Baba Anya (Day 40)
This morning at Vienna's main train station I met four generations of women from Mykolaiv oblast. Official Austria vs reality here for Ukrainian women and children.
I found this beautiful box of Easter eggs this morning at the cafeteria opened near the train station for Ukrainians to have a meal, drink a coffee, use the internet, figure out where to go, what to do next. That is how it works. You help women walk with their bags, luggage, kids, strollers, sometimes pets a few hundred meters from the train station. They have just arrived from Slovakia. Someone in Košice told them Austria is waiting for them. You have to be that face that disappoints and tells them the truth about what is happening here. The more information they have, the more informed decision they can make.
You offer breakfast and wi-fi. They follow you. It seems to ridiculous, doesn’t it? Here, please help yourself to a Semmel with ham and a coffee from this machine and use the wi-fi to figure out where you will go in Europe because no one here is really waiting for you and you cannot possibly know where there will be a safe place to sleep, a good job, some money to buy food for the first few weeks. How can Google tell you that? It can’t.
Poltava oblast. Grandmother, mother, two daughters, about ten and two. Were staying with an Austrian family somewhere in the Lower Austrian countryside. That family had three kids including a new baby. It sounded like a mess. They left. They arrived at the train station and left all their suitcases in a locker. They look at me and ask me what to do. I don’t have any apartments. I don’t have any answers. I try to tell them what others have told me. How much Germany pays, what France offers, I heard a chef going to Croatia yesterday, they say Belgium is nice if you can get there. I show them photos of an apartment and garden outside of Brussels, available if you can get there. The family with the big dog and 3 cats from Kharkiv turned it down. They are too tired to keep travelling. They will try their luck in Austria. You listen as mom cries a bit and then daughter cries a bit and you try yourself very hard not to cry with them because that wouldn’t help anyone. You ask mom to come with you into the ladies’ room and you give her some money. Your phone number. You say if you have questions, please ask. Good luck. Don’t rush your decision. You have time to think. The train tickets to Belgium and Croatia are still free, for now.
Mykolaiv oblast. “We are right in between Mykolaiv and Kherson. Did you see how they bombed Mykolaiv last night?”. I admit, I haven’t seen the photos yet. They open up local Telegram groups on their phones, start showing me videos of the blazing fires in the night sky left in the wake of Russian bombs and missiles and rockets and utter destruction. A maternity hospital, they say. Just like in Mariupol, I add.
Four generations of women: great grandmother, grandmother, great aunt, mother, daughter.
Baba Anya has shoulder-length grey hair dyed orange and put up in a bun. She has bright blue eyes. She is wearing a thick cable blue jumper and sturdy trousers. As she started to talk, I just pulled up a chair, and listened. She speaks a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian, trying to speak as much Russian as she could so I would understand. She was born in 1942, during the war. In 1946, she was sent with her mother and old brother to eastern Siberia, Irkutsk oblast. She remembers the name of the village, the river, everything. Why, I ask? Because they decided we were Kulaks (wealthy farmers), she explained. As I understood Anya’s father died during the war. There were all nationalities there in Siberia, Anya explained: Poles, Lithuanians, Tatars, all kinds. They were hungry. Their stomachs expanded. Anya shows me with her hands. Her brother, two years older, died of hunger. Anya spent eight years in Siberia. I was in 7th grade, she said…her voice trailing off. They returned to Ukraine, it must have been just after Stalin died, 1954…
Anya told me what she left behind in Mykolaiv oblast. Her daughter wrote down for me the name of the village:
The family told me in unison: you cannot imagine, we are right on the front, in the middle of the fighting between Kherson and Mykolaiv. We have been in the basement for a month. Our boys shot down 3 Russian planes and a few helicopters. Baba Anya told me how her whole house shook when the Russians hit a neighbours house, three doors down. I just bought a new refrigerator and put in new windows, she said, from the rental income I get from renting out my land. 50,000 Hryvnia for the year (about €1,500). I left behind the geese. I even had gas. When they connected me to the gas, I paid them with two bulls and a few pigs. I had water AND gas, she tells me proudly.
Baba Anya saw soldiers from both sides. Her daughter told me the Russians go from basement to basement telling the locals to give up their weapons or they will be shot. Baby Anya asked me why Europe doesn’t close the skies. What could I tell her. Europe can’t even figure out how to give her family of five a place to sleep tonight. They fled first in private cars, getting out of the active war zone, and then on trains, via Odesa. Odesa to Uzhgorod. Through Slovakia to Vienna. But their thoughts are all back home, in Mykolaiv oblast. The whole Ukraine was bombed last night, another lady chimed in from a neighbouring table. The women are physically in Vienna, but their hearts and thoughts are back home, in Ukraine.
Baba Anya told me she left with the clothes she had on, and forgot her glasses. I need +4.5 she said. Ok, I nodded. I left in search of glasses. I came up empty handed, except for a drug store, so I bought one pair with +3.0 and another with +1.5 and figured she could put one on top of the other. I returned, and showed her. She was so happy and gave me a hug, wanted to pay me. I said it wasn’t necessary. Now I can knit, she said, earn a bit of money. Then the other elderly lady who kept listening in asked for glasses for her and her husband. I ran back to the drugstore, two more pairs of glasses.
