Kafkaland (Day 37)
A morning volunteer translating at Austria Center Vienna, where Ukrainians come to register with the police and apply for social payments.
I met an artist from Kyiv today. She had come to ACV for her scheduled appointment to receive her first social payout (€215 per adult per month), and arrived a little bit early to ask about a “culture card”. I was confused, because we had been told at the train station in our translator chat that Vienna’s museums are now free of charge for Ukrainians. Not anymore, she said. She had been turned away by the Albertina Museum, who told her Ukrainians now need to get a “culture card” from Caritas.
I was volunteer translating via Caritas, wearing a little white vest, so she asked me. I then went to ask someone actually from Caritas. I was told the “culture cards” will only be available at the second social payout appointment at a different address. In other words, later, and no one knew exactly when and how. I asked a second employee, to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood. No, that was correct — no culture cards for now. It’s not an urgent need, I was explained. Of course not, I thought, but Ukrainian refugees cannot work legally until they receive their “blue cards”, so why would you limit their access to museums…
I explained to the artist what I had been told, and suggested she get in touch with one of the art universities which had hung huge anti-Putin banners out front. Maybe they can help, I suggested, feeling totally useless and embarrassed. She asked me about my manicure. I offered to invite her to my local salon. She hesitated, and then accepted, and gifted me this watercolour in return. You know, she said, I was in Vienna on February 14 to celebrate my birthday…and then two weeks later, I came back as a refugee.
You listen and nod because it is all you can do. You cannot promise when things will start to fall into place here in Austria for Ukrainians and life will start to feel “normal” again. Yes, you understand no one wanted to come, and everyone wants to go home. Yes, you understand how frustrating it is that nothing works properly and everything is a hassle, as if designed on purpose to drive people mad and make them think twice about choosing Austria as a safe haven from Russian bombs and artillery.
I don’t know how to write this eloquently, so let me just walk you through my morning. I arrived at 8am as my volunteer shift was scheduled from 8-14. The security guards out front of ACV had gathered Ukrainians into two lines: without appointments, and with appointments. It was freezing and a cold wind was blowing. We were all told to wait outside. I was also not allowed in. At 8:23, an employee of Caritas finally emerged from ACV and “let” me come inside. What happened next to the lines of people waiting outside I do not know.
I did see later that crowds were taken upstairs to wait inside in a warm hall with chairs, but snacks and drinks were not allowed there. A security guard told me downstairs I should bring some food upstairs, because “kids are hungry”, and when I tried to do that, another security guard upstairs got really upset and told me it was forbidden (I was carrying a box of bananas, apples and some bread rolls). I was then taken down again to the person in charge from Caritas who explained the rule was food only downstairs and the people are not hungry because they are already in Vienna; they didn’t just arrive here.
Can you imagine actually having a real discussion about why kids can eat free bananas downstairs but not upstairs? No, I couldn’t either until then. I gave up and set the box of food down again, downstairs. You have to try really hard not to explode in those moments.
I was shown around the giant room inside ACV. Those of you in Vienna who got vaccinated there rememeber what the giant white hall looks like. There are many tables and chairs set up for filling out papers. There are not enough pens. I handed out a half dozen of mine I found in my purse. Yes, everything is done with paper and pen. There is nothing digital about the Ukrainian registration process, although that was what many of us suggested one month ago.
Every refugee has a smartphone. The entire process could have been done digitally, online, had someone wanted to do it smartly. Clearly, that was not the goal. Clearly, the goal was to make as complicated and inefficient a process as possible so as to slow down processing times and send the message via the Ukrainian grapevine back home: don’t come to Austria. Of that I am convinced. Because even though a certain amount of incompetence is to be expected when dealing with Austrian government bureaucracy, this is next level.
Each charity or organization is given a little fiefdom. Therefore, no one is wholly responsible. Therefore, no one really takes ownership. Therefore, everything is a giant clusterfuck. To illustrate, let me explain the process.
