Broken (Day 119)
Thoughts on the refugee situation in Austria, worries about Baltics, a long war. Thank you to Mario and team and you all for your donations towards for another huge grocery card shipment.
Took my car in for service this morning and spent the day running from A to B to C on public transport and this artwork stopped me in my tracks while changing subway lines at Karlsplatz station in central Vienna. But what it doesn't show are all the cats who had to move to Europe and are now literally struggling to survive. In the most literal sense of the word. And the more you talk the more everyone just nods and shrugs and you realize: it isn’t going to get any better, it is only going to get worse.
Sometimes I think about the hope I had in March, thinking that now would be tough but slowly things will improve for those who fled Ukraine, and I think how stupid and naive I was back then. I have seen official Austria inside and out, or at least it feels like that, over these past three months. But I see official Austria through the eyes of the Ukrainians who pass through its plexiglass windows and FFP2 masks. Who call phone numbers that aren’t answered. Who are told to be patient. To call on Monday. To send an email. To call the other department/organization because that’s not our job. None of it is our job. Do you understand? How is your German?
Then you do your part — you register for a blue card, you register for an e-card, you find housing or move into the housing assigned to you, you even get a job, one that pays far below the minimum wage but you are trying, and then — the state takes everything back so you are returned to poverty except this time you go to work too to exist in that poverty.
Or you have a job and live in private accommodation so you do not collect any state payments but you still aren’t entitled to any child benefits despite working full-time and paying taxes in Austria. Because you are Ukrainian. You are not Austrian. Or did you forget that? Your kids obviously don’t need to eat and be clothed and do some sports and buy some school supplies. Your three kids are anyway lucky just to breathe the air here. And your employer does not pay you a commission for brining in new Russian and Ukrainian speaking clients you should be happy for that minimum wage job, it’s anyway the union rate. Does everyone in the union have 3 kids with no child benefit?
Speaking of blue cards, they don’t all arrive together. I cannot tell you how many families told me they received all but one. In the case of Natasha and Pasha, mom received her card, son did not. Their psychologist also received her card. They all applied together in Vienna even though they live in Lower Austria. Because that’s what they were told to do. Without a blue card I don’t know how we will register Pasha for school. Provided we even find a school that agrees to take him. And no one knows who to ask if you need to find out why your card went missing.
In short, this is happening. And it is so terribly depressing it just makes you want to scream into the abyss. And you look all around you and normal life continues for everyone else so why should they care what is happening to the Ukrainian refugees did they think Austria was going to solve all their problems Austria didn’t ask Putin for this war no one needed it did you see how high gas prices are now? Now that’s a problem.
I keep thinking about this woman who has had a planned surgery rescheduled three times simply because she cannot find a translator and she doesn’t know who to ask. Yesterday, I took Natasha to get a filling done. She got a full mouth x-ray and my dentist gave her a plan for all the dental work she needs. It will cost over 700 Euros pre-funded of which then the health insurance should return 80% but Natasha will never be able to pre-fund 700 Euros so we agree to find another dentist who works directly with health insurance and anyway Natasha doesn’t even have an e-card number yet because they sent her away when she went to go ask for hers (you have to have a blue card first which she now has but her son doesn’t). So we paid 40 Euros (I paid 40 Euros, I could not take money from Natasha) for the filling because my dentist was very kind and knocked a lot off the usual price, and she left with a list of her broken teeth and an x-ray. Train to Vienna. Train back home. Tanja babysitting along the way. But Tanja cannot babysit everyone.
They need used smartphones so they can put in Austrian SIM cards. I receive a few donated. I run around today collecting them. Thank you. Many families in that town are in need. If we have any extra, the psychologist will give them to those families whose phones are on their last legs. This all takes time.
I feel in my conversations with other volunteers everyone is running on empty. Everyone is stressed out. There are no rules for engagement, no right or wrong way to help. I get a request to send 14 grocery cards to a single address in Burgenland and I think how will I ever manage that. How will I find €700 to help a single location?
