Back to school

That's it, summer is over, and yet you couldn't tell from the sweltering temperatures we still have in Vienna.

It’s that time of year again which feels like a new start for everyone with kids who had to report back to school by now. This year, it all feels quite surreal given the extremely high temperatures we still have in Vienna. I doubt there is much if any learning going on in overheated, non-airconditioned classrooms. My youngest yesterday moaned that if only there was a fan, it would somehow be more bearable. Riding public transport is still a game of cat and mouse, you wait to see if the tram will be 40C inside with no A/C or if you might get lucky and jump on one of the few which actually has a cooling system installed and working. So it is a strange time, on the one hand we are all supposed to be diving into new projects and new beginnings, on the other hand it is still so hot that you cannot think straight. I was in a city hospital yesterday. There was no A/C. A very bubbly nurse was walking around the waiting room offering everyone water, which was kind, but a sad sign of the times. It feels often like our societies are failing at getting even basic stuff right. Like that a hospital, even if it was built in the 1970s, in one of the richest countries in the world, should have A/C when we regularly have very hot summer days for weeks on end. And yet, no one made it happen yet. I cannot get my head around it.

This week I will have the opportunity to speak with someone from inside the Vienna city government in the department charged with the refugee response, for lack of a better term. I accepted the invitation because although I do not think it will achieve anything, it is the first time in two and a half years that someone from that team reached out to me to inquire about “how the Ukrainians are doing”. I will be preparing a list today on exactly that topic. The answer is — complicated. On the positive side there are those who have been diligently studying German, found good jobs, and are eagerly gathering all of their paperwork to apply for the RWR+ card, an Austrian form of permanent residency that is tied to a certain level of income in paid employment and has been especially redesigned for Ukrainians. Permanent residency is a big step as it allows the individual (and dependents) to start counting years towards applying for citizenship. Until now, all Ukrainians who came here after the war began have had temporary protection status as mandated by the EU. In short, those years don’t count towards anything.

For many, the requirements to apply for this new status are too high of a hurdle, and they are simply focused on trying to make it work here month to month. One thing I have noticed in conversations with Ukrainians in recent months: no one is talking of going home anymore. Many tell a similar story: we thought it was only going to be a few months, and now it has been a few years… There are kids who probably don’t remember Ukraine much at all by now. You hear Ukrainian teenagers on public transport, especially boys, swearing up the bloodiest storm of swear words in Russian I have ever heard, and yet I don’t know if the granny in me should tell them off or let it go — they have gotten used to the idea that they think no one understands them. Language is also a safe space, a place to be yourself after you have been sitting in school in a language which is not your native tongue.

My biggest concern, reading the horrible news out of Ukraine (including Poltava and Lviv, both of which were considered relatively safe), where Russia has been intensifying attacks on cities and civilian targets on an already exhausted population, is what will happen this fall/winter if electricity cuts continue, air attacks continue, and more Ukrainians decide it is finally time to seek safer skies. Europe, from what I can observe, is not thinking about this at all and is not creating any additional housing. This is a topic I will bring up tomorrow, because there is already only a bare minimum of capacity (200 beds) in the Vienna “arrival center” which means in practice they regularly turn people away, telling them to try other cities or other countries. As I said in a group chat with other volunteers this week, it would be more honest if Austria would publicly say that it is still accepting Ukrainians, specifically, those who can afford to provide for themselves financially. We need more clarity on this, and soon. I am genuinely concerned there will be a new wave of arrivals and the authorities will act as if it was totally unexpected.

School started this week in Vienna, and before I write anything more, do watch this video if you speak German. A school director in a highly immigrant neighborhood explains: 231 students, of whom only 7 have German as their native language. Some of the parents are illiterate themselves. Class size 28 per class. One teacher. No extra support in the form of assistant teachers, etc. Many of the children are refugees, many just arrived, they have trauma and would need help from medical and social worker staff which the school does not have. You listen to this and you realise that ordinary elementary school teachers are being assigned a herculean, un-achievable task. The education ministry still thinks it can educate through schools, expecting ordinary teachers to become teachers of German as a second language. When the majority of a class does not speak German, you need a totally different approach, more like the one they use for adults (Austria’s integration ministry offers, quite successfully, free courses for grown-ups). The problem is getting worse every year, resources are stretched incredibly thin, and there can be no hope of “integration” for these families if the system cannot figure out the basic task of teaching these kids German. It is really alarming.