Let’s say you arrive by train to Wien HBF. You get off the train and say you want to stay in Austria at the Caritas info point where you will speak to their employees or volunteers like me who speak Russian or Ukrainian and spend our own free time coming in to help because we care.
You will be then driven, when a group gathers, by ÖAMTC drivers in vans to the Welcome Center at Stadion, run by Train of Hope, a grassroots organization that specialises in aid for refugees. The welcome center is essentially a converted gym. There you will receive some food and drink, perhaps a covid test, and you will tell them you don’t have anywhere in Austria to stay. Most likely, you will then be sent (again, with all your bags, pet, kids) to sleep in Wien Messe, run by the Austrian Red Cross, a giant expo hall with hundreds of cots. From there, you might be sent after a few days by bus to another city in Austria, or you might get lucky if someone finds you more permanent housing.
How housing is found is a mystery. The most successful placements are those done privately, connecting generous Austrians directly to Ukrainians in need. One organization on site at ACV supposedly helping with housing is Diakonie, a protestant charity, but I don’t know how it works in practice. I do know an Austrian woman who registered her room in Vienna with them and for weeks didn’t get a phone call. I placed a family in her room for a few weeks with one phone call from Wien HBF when the family was standing in front of me. They have since received a Meldezettel (a piece of paper that says which address you reside at without which you can’t do anything in Austria) thanks to their Austrian host, registered the kids for local schools, and found an affordable apartment to rent. Again, all thanks to the time and generosity of a local Austrian host. No charity helped this Ukrainian family.
So, let’s say you are one of the lucky ones and have a room somewhere in Vienna, or are staying with friends, etc. You come to ACV (which was btw closed for a few weeks when they simply shut their doors as they couldn’t process everyone because pen and paper takes time and no one thought to do anything online!) where you wait in one line outside, then another line inside, then you are given a number on a yellow piece of paper, then you have to find a volunteer like me who gives you forms to fill out: white for police, in 3 languages / orange for social payments, only in German, several pages long half of which are Datenschutz / a third form no one knows what to do with, maybe for kids aged 15-17?. Once you filled out the forms (block letters, make sure they can read it!), you wait for your number to be called. This might take an hour or two.
When your number is called, you talk to someone in a Caritas vest or maybe a Soziales Wien vest and then you hand in your orange form. You are told “someone will call/text/email you for your next appointment”. You don’t leave with any kind of confirmation slip. If you haven’t yet registered with the police in Austria, you can do that too, the police are also on site. If you manage to continue around the corner (there are ropes everywhere, you have to try to get past them), you can ask at the Integration info point about German courses (not possible until you have a blue card except for one hour a day free online from 11-12), or you can ask AMS about work (also not possible until you have a blue card).
How do you get a blue card? Good question. We think they come by post to your address from the police, but we don’t know for sure. Ukrainians cannot work legally in Austria without a blue card.
If you were lucky enough to get a time/date appointment, meaning this is not your first visit to ACV, you then get to line up in a different line and you wait to talk to someone with a laptop from Soziales Wien which is to fill out all the info they need so they can “activate you”. I have no idea why it is called this. Activation is a handwritten piece of white paper (I hope you are getting the vibe by now, bear with me). Yes, really. I saw it with my own eyes. All handwritten. Names, next appointment time/date.
If you are lucky enough to have passed all these steps, have an address in Vienna, a roof over your head (which you most likely organized yourself), then you might get to get in the last line (yellow post-it note with your number on it from the person in charge), where Caritas might hand you cash for the first few months, €215 per adult and €100 per child. You wait on chairs until your number is called and then you go into little consultation rooms, I suppose so no one sees who is coming out with how much money.
There is supposed to also be eventually a subsidy payout towards rent, but only if you provide a form signed by your landlord, oh and by the way that isn’t exactly ready yet from a legal point of view so no one knows when that will happen, but when it does happen rent support will be €150 per adult and €300 per family no matter how many kids you have. Here is the form — in German. Please fill it out and have your landlord sign it.
