna. There are university students with the latest iPhones sipping €6 Frappucinos, businessmen and women walking past in their crisp suits with their elegant Italian footwear, and I am standing on the corner in front of a group of half a dozen (at times more) Ukrainian women all telling me about their troubles, more or less all talking at the same time, in loud Russian. And it doesn’t stop. I nod my head, because I know how the story goes. I say I have tried to make this public, I have tried to talk about this, I have told Austrians who might be able to help, but I cannot force the city of Vienna to do its job and offer you what is your legal right per the EU directive and how other refugees are treated. These women are told by those “in charge” on site in their dorm: you must find other housing on your own. But no one helps them to do so. And if they had any money, or means of renting accommodation, they wouldn't be there in the first place.
One is a senior nurse but she only speaks French. She understands her professional job prospects are basically non-existent here. Another is here with her 18 year old daughter who is studying online. But mom cannot apply for Familienbeihilfe (child benefit) because for that you need an address, a blue card, and a bank account. An adult daughter arrives with her mother, aged 72. Zinaida Aleksandrovna is tall, frail and only has one kidney. She has fought cancer in the past. She is dressed in layers of summer clothing because she is easily cold. They found those things in second hand donation centers but they cannot stand in lines for hours given Z.A.’s health. I promise to write about them, and as of now, a few private individuals in Vienna will reach out to help mother and daughter buy or receive clothes and shoes for winter. Z.A. doesn’t take her FFP2 mask off the entire time she is talking to me. Her eyes are drowning in sorrow. They are from Kharkiv. They cannot go back now. They are stuck in limbo. They would like to see Stephansdom, is it a long walk?
An elderly woman does not leave my side. I offer her a coffee, she declines. She asks me about a young woman. May Alyona write me too? I say, I know Alyona with her husband and toddler, I know Alyona with cancer. No, this is a third Alyona. Yes, of course she may write me.
It never ends.
I explain: I am not the state, nor the city, I an not an NGO, I am just one woman distributing supermarket gift cards when I have the funds from private donors to do so. They look at me disappointed when I explain it is not once per month, but just one time. They had hoped it would be a regular help of €50. And I think about what €50 actually buys these days, and I get so very depressed.
My first meeting yesterday afternoon on that sidewalk was really something out of this world. The boys in the photo below arrived with a petite blond women, around 40, and she looked so familiar. She had written me we needed to meet earlier because they were on their way to sports practice, which I did think was a little strange given the address she had given me — a federal government temporary dorm in Vienna. Then we got talking and I realised we had met before. At Wien HBF. In April. When she was in charge of brining a group of 50+ football players from Ukraine, mostly teenagers without parents, from Zaporozhye and Dnipro, to Austria. They were met with great pomp and circumstance by none other than Austria’s Vice Chancellor Kogler (aka Sport Minister). Hence the photo below.
Wait, I exclaimed, we met before! You brought that huge soccer group! You were met like royalty! What happened to Salzburg?!
She smiles and says: it is a very long story, but basically, in five months, nothing really worked out, we tried to find places for all the kids, a few of them were lucky and ended up in Burgenland…she is on her way to Schwechat to see if the team there can help the two boys she has with her, maybe they will have housing and a school…
We agree to have a coffee soon so I can hear the full story. I tell her how sad I am to hear it didn’t work out as promised because I was sure if anyone had a soft landing in Austria, it would be her group of athletes. She says it takes more than five minutes to tell the story…she looks so sad and disappointed.
But can you imagine? All my days and nights on the train station, I never saw a group welcomed so nicely and well organized as this group of fifty young footballers. I was sure they, if no one else, would at least get off to a solid start in Austria. Alas, even they have been seemingly forgotten about by a system in which no one is ever ultimately responsible for everything.
How did you find out about me, I ask her? Oh, a mom at school told me there is this Tanja and you can text her and she will give you a grocery card. A mom at school. I nod. I wish them good luck. We will meet up soon, I promise.