It is also important to remember in past waves of immigration, I don’t believe there were schools with 90%+ immigrants. There were always enough native German speaking kids so that new arrivals could learn from being surrounded by German. Now the numbers of kids with refugee backgrounds are so high that you cannot expect this to happen naturally. A form of segregation is also taking place, as many local Austrian families are opting more and more for private schools, not because they are particularly devote Catholics, but rather because they want an “Austrian” classroom. I was translating at one such parent meeting last night, for a Ukrainian mom who enrolled her child but does not yet understand German well enough to manage a parent night on her own. I looked around the classroom and saw older parents who clearly could afford the tuition, and couldn’t imagine this was a class of 1st grade parents. The Ukrainian mom was easily 15 years younger than most of them.

You see how these issues are also affecting voting patterns in Germany, and soon here in Austria, too. The election posters are already up here in full force, which means you quite often in Vienna walk by a poster from the far right and see that someone took a black Sharpie and wrote NAZI over it, drawing on a little Hitler moustache, and for a second you smile, thinking the kids are alright. But the reality is that many hardworking taxpayers here are not citizens, meaning those who can vote do not truly represent the fabric that is modern Austrian society. We saw this in eastern Germany which voted recently, and the far right received 30% of the vote. This is a good summary of the vote and what it means.

Austria will vote on September 29, and I’ll be completely honest, I haven’t watched a single hour of the televised interviews with the heads of all the major parties this summer. I feel like we already know what the result will be. A strong far right will try to build a coalition with the conservatives, who have been weakened in recent years but are desperate to cling to power. The alternative to that will be a three-way coalition between a very weak (in my opinion, both in terms of personalities and positions) socialists, Greens (also damaged by scandals), and the Neos, a liberal party who have interesting positions and say a lot of the right things but never manage to get really beyond 10-12%. So I guess because bad news is easier to digest ahead of time, I fully expect a new government with the far right in charge. For that reason, I continue to tell the Ukrainians not to think of anything they have now as a god-given, things can change, even overnight when legislators actually want to make change.

Ask any Ukrainian when the war will end, what the incursion into Russia means for the course of events, and they will shrug. Everyone has long since stopped making predictions. They are angry at their government, angry that this has been going on for so long, angry that someone is clearly profiting from war. It is a general anger, directed at Russia, sure, but not only. It is a frustration that your life took a different path that was totally out of your control. Your plans and your future were ripped out from under you. So now you try and make the best of a situation you never expected yourself to be in. Some do this better than others. For those with financial problems, like the pensioners who write me and say they have not been paid on months (I do not know if this is incompetence on the part of the authorities or because a “debt” was calculated in the size of their Ukrainian pensions — either way, horrible, inexcusable), their only concern is survival. Those are the hardest messages to receive. I promise them Hofer cards, when I will receive them. Everyone else able-bodied has generally had a chance to look for a job or at least part-time, unofficial opportunities to make a little cash on the side.

As I write this I just read there has been a shake-up in Ukraine’s government this morning, with the foreign minister, and several others, offering their resignations. I wouldn’t dare speculate, but it does seem odd that right before you face what could be a terrible winter, with significant damage to your utilities infrastructure, you decide to appoint a whole new team. This smells like infighting to me, and is perhaps what Ukrainians are hinting at when they roll their eyes and express their frustration. For the poor there is war, for the powerful there are also opportunities to enrich their own families. To think anything else in this situation would be delusional. If there was before a culture of self-enrichment, why would that suddenly stop now, especially with the future so uncertain? This is pure speculation on my part, but that is what this sounds like — political infighting at a time when unity would seem to be the only way to move forward, with the country exhausted and under so much pressure to find a way to end this war with an aggressor who shows no signs of wanting peace. Ukraine invaded Russia into the Kursk region, and Russia has retaliated with even more terror on Ukrainian cities and civilians. This is intentional, of course, to increase public pressure on the government. There is little public pressure on the Russian government, at least not until things in Moscow start blowing up.

So it is a strange fall that doesn’t yet feel like fall. The beaches in Croatia, where I was last weekend, were packed. The prices, sky high. It was as if summer wasn’t going to end anytime soon, no one had to be back at school or work, and life was running on inertia. Time stood still. For a few days you block out thoughts of to do lists and household chores and you just soak up the sun and the salt, telling yourself it is good for the immune system. When the low-coster delays your flight by a few hours, you don’t even get really that upset because it was your choice to book them and for an evening departure at that. We are all putting one foot forward, as one does, but it does seem now more than in the past like a blind walk. I really cannot imagine what the future will bring, and am instead trying to focus on enjoying the present. On the direct tasks in front of me. On those fires which I can put out, and accepting those which are beyond my capabilities.