It is exceptionally warm right now in Vienna, and it feels absolutely surreal. Just a few weeks ago we were freezing inside the train station. It was below zero outside. And now this. Spring. Supposed to be a time of hope yet feels like anything but. Some days you feel uplifted and other days you feel really down. Today, I feel really down, so I apologize in advance: this will be short and not particularly sweet.
Last night I was running back and forth to a local hotel to house 7 Ukrainians from Odessa travelling in two cars via Vienna. Today my phone was ringing they forgot to hand in one hotel key, and while I’m trying to drive my own car, I’m also working as a go between, texting them on Telegram in Russian to turn around and come sort out the key situation, calling hotel back in German, ensuring it was just an accident, all while trying not to lose my own sanity or cause an accident.
I met several people this morning who just arrived from Ukrainian front lines. They call them “hot spots” in Russian. Mykolaiv. Kherson. Chernihiv. Many continuing on tomorrow. I helped get them into hotel rooms today. There is official housing but it means a van ride to a welcome center and then I imagine cots in a mass room — sometimes you take one look and realise people who have been travelling for days on end without proper sleep just need to sleep on night in a bed and take a shower. One mother was pushing her teenage son in a wheelchair.
A couple from Chernihiv were born in 1941 and 1942 respectively. The husband told me the “Russians are worse than the Fascists (Nazis)”. He said they would strip people down to take their civilian clothes (I supposed this is to go incognito behind enemy lines). He said they are killing people, stealing, hiding their military equipment next to civilian homes. His wife walks very slowly, with a cane, she had a surgery last year.
You try and help offer tiny little solutions — here is the bank where you can exchange into Euros, there you can get a free, warm meal. Only you learn after the fact the warm meal is now only available with a ticket, and the ticket you can only get behind the info desk inside the train station, and is now only available to those people travelling by train that day. Sometimes it feels like 1 step forward and 3 steps back. Take a ticket and run back to the hotel leaving a note in Russian for the older couple warning them they will need it to eat. Hoping the hotel staff will pass it on. They have no phone.
Back at the station a middle aged woman comes up to me, tells me she has been housed in an apartment with no kitchen, sleeping on mattresses. Says the cafeteria near the train station won’t feed her anymore because she has been there already. I give her another list of cafeterias but we don’t know exactly what is on offer at each church on the list, on which day and time. It is overwhelming. She says she needs to feed her son lunch after school. I am aware that I cannot possibly know who is telling the truth and who isn’t, so I offer enough money that she can take him to McDonalds, and show her where it is. We walk to the bank machine. I hand over enough for a few trips. She is really grateful. I warn I cannot do it again. She leaves.
All morning long there are questions like which city in Austria should I go to? When is my train to Munich? Where can we leave our luggage? Where did the free SIM cards disappear to? Does anyone know anything about the registration process in Austria?
I meet a mom from Kyiv with two kids aged 13 and 9. She has just arrived with them from Poland where they were staying with her mom. The kids, she says, speak German, they were learning it in school in Ukraine. I make a phone call, and one of those little miracles happens: a Vienna family with 3 children of their own says yes, they could house mom and kids for a few weeks while they figure out more permanent housing. Arrangements are made in English between Kyiv mom and Vienna mom. The little girl gives me muffins her grandmother in Poland baked. I take them and say thank you, hoping a local school here will soon give her a place. School is the first question on most mothers’ minds. They want some kind of normality again for their kids despite all this chaos and uncertainty.
I promised to return to the older couple tomorrow morning to put them on their train. They are heading further west, and I have been texting with a young Ukrainian woman I met on Twitter who knows someone who can meet them in the train station tomorrow and help them declare their arrival in Tirol. The internet can be a magical thing sometimes. The Ukrainian people are so incredibly resilient. How they keep going despite everything they have been through, everything they have seen, so many unknowns ahead of them. Nowhere to live. Not enough money to last long in Europe. Not even knowing which cafeteria will feed them next.
I am finding it increasingly hard to go between both worlds. To emerge from the train station back to “normal life”, to sit here typing this as my kid has sports practice, and everyone goes about their daily lives like in the before times. The times before Feb 24. Which Ukraine will not experience again.
In the meantime I have been thinking about the widening gap between analysts’ hot takes on what it would take to end this war, and how, and the sentiment you feel after speaking with Ukrainians. I wrote a little bit about that in this thread here:
I would really, really recommend listening to The Daily today. I found myself nodding alongside Carlotta Gall the entire time.
Some other articles I found useful:
Leonid Bershidsky on Mariupol’s history
Mikhail Khodorkovsky on Putin’s criminal empire
Fascinating NYT Visuals report on ham radio users listening in on Russian troops in Ukraine:
Just as I was about to hit publish, I saw this:
I can’t escape this horrible feeling this is only the beginning. I don’t have a guilty conscience anymore when I recommend Ukrainians keep going west. Not just because of the underwhelming execution on the ground here, but simply because the risk of a wider war is, in my opinion, a lot bigger than zero. Particularly in light of embarrassing military setbacks for Russia in Ukraine, such as this, this morning:
Meanwhile, I found this updated map from the Kyiv area to be useful (usual caveats apply this is one-sided information):
Thank you for reading. Thank you for your kind words. Thanks for your understanding some days are easier to write than others. Today I am a bit deflated. Tomorrow will be better. I have a grandmother and grandfather I promised to put on a train, and I will keep my promise.
Something clicked in my brain yesterday--Austria...oh yes, Innsbruck. I was fortunate enough to backpack through Europe on a EuroRail pass at the age of 26. I stayed several nights in a hostel; it was around this time of year. While I was there, it snowed, blanketing the city, softening its edges. It was the first time I had seen train cars with a playroom car; I went to get coffee in a hip shop, and discovered a play-loft and a ton of giant stuffed animals. It was also a performance space for music. Too cool.
I mention my age because I was an ignorant U.S. person about Europe in general up until my mid-20s. . Going solo for three (3) weeks gave me a new perspective, opened my eyes to the wonderful people of Europe, and most importantly, taught me how NOT to be and ignorant American... I wonder if the coffee shop is still in business.
Thanks for allowing me into your life, Tanja. I so appreciate you. Stay safe.
--christopher