Cash payments? Yes, in cash, which is strange because Erste Bank provides all Ukrainians with free bank accounts and 99% of them have already opened accounts. This entire process, the endless lining up and waiting and filling in handwritten forms could have been one website, one upload of photos of documents, ok worst case one trip to the police station for fingerprints, one place to enter in bank details, and electronic payments. The entire circus at ACV doesn’t have to be an in-person experience. Ukrainians could be taking photos of their passports, their Meldezettel, providing bank account numbers, and then receiving the payments every month.
Keep in mind this money isn’t enough to survive on in Austria anyway, and no one can work until they can look for a job after they receive a blue card. And no one knows how long it will take to get a blue card. Will it arrive by mail? To the address I wrote? And if there was a mistake and they couldn’t read my handwriting? What if I live in a hotel I was assigned by the local authority and I don’t have permanent housing yet?
Can you all imagine for a second how many thousands of people are now highly vulnerable, from a psychological, physical and financial perspective, and those in charge are deciding whether or not bananas can be handed out upstairs (they cannot — Ukrainians are not hungry, you see, they are fed wherever they are staying!).
I saw how quickly the hot lunch was consumed when it arrived and I beg to differ. I suspect many people are indeed hungry.
Positives? A doctor showed up around 11am and there was a translator. A queue formed soon after. Hot lunch arrived after 12pm: rice, sweet potatoes in sauce, some kind of meat. A queue quickly formed. It got very quiet for about ten minutes as everyone was eating. There is no coffee but there is water and tea. There is a kids playroom.
There is a corner for psychological consultations but no psychologist. A round table with six chairs, empty. A metaphor, surely.
Another charity is in the very back, Diakonie, and supposedly you can ask them about housing, but I met people this morning who don’t know where they are sleeping tonight. I told them, you have to go to Stadion, say you arrived in Austria, they will probably send you to Messe Wien. We were just there, they said, the people at Stadion told us to come here. They were freshly arrived from Kharkiv via Slovakia, filling out police forms but have no address. With no address, you can’t receive mail. With no local phone number, you can’t receive an SMS to know when to come for your second, third, fourth appointment during which if you are lucky you might be handed the €215 per month payout.
I heard everything. I heard of people staying with friends, in a hotel, in some room somewhere, in rented apartments, with Austrians they barely know, every arrangement imaginable. I met a women who “rescued” Ukrainians from some village in the middle of nowhere where they had been sent by some charity to live on what sounded like a very remote farm and the nearest school was an hour’s bus ride away. I met a women now from Kryvyi Rih but originally from Donestk. I am now twice a refugee, she said. She showed me her document from 2014 confirming her refugee status within Ukraine. I listened patiently and explained it unfortunately probably won’t make much of a difference to the authorities here.
Keep in mind, this entire circus is still not really solving the problem of finding affordable, safe long-term housing, schooling, and the right to work. If Austria wanted to, it could have easily said: register with the police that you arrived, go in any police station. Next, go on this website, upload your passport photo and your Meldezettel (paper from local authority saying you live at such and such address). Next open a bank account. Next receive payments in such bank account. Give all Ukrainians the right to work, immediately, without waiting for any blue cards. Done! 90% of problems would disappear. Ukrainians already know, for example, they can seek medical care even if they don’t have insurance cards yet. The same could have been done for access to the job market, and the payout process does not need to be personal 1-on-1 appointments to hand out the cash equivalent of two weeks of groceries. None of these payments are enough to survive on in Austria. Not even close.
I think this pain is by design. The message is loud and clear: Ukrainians, welcome, but you are on your own here financially. We are only going to provide you with the bare minimum, and for that you should be grateful. Everything is designed to be maximally inefficient. Can we just ask ourselves, where in any civilised country are we still filling out papers with pens, just to have someone then type it all into a system?