I escorted Baba Anya’s daughter and granddaughter to the subway. In order to activate a SIM card here in Austria, you have to go to a phone shop and show your passport. Nothing is simple. We don’t have a subway in Mykolaiv, they said. Don’t worry, I explained, you can go for free and if anyone asks just say “Ukraine”. I told Baba Anya’s daughter I am sorry I don’t have any housing to offer them, warned her about how long it takes to get the right to work, the cash payments towards food, etc. I asked if she would take a little money. I passed it over quickly from palm to palm so no one would interfere. Put it somewhere safe, I said, warning that there have been thefts inside Messe Wien, which is the massive center with cots where Ukrainians who have nowhere in Austria to stay are first taken. They nodded. They understood what I was trying to say.
As I was trying to leave today, I kept getting pulled aside. More and more people who want to try and stay in Austria and I feel like an absolute fraud walking them through the steps, trying to be honest with them about what to expect. They too believe somehow Austria will be ok. But it isn’t ok. Many are coming to us and saying they have been housed in homes in the middle of nowhere, where there is no school, work or transport without a car. They took two regional trains to get to Vienna, and those only work on weekdays.
The women of Ukraine want to work. They want to find jobs as soon as possible. They need to be housed near urban centers or towns were there is work, and school, and kindergarten. I am really worried about the process for finding work after hearing the head of AMS on Zib2 last night.
My husband suggested I tweet at him. My husband, like many, is a cup half full guy. He generally believes Austria is trying to help and the problem is in the execution, while I have a more sinister view (half empty, obviously!), I think, based on what I have seen, many officials are far more interested in looking like they are trying than in actually trying to figure out how to make things better and actually work efficiently. But perhaps my husband was right. I took a deep breath, and I tried to explain the problem. I never got a reply. A thread:
I learned last night that a “blue card” alone is not enough to access the Austrian labor market. Employers must then apply for permission to hire Ukrainians:
This is a real problem, because small businesses will surely not want to do this. This will be an impediment for Ukrainian women trying to get jobs with a local shop, restaurant, beauty salon. This will drive Ukrainian women towards mass hire jobs — exactly the kind that make them ripe for abuse. This bureaucratic layer needs to go, just like Germany removed it. If Austria does not remove it, we should question why that is. I am very concerned. Most Ukrainians haven’t even realised the is the case, as everyone only ever talks about the blue cards, which also remain elusive. Few have received blue cards yet.
Official Austria needs to speak to actual Ukrainians in Austria, not just the TV cameras they like to have follow them around showing their “help” in action. I am willing to help. Anytime, anywhere, I will translate. Please start speaking to women to understand what they are going through. They have left behind sons and husbands. They need to work, they want to work. They need affordable housing near job opportunities with transportation nearby.
You want to hire Ukrainian-speaking teachers? Just give me the word I will find you over Telegram dozens in a few hours. I am sure of it. This is not rocket science. The only thing standing in the way of everything working properly is Austria’s love of 25 steps of paperwork and arcane rules and regulations so as to prevent us from actually helping the people we claim to want to help. And those people, they want to help themselves. The women who arrived from Ukraine are more online than most Austrians. Give them internet access, they will figure everything out with their smartphones. They are smart and resilient. But also vulnerable the longer we prevent them from being able to support their families. They did not arrive with months of savings. How could they?
This, I think is the fundamental problem, if you work under the assumption that official Austria actually wants to help (as I said, I am skeptical at this point):
Please use me. Please ask me who you want to talk to. What you want to know. I can be that bridge. But the systems have to change. All the red tape has to go. No more coming to ACV five times to be told the documents were lost and you aren’t in the system and maybe come again next week to get your money? Get those blue cards out to everyone, now. And remove the other layers of bureaucracy: if you force employers to apply for permission to hire Ukrainians, you eliminate all small and medium-sized businesses, and drive Ukrainians into working in precarious environments, where a large employer hires a big group and then dictates all the terms. I saw this yesterday, for example. Journalists write me, where did you find that, who took the job? It’s all on Telegram! How could I know who took the job?
But you have to understand the average Ukrainian doesn’t know now how to get the €215 per month for food they have been promised, and in that context €1000/month net for hard labor on a farm might start to sound appealing to some, even though they know exactly they will be at the complete mercy of the farm owner and whatever working conditions are provided there.
Housing is the first, most urgent problem. Near transport. Near civilization. Near jobs and schools and kindergartens. Next is access to the labor market. Real access, meaning not an extra layer of BS just to make sure Ukrainians don’t take any “good” jobs away from Austrians. Anyone who really wants to help Ukrainian refugees needs to digitalise the entire process and remove all unnecessary red tape. From what I can see, 90% is unnecessary red tape.
Bigger picture, the news is really depressing. The world is moving in the wrong direction. A good summary by the New York Times this morning.
Putin, unphased, is explaining away his de-Nazification program (= genocide) for Ukraine to anyone who will listen and consume Russian state media. And apparently the world is ok with this?
I haven’t yet caught up on Ukraine news this morning. I’ve been in this micro world here on the train station, trying to help with immediate problems, feeling pretty useless because all I really did today was buy 4 pairs of reading glasses, 3 coffees, bring a couple dozen people to the cafeteria, and give two large families some cash and publish a Substack. That’s it. Not much.
Tomorrow is a new day.
Thank you for reading.
one would have thought the announcements would have included Ukrainian... sigh.