My last encounter yesterday was a young woman, age 23, who write me the day before she had essentially been homeless since she arrived in Vienna 150 days before. She was confused, couldn’t find the address, sent me a photo where she was standing, I walked over. Her story was hard to follow, but boiled down to she stayed initially with a friend, who gave her a place to stay with some Austrian, who then died (yes, literally died), and she had to move again, and now she has rented some tiny room for €300 per month but doesn’t know how long she can stay. I am not a trained social worker but something was clearly off with her. I listened, gave the Hofer card, wished her luck, told her to ask the charities for help. Today she wrote me asking for a laptop. I explained I don’t have laptops. How did you get my number? I ask her. Oh, I was waiting in line at Leo (Caritas-run discounted food program you have to be a member of to participate in; unfortunately closed for new registrations), and a lady told me to call you. I nod in understanding.
I am on my way home. I receive a text from a young lesbian who contacted me for help in the past when authorities wanted to separate her from her partner under the argument they are not “family”. That was quickly sorted back then with the help of local LGBTQ+ organizations. Now she has a different question. A mother is dying in a Kyiv hospital. She wants to send her 11 year old child to Europe, to be taken care of by a family. Can I help?
Another punch in the gut. No, I write back, I cannot help. You see, the mother is still alive, and you didn’t mention the father, but no one can just take a minor across an international border…but instead of doing nothing, I give her the phone number of a wonderful psychologist who also does refugee work who just returned home to Kyiv. Call Katya I say. She may know an international or Ukrainian organization in Kyiv who can work with the family to discuss options. Ok, she texts back. I know it isn’t what she hoped to hear. The war did not put a stop to all the other personal tragedies around us. It accelerated many of them, yes. But sick people are still sick, and addicts are still addicts, and poverty is still poverty. And now with economic pain here in Europe too (inflation is real and very palpable), what little empathy was left will likely go down the drain with the bathwater, as we turn our thermostats down to 19C, per the government’s suggestion.
My inbox is as many individual cries for help as it is requests for grocery cards, and that makes it hard. Collecting money, buying cards at Hofer, mailing them — that is the easy part. Answering all the “other” requests is much, much harder.
Like this. And multiply it over and over and over.
This article came out yesterday, which prompted me to respond because although I believe and know the problems, I also had been myself in touch yesterday with the authorities in Burgenland who were trying to help, and they are the only Austrian state who has ever helped me directly. Really. Burgenland is at least trying. They respond to specific cases and try to help. I spent half an hour on the phone yesterday with a family that has been totally screwed over by ALL of Upper Austria and no one cares. They are just looking for a way to leave, to go anywhere but there.
The fundamental problem is a lack of responsible oversight, a lack of funding, a lack of resources, a lack of anyone in the federal government (as this is after all a national problem) to fund a response and give the states what they need to cope with the numbers of Ukrainians arriving here. I kid you not — yesterday afternoon, in downtown Vienna — over two hours, I easily heard more Russian and Ukrainian on the streets than German. Easily. They are everywhere and no, they did not all arrive in fancy cars (two Ukrainians are working on a design for my A5 flyers, btw). And when they write me and say they have no money left, I am, most of the time, inclined to believe them. I see them. I talk with them. I hear them. I see their faces. I look into their eyes.
Thanks to a few generous donors of late, I am working off my own waiting list. It has been months since I have had this feeling of a cushion, that I can spend money and send/deliver cards immediately. Thank you. I am working as fast as I can. Today should be another 16 or so.
I would also like to recommend some big picture reading which I have found informative. I haven’t had time nor attention span for more, sadly.
Sketches from Ukraine more on Molly Crabapple’s Instagram here
Alexey Kovalev on the “pro-war” landscape within Russia (more in this thread here)
Ukraine Pulled Off a Masterstroke by Professor Phillips Payson O’Brien
This is also a good overview podcast
Thank you for reading and for your continued support.