Gratitude

Our first ever book & bake sale was an overwhelming success. A huge thanks to everyone who made something I only vaguely imagined a beautiful reality.

Lovely homemade signs by Natasha who also made the heart pins in Ukrainian flag colors

Honestly, I am at a loss for words. I cannot thank everyone enough who baked, donated books, came to support our sale yesterday. It was such a lovely coming together of people for a good cause. So many old and new faces. The best words I found are from Iryna, a mom of three who has been in Vienna since the war started. She baked treats yesterday and was a big help to us. Last night, she wrote this in our Telegram group, and I translate with her permission:

“People together — now that is strength ❤️

The people today made such an impression!!!

People carried and carried, baked goods, books, smiles and warmth. May I please share a few of my impressions, it was really amazing and gave so much strength 🔥

I really remembered a few people in particular:

- An Austrian family, a daughter with her parents, already of pension age, who brought 7!!! different kinds of cakes, and they were culinary masterpieces. The strawberry cheesecake was out of this world (Tanja, I hope we didn’t forget any in the fridge? 😊)

- An Austrian man, also a pensioner, who brought two huge trays of Austrian nut cake with apricot jam, with the phrase “meine frau kann nuss super kuchen” :) and then very quickly, modestly tucked €100 into the donation box 🙏🙏.

- A Ukrainian young woman, I think her name was Natasha (I am sorry if I got the name wrong), who came with a one-year old baby by tram! She brought four or five apple cakes, little pies with sausage, and something else and she baked it all by herself ❤️

An American, Emily, who brought cinnamon buns with a piece of paper listing all potential allergens in the recipe.

Olga with her daughter, who baked on their own and decorated cookies for the event…

And so much more…marshmallows in all different colors, hand-decorated sugar cookies…so many emotions, I cannot express it in words ❤️

The Ukrainian volunteers, who came for the whole day and helped out, baked packed carried and talked about books, cakes, and most importantly, made donations 💙💛

A huge thanks to Igor, who provided the space, equipment, and treated us all to delicious coffee 🙏

Thank you to Tanja and her husband who were there from early morning to late in the evening ❤️🙏🙏🙏

I am sorry, I cannot describe what happened with the books in such detail, I only know a little bit, that in the children’s section Anastasia, Olga and another very nice lady with her daughter were there the whole day, they sorted out all the books, helped customers choose books, made recommendations and helped people find what they were looking for. I am sure there are lovely stories from the book sale, maybe someone can share….

Everything today was really touching.

Tanechka, thanks for everything.”

I can only nod in agreement with everything Iryna said. I was amazed and so thankful to everyone who came to help and volunteer their time and make the event such a success. I did spend several hours downstairs in the book section, and the children’s books were particularly popular. We had a rather amazing selection, unfortunately not much in Ukrainian, but we did have lots of books in Russian and those sold very well thanks to a local Russian-speaking mommy group which let me spam them all week with advertisements about our event. Some of them volunteered, as well. It was such a nice mix of people of all different nationalities, young and old, and I am very proud of our pricing decision. I think it worked beautifully. We said simply: there are no prices. Take what you like and leave us what you can / what you feel is fair. And people did exactly that. I always asked if they wanted change. I never wanted anyone to feel embarrassed about only spending €5 or €10. And at the end of the day, it all added up, and the result is incredible. We had no idea until we got home and made a grand count:

This will buy 55 more €50 supermarket gift cards. Mario will send me the next 50 names and addresses from our website waiting list, as I also received a very generous donation of email gift cards on Sunday morning from a longtime supporter who could not join us in person.

I was so busy yesterday I didn’t pause to take many photos, but here is a selection of what I could find on my phone and from what others sent me:

A few photos from yesterday's event

I also made a brief video of our amazing kids’ book section, but it seems Substack will make me post it as a separate video, so I will try that in a second.

Thank you thank you thank you. It was a lot of work gathering the donations and promoting the event, but it was absolutely worth it, not just for the funds raised, but also to come together as a community, in person, see each other, talk to each other.

I came home and immediately worked off my own waiting list, and this morning was back at the arrival center making card deliveries to those who reached out and are still waiting for housing assignments. The people there for now are those who have somehow fallen through the cracks. Some have come from other countries such as Poland in the false hope that things might be better here. The center will close at the end of this month and to my knowledge there has not yet been an official announcement about where Ukrainians will be told to go when they first arrive in Vienna after that…I keep thinking about the situation with the war, if this new offensive happens, if this leads to a new wave of civilians coming to Europe…where will they go?

We will keep doing what we do best — put money for food directly in the hands of those who need it. I find it fascinating the Austrian government is hosting a food inflation “summit” today after a bunch of mostly men in suits realized ordinary people cannot afford to buy a normal selection of groceries anymore. I started to look through the photos of groceries and Hofer receipts I have on my camera roll since April 2022, and the evidence is all right there, in real time. It’s funny to call it a summit on something that has been a huge problem for months. And now the supermarkets are crying poor…I just cannot.

Thank you all, truly, I cannot say it enough: for your continued support. It meant so much to the Ukrainians who came yesterday to see what local people are doing to help, to show that they care. Each of them came up to me and told me all of that, because often their German is not good enough to say it to you all directly. They were all so touched. My group is still chatting about it today…