Kafka lives
A quick trip to Prague and an update from Vienna. Easter weekend. Everything paused until Tuesday.
I took my girls for a quick one night trip to Prague this week. The Regiojet train was amazing and one third of the price of ÖBB. For the return, it was unfortunately sold out, so we paid triple the price and I now know for next time you need to book the quiet car. There were Austrian countryside pensioners seated near us and they were drinking. The more they drank, the louder they got.
Prague was wonderful as always and left me thinking a lot about how much change is really possible in such a relatively short period of time. I studied in Prague for a summer in 1995. It was nothing like the city today (Starbucks and shiny new malls everywhere — much better shopping than in Vienna), but I loved it back then and now. On my last visit, I went to the Kafka museum with my son. This time I took my girls to the museum of communism. Which sounds self-explanatory but it is so easy to forget what Czechoslovakia lived through when you look around modern, clean, bustling Prague today. What people fought for. What kind of repressions were used by totalitarian regimes. I wanted to take every young communist tankie and show them what must never be forgotten. And then I looked at the shopping malls in a different light — you do appreciate what was once forbidden — commerce, a free market for goods and services.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot as the political news coming out of Austria at the moment is just generally, across the board, unbearable. I haven’t commented on it in weeks because honestly, I don’t even know where to begin, and since I cannot vote anyway, I somehow feel I should shut up and keep my head down. Personally, I think so much of it comes down to a fundamental lack of understanding of how basic economics work among those who set policy and claim to govern on behalf of the people. Politicians and journalists alike are shouting about issues but using the wrong arguments. I understand when people are hurting, it is easy to blame capitalism. I get it. But communism is not and will never be the answer. Over-regulation and bureaucracy that takes on a life of itself and yet still fails to put money in the hands of those who really need it — now those are real problems. When small business owners cannot hire more employees because it costs you the same amount in employee taxes as it does to pay a month’s wages. When there isn’t even a national minimum hourly wage, and instead a zillion different collective bargaining agreements, you can’t even tell a new immigrant how much they might expect to earn working X hours per week. And now horrible stories are emerging about unpaid labor hours as a regular practice at the toughest, lowest paying jobs.
In short, I was thinking about Kafka and stagnation a lot. It feels, and I am not able to put this really into words properly, like other countries are moving forwards in one way or another, and Austria is frozen, trapped in time. Maybe I am simply too close to the trees to see the forest. I hope so. I really hope I am wrong on this one.
I arrived back and sent out a dozen cards today (well, they will realistically only go out on Tuesday, once the Easter long weekend is over, but they are in the box), and also hand delivered some cards to the arrival center this afternoon. I met two grannies, one from Kyiv, one from Kharkiv, both lost and upset and hoping they won’t be sent to a village in the middle of nowhere with no shops. An older gentleman with only a few teeth left walked up to us, muttering he has been there ten days and at this rate “I might as well go back to Ukraine.” He was originally from Crimea but had been in western Ukraine, and then decided to come to Austria. I start to get the impression many vulnerable Ukrainians came to Austria thinking the grass would be somehow greener, not fully understanding what exactly is and isn’t on offer here right now.
I met a young mom who had been with her first grade son in Semmering, in a remote location where they had to wake up at 5:15am just to get him to school on time for 8:00am. They had to return to Kyiv for few days to help her mother, and after three days, per Grundversorgung rules, they were de-registered from their social housing. So now, ten days later, they are back in Austria, but starting over from scratch at the arrival center.
This particular young mom already has a job offer, from a Ukrainian-owned restaurant in Vienna’s 18th district, but she has no place to live. The restaurant even has some kind of employee housing, but the rooms, 13 of them, are all full. Mom worries she will get in trouble if her son isn’t attending school. They are trying to keep up with online Ukrainian school. She faces a chicken and egg question: she has a job offer but needs a Vienna registration in order to start working, she cannot get a Vienna registration without housing, but she will have to find an apartment on her own via the private sector, and you are looking at very high rents compared to what Viennese have grown used to over the years, and a security deposit of three months plus first month rent plus sometimes even a finders fee.
She hopes to team up with another mom and somehow rent something together. I recognize the other mom — I gave her a card months ago at another hotel in Vienna. She has since travelled to Canada and back again (!!). Why didn’t you stay, I ask? It wasn’t her thing, she explained. Expensive, little public transport, not enough other Ukrainians…she decided to come back to Austria after just six weeks in Ottawa. Immigration is not for everyone. One of the aspects of life in Austria giving Ukrainians here some form of comfort is simply the geographic proximity to Ukraine.
I was also supposed to meet a grandpa without a phone, but he didn’t show. Next time, I said, wishing the young moms good luck, leaving thinking about how as the months drag on, the war is now well into its second year, many Ukrainians still have not landed on firm ground. They are still floating, trying to figure out where to plant roots. Hoping for the best, and some good luck, as they say. Rumor is the arrival center will close in a few months. So either Austria is shutting its doors officially, or authorities know something about the war the rest of us don’t. I suspect the former.
This is a good report in German on the challenges Ukrainians face in accessing the labor market in Austria. Again, over-regulation and bureaucracy for the sake of it come to mind. Ukrainians who accepted housing from the state run the risk of becoming homeless should they go work. Which, at a time with so many low-paid jobs unfilled, makes no sense. But these are the policies those who “govern” let dictate the official response. They have not legislated anything better.
https://twitter.com/tanjamaier17/status/1644002104930103296?s=20
FYI I can no longer embed tweets as Twitter and Substack seem to have declared war on each other — apparently I will also no longer be able to link to my Substack on Twitter…
Do read this great FT piece on the Ukrainian chef cooking for the front lines. If you don't have a subscription, do what I do, put the title of the article in Google along with FT. You’re welcome.
This piece on the struggle to pay Ukraine’s teachers is very timely and illustrates something we do not talk enough about: refugees flee not just war but also come to Europe out of economic necessity. The more the west can do to support Ukraine’s war economy, at home, the better. Would be a win-win for everyone, and would probably cost a fraction of what is spent on big budget International NGOs who employ large staffs but don’t do much in terms of putting cash aid directly in the hands of those who need it the most.
This unbelievable story of one family’s ordeal to get their non-verbal teen back from Russia after he was taken from an institution in Ukraine.
Wonderful report on Ukrainian doctors and nurses working in Riga, Latvia. Sadly I cannot see this happening anytime soon in Austria, unfortunately. Sometimes you read the news from other EU countries like its from another planet. This is one of those times.
Really a shame I cannot embed tweets anymore — wanted to show you all some of the lovely grocery photos I have received this week. Would be nice if the two platforms I have chosen to stay on would stop fighting, but alas…
…thanks to your generous donations, we continue to deliver cards. I continue to receive requests from across the country, and prioritize those in the arrival center and/or in hotels where they are “fed”.
The DW report is now on YouTube, and I really hope it will help us with fundraising from new sources.
That’s it for now. Greetings from a cold, gray, not-at-all-spring-like Vienna.
Hello Tanja, Happy Easter! We contributed €400 to your Card for Ukrainians initiative and $100 to your journal. We live in Vienna and would like to meet you. You are a wonderful human being!