The entire experience reminded me of when I once arrived when my kids were tiny at Gatwick airport in London during a horrid snowstorm, and the only way to get into the terminal and onto our flight was to literally push in front of hundreds if not thousands of other passengers. So I took my then 4 month old baby in my arms and did just that.
The only refugees who really achieved anything today were those who were vocal and demanded help, which led us to find those handful of hardworking Russian and Ukrainian speakers working for local organizations who really understand how the game is played, and if you are lucky they let you wait and ask your questions without having to come back another day. They are the real heroes. I don’t know how they come back day after day without getting totally morally deflated by the whole system.
I feel like my words do not do justice for the chaos and confusion. I cannot understand why people have to come back three, four times to wait in lines outside, inside, for hours, just to receive a little money that won’t even stretch for a month’s worth of groceries. I do not understand why there are 17 different organizations all in charge of one little slice of the pie, no leadership, and yet we have splashy charity concerts raising so much money “for Ukraine” and yet I don’t see actual Ukrainians receiving much if any of it.
I still don’t know where to tell people to get cheap groceries on a regular basis. I do not know where to tell them to get donated clothes and shoes and backpacks for school. I do not know what to tell them how they should live until the blue card arrives (if they are lucky) and they can finally start looking for a job. How to survive until that first paycheck is deposited on their account.
I understand Putin unleashed this hell, but it is Europe’s moral responsibility to help, and what I see is an absolute Potemkin village of a response to a crisis. Every time I see a TV camera I want to scream. You are not allowed to take photos inside. I took a few photos outside. Do read the sign if you understand German. It gives you an idea.
The rules change daily if not hourly. Before 15 March one thing, after March 15 another. Today people who applied in early March were getting paid. Those who filed today will wait several weeks to be informed, if they hear something. Those who get impatient come in anyway, and if they are lucky, they find someone willing to look into the black box of the system to tell them when they can come for the next step. If their form was lost or not. If they are indeed in the system.
Keep in mind I came as a volunteer and no one explained anything to me for more than five minutes of a quick intro and there you go. When I left, I just hung up my vest and left. I don’t know who took over. There aren’t any words of gratitude for those of us volunteering our time. No one says thank you. No one even notices us until we dare hand out bananas upstairs. The Ukrainians, they see us, because we listen to them. We hear them. All morning long I hear “Tanya! Tatiana! Tanechka, do you have a second? Can you come back to us next?”.
I do it only for the people of Ukraine. I apologise on behalf of those of us living in Austria to everyone. I spent hours apologising, saying it shouldn’t be like this, I know it’s terrible. I am sorry. Babies, pregnant women, everyone has to wait. One man came in who had lost both legs and was pushing himself with special pads attached to his hands while he sat on a padded wooden board with wheels. I didn’t speak with the family (that is my fault, and something I now regret), but no one offered him a wheelchair to my knowledge (maybe he does not want one?).
I left with an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness. Volunteers will stop coming. No one wants to come spend their time being not helpful. No one volunteers to be told people may only eat fruit downstairs not upstairs (there were even paid vending machines upstairs so it’s not like some kind of actual rule, it is just a power trip of whichever heartless person thinks up these things).
I hope you can feel from this terrible writing (my anger is getting in the way) how upset I am about what I saw. Because in a million years you could never design something so inefficient if you tried. Every Ukrainian has a phone and internet access. They will do anything you ask with their phones. This entire process is a meeting that could have been an email times one thousand. It shows an utter lack of respect for what these people have been through. They fled bombs to be treated like cattle over and over and over again. No wonder some are giving up and going home, back to Ukraine, back to war.
I know that by writing this I may never be allowed back again. I will find another way to help. One young women looked at me today and said “thank you, thank you that you care, thank you that we can see in your eyes that you are trying, that you didn’t ignore us, even when you didn’t know the answer.” She then told me another translator at some point in the labyrinth of bureaucracy looked as if she couldn’t even be bothered to say the words in German out loud on her behalf. I’m sorry, I said. She is probably one of those getting paid to be here. We are volunteers, I explained. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t want to be.
