Believing in miracles (Day 73)
Yesterday was a good day. Things worked. Progress was made. Human kindness and generosity were present. A hopeful day.
So this happened. Yes, really. It was the most unbelievable scene. I arrived earlier than usual to the train station, because I had agreed to meet a mother of three living in a dorm at 10:30 by the ticket counter to give her two Hofer cards (her situation seemed particularly dire). As I walked up, the security guards were like “Tanja! Where have you been? A big spender is looking for you!”. I couldn’t understand what they were talking about, as first I was early, and second no one had contacted me about meeting that day at the train station to give a donation. I went to “work” translating inside the ticket office as usual.
About ten minutes later, the security guys brought in an older man. A pensioner. He had in his hands a cut out from the newspaper Heute, of my photo (below). The print tabloid is free near all public transportation. He isn’t on the internet, he told me. He came the day before and then yesterday to the train station looking for me.
As if that wasn’t a surprise enough, he then continued. Says he gives once a year €10,000 to charity, and this year he wants to give me Hofer grocery gift cards for Ukrainian families in Austria. I burst into tears. I couldn’t believe it.
I asked him three times if he was sure, said it’s really too much money, but he insisted. He says he went to Hofer and asked them for the cards and they told him it will take a few days. We agreed to meet next week. I will call him again this weekend to make sure he really wants to do this. I will take down his contact information, as some have suggested I must be sure he is of sound mind in making such a decision. He sounded absolutely reasonable to me. Explained he usually gives to a big organization but read the article and now wants to donate via me instead. We exchanged numbers. I thanked him profusely. Meanwhile the whole time Ukrainians were interrupting trying to get me to help them with their train tickets because naturally they could not understand what was happening at that moment, as we were speaking German.
Amazing. Even if it doesn’t work out for whatever reason, even the intention to do such a good deed is reason enough for hope in the good of humanity.
Yesterday I was busy with tickets (Germany, Belgium…Nice? Take a plane…). One woman came in really upset after Hungary. By the time we sorted out her ticket to Germany and presented a €10 McDonalds card, she had calmed down again. She simply needed to hear that someone cared and was helping. Older Ukrainians continued to come (and some younger, too, actually) and ask for train tickets back to Ukraine. The direct train to Kyiv, for which they must buy tickets at €86 each, is sold out for weeks. We can get them free tickets to border cities in Poland, Slovakia or Hungary, but then they are on their own. And the trains pull in late at night. Some agree, others hesitate.
I met two women, a mother and daughter. The mother was frail and walked very slowly with a cane. She really needed a wheelchair. To Budapest. Budapest?, I asked, thinking that’s the wrong direct. We applied for Canadian visas. We have nothing to go home to. In 2014, we fled Donetsk for Kyiv. Now we fled Kyiv. We have nothing to go home to. We will try Canada. We got tickets with only 15 minutes to spare. I helped grab bags and took them directly to the platform. This means not helping other people with translation but sometimes this is the right decision. As we chatted, I gave the daughter the contact of an amazing volunteer in Budapest and a contact in Canada. Do contact them, I said. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. And then you say goodbye on the platform and wish them good luck and really, really hope one day they actually do make it to Canada.
I handed out grocery vouchers in person to two moms yesterday. I meet in person when we aren’t sure the post will work, or they really ask urgently. Natalia has three children and lives in a dorm in the 11th district. The food is bad. She is unhappy. It is all very hard. She maybe wants to go to France where her friend says it is better. I listen, offer two Hofer cards (big family), and promise to help with train tickets if she decides to go. She isn’t entitled to the full financial support from the state as she is living in a dorm and the state sees her as already being fed. She seemed very sad. She then left and went to Train of Hope at Stadion where she knows she gets a hot lunch.
I met a mom from Odesa who had a hotel for the night but didn’t know how to get there with all the bags and two kids. I gave her €30 taxi money and a few McDonalds vouchers. I always say: it’s not my money, it is from kind people who want to help. Then it is more easily accepted.
A second mom came with a 7-month old baby to get a Hofer card. She was sent to me by Tatjana, a Belarusian woman who runs a mother & child center for Ukrainians in Vienna. Svetlana told me how hard it is for her husband not to see his baby growing older. It’s been two months. He is back home, in central Ukraine, working in food distribution. His work is now more important than ever. Someone must hold the economy up, she says. And she is right. I always have to end these conversations too soon. To say I’m so sorry, I have to run off now.