I have tried to connect Austrians and volunteers to Ukrainians in need so I don’t have to be in the middle of every conversation. I wish I could learn to do that faster.
This has been weighing on me this week, too, but it is now being taken care of. A local volunteer is organising something akin to meals on wheels, and a kind donor will pay for the first 4 months. Another volunteer wanted us to organise via the social services, rightly arguing someone from the state should be paying for this, but I don’t trust any of them anymore. I don’t trust anything official. 99% of solutions at the moment are money talks. For things money cannot fix, that is the real problem. It’s like pulling teeth. Natasha told my dentist how the dentist in Ukraine had pulled out her teeth. I am not sure if my dentist believed her. I do. I believe every word.
So I am trying to answer messages and phone calls and work off my own little pile which every time it gets smaller (a great sign, means I sent out more cards), it then grows again (new messages), because the problem of how to survive in Austria on not enough money hasn’t gone away and is only going to grow more acute. I walked by a nearly empty “social” supermarket in Vienna’s 3rd district today. Rumor is the charity helping at the train station will not hand out food (sandwiches, apples) anymore from this weekend (only in the cafeteria nearby, only if you manage to get a ticket, you will have to ask). The screws are tightening everywhere. I cannot understand why we are even pretending to help. Why not just be honest and tell all the Ukrainians to go to other countries or go home. Austria doesn’t want you here.
I did a lot of driving yesterday (my kids have certain demands on me despite my ignoring them these past few months), and in the car I heard a radio report on Lithuania that made me stop and think uh-oh, the same way I thought uh-oh in late January and early February. A little thread here:
Anyone who knows the Baltic history knows why they would be justified in being worried.
Finland too is on alert.
I haven’t had a lot of time to consume news and analysis in an in-depth way, but these are the kind of directional indications I do not take lightly. Today Putin was laying wreaths on all the Soviet hero city memorials, including and especially Kyiv, Odesa and Sevastopol. No matter how much Europe and NATO might like to avoid a direct confrontation with Russia for obvious reasons, I imagine sooner or later that will be unavoidable.
Meanwhile, the view from Moscow:
This I feel like is very representative of well-off not particularly intellectual “we don’t talk politics” Moscow upper middle class response to everything post-Feb 24:
And of course as someone much smart than me pointed out this week, the poverty and propaganda machine keeps Putin in power across wide swaths of Russia. They are shut off from the outside world and the army sucks up poor young men who have no other chance of making decent money and some of them will come home alive and others will not and that’s just how it is. This information bubble, being cut off from the west, this makes the Kremlin’s position that much stronger at home — poor and ignorant people are much easier to rule over than emboldened, slightly enriched, and informed.
Russia keeps plodding onwards. It thinks time is on its side. It’s probably not wrong in that assessment. Laurence Freedman writes, “Putin’s default strategy is always to inflict pain even if he can achieve little else.” Do read his entire piece.
The military news from Donbas is still very grim.
I don’t see how this ends anytime soon, and there can be no real peace with this Russian regime. Does Europe realize this? I’m not sure it does.
I would like to close with an enormous THANK YOU to Mario and team for sending out an incredible 247 more Hofer cards to Ukrainian families in Austria last night. The website alone has raised €67,839 so far. Which is mind blowing. We should not have to be doing this. And yet, as I read in a volunteer chat today, "the food issue is acute everywhere, and especially in Lower Austria”. The food crisis is here to stay until this government changes its policies, or Ukrainians pack up and leave for more welcoming countries and/or simply go home, if they have homes to go back to. Many do not.
I still love opening all the happy grocery photos. These beauties came in last night while Mario and his team in Graz were busy stuffing envelopes. You can support our work here and here. As always, a huge thank you for your collective generosity which makes all of this possible. As I tell the Ukrainians on our (long) waiting lists: I cannot send you what I do not have.
Can you believe you are on the cusp of four (4) months of your volunteering?