As I was leaving I saw a young Ukrainian women of about 25 in a blue hoodie with a long yellow coat on top. She was a walking Ukrainian flag. I wanted to rush back up the escalator and ask if I could take her photo, but I couldn’t catch her in time.
I hope Ukrainians forgive us. I hope they forgive our society for failing them so badly at this time when they needed Europe to step up and show that it cares about more than just beaming blue and yellow onto buildings and hosting fundraisers where the funds go anywhere but Ukraine.
If you meet refugees, talk to them. If they let you, offer them a little cash. I don’t have any better advice. I ask if I can buy a coffee, a sandwich, pop into the grocery store, a new pair of sneakers. Really. I don’t know how else to help. I give little pieces of advice, like, oh, you are staying in that district? Here is the name of a good school, call the director, ask her if you can sign your child up. An older man asked me if I knew where he could get a free haircut. Go to Ottakringerstrasse, I said, go in any barbershop where they speak Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, say you are from Ukraine, ask if they’ll cut your hair for free. I don’t have many answers, but I try to help people help themselves if that makes any sense.
This is where we waited out from this morning. This is the sign they put out front when everything is closed. A photo is worth a thousand words they say. I’m not a photographer but this one I think reflects the mood quite well.
Thank you for reading. If it is dark, I am sorry. It feels very dark. I worry about the people and there are so many of them. They will only all be ok if each of us takes it upon ourselves to help a little bit, direct aid. Journalists, you need to write about what is happening. You need to talk to Ukrainians about how long they are waiting for housing, for access to the labor market, for these bare minimum social payouts. Ukraine is not a rich country and most people who arrived don’t have months of savings to live off of at European prices. As for the rich ones living in 5-star hotels in downtown Vienna and driving their German-made SUVs around? Let them! They are helping our local economy out. They are paying for their hotel rooms and restaurant meals and luxury shopping and gym memberships. Who cares!
Please focus on those in need. Those who arrived with the clothes on their backs, in winter boots, pushed their way onto trains heading west with the few bags they could carry, documents, a smartphone, a charger (I charged two Androids today in the Caritas office for Ukrainians because no one set up a charging station for them while they are waiting), two kids, a cat or dog, maybe an ageing grandma. Many people fled directly from cellars — that is why they have only plastic bags when we see them at the train station. Their suitcases would have been in their apartments and homes they could not get back into.
I wish everyone trying to “help” in an official capacity would take a second to imagine, just for a second, what that must feel like. They say in Russian, “God forbid”…we said today, “God forbid” official Austrians ever experience what it feels like to be in the position many Ukrainians find themselves in now.
"You listen and nod because it is all you can do." I believe this action, repeated with empathetic kindness, over and over, wins the day in the end.
On the maddening bureaucracy, this film clip from "The Incredibles" comes to mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGqq1F6OkEo He's like you getting the meal tickets for those who were not just first arrivals. ;-]
I want you to help; I want you to volunteer; I want you to keep writing the stories and telling the universe of what you witness. You see, I feel utterly helpless. Reading your dispatches, supporting your work-- I tell everyone in my circles of how I discovered you. If you feel your ears burning in the middle of the night, well, it might just be me telling another person about the outstanding work you are doing. I want you to know I care.
Please do not take this the wrong way--I do not really have a right to kvetch about how I feel, sitting here in the States. However. These last few weeks have been pretty disturbing for me. I am having trouble sleeping-- I wake up with the thoughts and images of war--of abject suffering and apocalyptic destruction of buildings, towns, and people's lives. With every day-to-day task, I am haunted by the thought "How would I be able to do (insert activity) if I was in a war-zone?" But I am safe, with a climate-controlled apartment, a steady job, and a car with all its windows which I can drive and complain about the potholes. I think... "Why doesn't roadworks get on these?"
Please hang in there; be good to yourself, and know I am rooting for you and all the people who stand up for the Ukrainian people. Слава Украине.