Next I met two moms and two sons, 6 and 9, one of whom has a hole in his heart. They had been living in Wien Messe (expo hall with cots run by Red Cross) for 10 days. They were desperate to move. Asked for train tickets to St Pölten to go to a new center there, in the hopes of maybe eventually being properly housed. I knew a contact about an apartment in central Austria. We exchanged numbers. McDonalds cards. I said I cannot promise anything. Unfortunately, by evening, the contact said the apartment had already been filled. I felt so badly I made an appeal on Twitter:
It definitely sounds like we will have an excellent cardiologist by Monday, but still no housing. One offer, but in Bludenz, not sure they will travel that far. I sent them all the contact info. They have to decide what they want. But this is the thing: we need mass solutions for money, housing, medicine. We cannot treat these all as individual cases. There will soon be 100,000 Ukrainians in Austria. You cannot solve each case one by one. This requires an organization led by a “CEO” and then a bunch of senior Vice Presidents, each responsible for his/her own division. Just like in business. Housing. Money. Medicine. Education. Work. Not rocket science.
Finally, I had a visit from America. With two boxes of Life cereal, nearly €1,000 in cash donations (immediately turned into Hofer cards!), and lovely handwritten notes. Thank you thank you thank you. So nice to read the messages from across the Atlantic and know that back home many people care about what we are trying to do here and the plight of Ukrainians in Europe. These cards went out to Ukrainians across Austria before the post office closed yesterday.
What else? I spent the rest of the day giving some interviews to journalists, talking with experts in the field of asylum, connecting journalists to Ukrainians they could interview, and processing grocery card requests. As I answer messages about the Hofer cards, I hear the stories. And the stories are really mind blowing sometimes. Just read this:
Three of the moms clarified they are looking for housing together; would be 8 people in total. They are now in 1220. Just in case anyone knows of anything for 8 (!!) from June. Will take a small miracle, I fear.
It was 11pm on a Friday, but even that late, one of my kind readers sent the mom from Mariupol €100 via her roommate’s bank account. A little financial bridge and a message that people do care. But what we are all doing as individuals is not sustainable. The state needs to step in and give all Ukrainians in Austria in need of help money now. With money in their pockets, and access to the labor market, they will take care of themselves. I was so tired last night. Haven’t been this tired since we worked 100 hour weeks in investment banking and didn't sleep. And then I was twenty-something. It felt different.
Coverage on the issues at hand is great and welcome. Thank you, Stephanie for this video. Thank you, Max, for this article:
This morning I’m off to buy more Hofer cards with the donated funds (thank you), and will keep addressing envelopes this weekend. I am now in a “Ukraine in Austria” Telegram group in all nine regions of the country. In theory, I can chat with nearly every Ukrainian here, as 99% of them are online and internet savvy. I am so grateful for the power of the internet in this case. As they contact me for supermarket gift cards, I hear their stories. We need an overall solution. What is happening now is not a solution. Many people are falling through the cracks, trying to get by for months with no income, state aid money not paid yet, and savings run out. I am glad this crisis is finally starting to get the attention it deserves.
In other news, very briefly, read this by WSJ on Russian soldiers’ funerals:
Read this about the lies told to the parents of Russian servicemen:
And read this about draft rumours in Russia. When the Kremlin denies something, it is usually true.
Now Russia is not making any real military progress at the moment. In fact it is even being pushed back from Kharkiv. More on that here from villages near Kharkiv:
I have no data to back anything up, but my gut feeling is the war in the south will continue and stretch further over to Moldova and this is all just positioning and the moment and no reason to believe this war will end anytime soon. Even Lukashenko is exacerbated and finally said the quiet part out loud.
That will only make Putin dig in deeper. He doesn’t care how many thousands, millions of boys he sends to their deaths. Meanwhile, this is Moscow, and I cannot believe it, I will not believe it, how did Moscow, once like a Vegas of the east, which felt back then, late 1990s/early 2000s, in so many ways completely free, how did Moscow become this? How did that happen? I will never really understand it.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for your support. If you live in Austria, the best way to support the grocery project is to send me by post (I’ll give you my address) a €50 Hofer gift card (or Billa/Spar/Lidl/Penny!). It just saves a lot of time. It will then immediately go out to a Ukrainian family here in Austria. From abroad, I created a PayPal link here.
THANK YOU!
Remember a few weeks ago when you felt you weren’t making a difference? Today, you have mobilized a movement of kindness, support and knowledge. What a profound difference you are making in the lives of so many! People around the world have come together because of you…families have food, donors have purpose and humanity has a glimmer of hope. ❤️
It’s people like you that restore faith in humanity.