Bewilderment (Day 52)
A non-stop morning at Wien HBF on day one of Easter long weekend (surprising news to most Ukrainians arriving). Timing: not great.
My day today began with an unaccompanied minor and ended with a family of four who managed to escape Mariupol more than three weeks ago via DNR and then Russia, and reach Europe the long way: via Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, all by bus.
There were so many people today. Not so much “fresh” arrivals (although we had those too) but many people moving from A to B within Europe as long as those train journeys are still permitted. There are not enough volunteers, particularly those with language skills. It is very intense and very stressful when you are alone or nearly alone and dozens of people are trying to get your attention all at once.
Almost everyone is grateful and polite, for the most part, but you get the occasional grumpy apples who are rude to you and you think, with all due respect, we are volunteers if you want to be treated like a princess, buy yourself a first class ticket back to Kyiv. In this case the grumpy apples were not happy with the choice of trains to go home. I just walked away, shaking my head in disbelief. Luckily, though, those cases are rare.
My morning began with a call from a ticket counter. A 13 year old boy with a Ukrainian passport was trying to travel to Germany, alone. His story was the following: claims mom flew from Vienna to Germany without him because he didn’t have a covid test and wasn’t allowed on the plane. Claims they had gone to Egypt after visiting friends in Germany. It was all very odd and the boy was extremely calm. Long story short, I handed him to the charity who took him under their wings and he is now in whatever official care exists here in Vienna for unaccompanied minors. I have no idea if any of the story I was told was true or not, but the boy sent me a message and said he is being taken care of. Who knows, either his mother is a complete idiot sending a 13 year old to cross an international border alone with no parental note, or this solution was the intention from the very beginning.
Most of the trains are completely sold out today. So many Europeans are travelling this Easter that we cannot find tickets for the Ukrainians to the cities they need to go to. We scramble to find all possible options (this requires a lot of seat reservations when possible — thank you for the donations you paid for quite a few of those today). The railway waived the fee for seat reservations for tomorrow, to encourage people to wait and try to travel on Sunday. But they still need a place to sleep. I helped one mom from Poltava with a daughter with some developmental difficulties and heart trouble get a nearby hotel room from the charity for tonight. Another mom with two kids with a night train tomorrow I sent to a local hotel near me (you all helped fund that, thank you).
I met a pretty confused group of five who had just arrived from Dnipro. I sighed and thought about the children recovering in the hospital there from the Russian attack on the Kramatorsk train station. The children lost both limbs and their mothers. No words. I will try to contact Vice Chancellor Kogler’s office on Wednesday. Maybe Austria can sponsor those children and their remaining relatives once they recover. The families from Dnipro were still visibly shaken. I can’t remember anymore where we got them tickets to. It was such a blur this morning, once train tickets were sorted, I tried to send everyone to the cafeteria, but you have to ask the charity for an entry ticket, and I couldn’t accompany each family individually to ensure that it worked. I explained over and over what to ask for. I met a group of five from Kharkiv also continuing onwards to somewhere in Germany. Repeated the same speech. Over and over.
Tickets. Housing if necessary. Warm food and wifi. Repeat.
Apparently they ran out of hotel rooms late last night. With the Easter weekend, the charity has far fewer rooms available. Every room I manage to get signed off by them feels like a small victory.
I met two women who were charged €67 to take a train back to Lviv. The trains back to Ukraine remain a mystery to me. I only know how to get free tickets on the single train per day that goes directly to the border city, Zahony, in Hungary near Chop, Ukraine. It arrives in Chop at 2am. What happens from there, I have no idea.
Finally, when I thought I was almost done, I was pulled over to answer a question by a family. It turned out they are from Mariupol. I couldn’t believe it. I have only ever met two people from Mariupol, and that was weeks ago. This family: mom, dad, son (20s), daughter (17) left on March 22. They were taken to DNR (treated them terribly), then Russia (treated them better but son was grilled for two hours on the border because he did serve in Ukraine’s army as a draftee and his phone was searched, etc). Once in Russia, they went to Vladikavkaz, to Georgia, then Turkey, Bulgaria, and up to Vienna. All by bus. They have been travelling for weeks.
Today they were asking for tickets to Köln. They will go on Tuesday. A friend of theirs said it might be a good place in Germany to settle. They don’t have anywhere to go, they don’t really have any money left (I gave the cash I had on me but it isn’t enough to cover any major expenses), and they might be interested in applying for Canadian visas once they understand how the process works. It sounds like they have been on the move, in survival mode for so long, they haven’t had a chance to build any long-term plans. Oh, and they also have a chinchilla pet! But I didn’t get his photo. He was back at the group housing center.
I paid for their seat reservations for Tuesday, took the kids’ mobile numbers, and walked them to the cafeteria. The son sent me the photos he took himself in Mariupol while he could still charge his phone. The photo above is how they cooked outside in -9C. He says only 2% of the city is left standing. Everything is ruined, the mom said. They drank rainwater, and washed their hands in the snow. They sent me this photo “it was our kitchen”.
“This is our apartment”.
This photo of a market is so striking in its total melancholy. Just complete destruction everywhere you look in the images from Mariupol. You cannot even begin to describe the human tragedy with words. This city had a population of half a million people before the war. Half a million.
I was amazed by something else. After weeks of unimaginable stress and travel, mom, dad, daughter and son were still in good spirits. They were grateful when I promised to ask about options for them in Germany or Canada, explaining I cannot guarantee anything, but I can share their story, and ask. I told them to come find me the next few days on the train station if they need anything else. They seem like the kind of people who will absolutely 100% build a new life for themselves if given a chance. The mom said, we have nothing left. I looked at her and said, you have your health and your lives. Yes, she nodded. We do.
So let’s see. Let’s see who reads this and offers to help. I told the son when he is ready to share his stories from the time in Mariupol, I am ready to translate them. Now isn’t the time or the place; they have more immediate worries.
I also got a phone call last night from a young mom who is here alone with a 10 year old son and an almost 2 year old daughter. She is from Avdiivka, Donestk oblast. She needs a place to say in Austria, ideally with a family, something permanent. Does not have to be Vienna. She even seems to prefer countryside, something more rural. I have put her in touch with one option in the west of Austria, but I don’t know yet if that will work out. If you have any ideas, please let me know.
I haven’t been able to follow the news that closely, but I do see there are more questions as to what actually happened to the Russian crew of the sunken battleship, Moscow. Echoes of the Kursk tragedy?
This also looks like an interesting article (yes I am that cheap and do not pay for a NYT subscription). I have also been thinking a lot about the geography of Eastern Ukraine. Kansas yes but with regional urban centres with high rise apartment buildings. More like perhaps the plains of Poland or Bulgaria? I keep thinking about all the people who didn’t get out yet.
Yesterday I met an adult daughter who left Ukraine one month ago, and now travelled across Europe again to meet her elderly mother who didn’t want to leave Dnipropetrovsk oblast because she wanted to plant potatoes (yes, really), but then had to leave when Dnipro received the mandatory evacuation order. Thankfully reunited, I helped them get tickets back to the Netherlands where the daughter has a place to stay. Mykolaiv oblast also keeps arriving. The farmlands of Ukraine keep arriving. Women and children. Multiple generations. If the offensive starts up again early this week as expected, it is only going to get worse.
We volunteers will burn out. There aren’t enough of us. We don’t have lasting solutions. Ukrainians need long-term housing near public transport. Jobs. Money. Education. Hope. I watched an interview last night on local TV news with the head of the protestant charity here (which is also helping to house Ukrainians, at least partially responsible for placements), and she didn’t mention housing as the number one issue for the “Ukraine crisis” as they like to call it here. I wondered how many refugees she has spoken with directly. Donations of diapers and sandwiches and water bottles are helpful, but to be frank we have moved past that stage. We need long-term solutions. No one knows how long this war will last. Many want to go home to Ukraine as soon as possible, but no one knows when that will be.
This also surprised me this morning:
What I am doing might be helpful in the moment, to give a human face, direct aid, and a tiny bit of hope, but it isn’t really scalable nor sustainable. Tomorrow morning I’ll be back, trying to help once again with my batteries slightly recharged. Today I saw (it was indeed all a crazy blur) some volunteers who couldn’t really do much to help because they don’t speak Ukrainian or Russian. So nice that they want to help but it doesn’t help so much when they cannot communicate. It seems to me to be high time to give actual paying roles to people with these language skills and put them in these places to help but then again…it’s Austria. Who knows who makes decisions and why. Maybe someone with a fancy title thinks the fewer resources you throw at a problem the more likely it is to disappear (sound familiar?)?
Thank you for reading and for your continued support.
Tanja, I have a free subscription which I appreciate very much. how can I donate directly to you when I can? Barbara
Can you add a ‘Donate’ link?