Liza sent me this photo on April 26, but we met much earlier, in March, at Vienna’s central train station. Liza was with her 9 year old daughter, their adorable little dog, and a friend, and a cat. When I first met them, they were very unsure where to go and what to do. They ended up in Lower Austria, a train ride from Vienna, and came to meet me, again at the train station, this time to pick up a Hofer card. After that, I lost touch. I recently created a Telegram group so that I can communicate in one place with all the Ukrainians I have met along the way in Austria (technically this is an absolute nightmare and I should have done it months ago but tech was never my strong suit). Liza received an invitation, and joined the group. Yesterday, she shared her story. I share it now with you all too, with her permission. She is so happy, she didn’t even want me to change her name. She said she could write “poetry” about how happy she is she made the decision to leave Austria for the UK.
And here, in Liza’s own words:
Good evening. It was you who told me the train station to keep going, but I stopped in Vienna. If you remember, they offered me UK, and I thought, it is so far away, and there isn’t anything good there. I thought Austria is a great country. And it is, but only for Austrians themselves or those who speak German. I was in Austria from 20 March until 28 June. With my daughter (age 9) and a dog. I lived in a village, there were problems with transportation, basically there was almost none. I received €315 per month for myself and my daughter and I think that is really not much. I personally did not have enough money to buy food. I don’t even mention clothing. The kids don’t eat lunch in school. There is no work, and what work can I do when the child is 9 and comes home at 12:30. So I remembered you and left for the UK. Thank you so much. And thank you, Austria, we will always be grateful for the help we received there.
We are in the UK, not far from Birmingham. It is also a village, but it’s not far from the city and villages here are different. There are pubs everywhere, shops, farms. It is like a different world for me. Austrians felt like the kind of people who like to sit at home. We lived in a village that wasn’t that small, but there were never any people on the streets. Here people are walking everywhere and at all times. I have been here since 30 June. I started working yesterday. The language is easier, groceries are cheaper (for example I could not afford to buy meat in Austria, and here the prices are great). The kids get free lunch in school (a very good lunch) and school lasts until 15:00.
No, you don’t have to hide my name, I am writing from my soul!
Yes, you also gave me a card for Hofer. Thank you, it was really a big help. I couldn’T afford much in Austria, I was afraid to buy my child anything “extra”. I was afraid of “expensive UK”, as many people warned, but it actually turned out quite the opposite. There is of course a small list of products which are cheaper in Austria, but not many. I also think the food here is closer to our Ukrainian. Girls, there are beetroots in many shops and the people are really full of life, I really love their mentality.
In Austria I didn’t buy any fish, on my €315 for me and my kid it was impossible. I never even looked at beef or fish. And I am used to feeding my child a healthy, balanced diet. It was painful for me, that I could not do that. I would have so happily gotten a job, but there was no work (once every 10 days I cleaned up one lady’s apartment). I did everything possible to find a job, but there is no work when you don’t speak German.
In the UK I can buy all of that and I already have a job. I can provide my child with a balanced diet. I think that is a normal wish — that is our health. I say again about school. The children are fed and they are in school until 15:00 which for me, as a mom, is wonderful. Excuse me, I know the group isn’t for this, but I have so many emotions I thought I would share my story, I am ready to write a book!
That’s it. One mom’s story. Makes perfect sense. Makes me feel like I did the right thing standing there at the train station day in and day out last spring saying “keep going if you can” because although I couldn’t predict the future, I have lived in Austria long enough to know how things work here. Or in this case, don’t work. The anti-immigrant mentality, the willingness of so many in official roles to help only in front of TV cameras, when journalists ask them what they are actually doing.
But then I think about what we have achieved. Because I could not have handed out a single Hofer card or bought hundreds of coffees and sandwiches on the train station if I hadn’t received donations, and the vast majority of those came from Austria. So the system is often broken, but the people here are not. Unfortunately, it still means even a county like the UK, with all its problems, with its visa requirement, was for this single mom and daughter a more welcoming place. Hope for the future. Full day school. A job. The ability to put healthy food on the table.
So when I get frustrated, like today, when I technology doesn’t work (both Telegram and Messenger don’t want me to write everyone in my inbox; they prevent me from sending messages and it is so annoying because I have hundreds of Ukrainians still in my inbox I cannot tell about my group!), or when I am out of Hofer cards (four sent this morning, can now buy another two, but I have a pile of nearly 100 empty envelopes and Ukrainians asking me all day every day when their cards will arrive…), I open my phone and look through some of the photos, or click on old Substacks, and try to assure myself there were many times when it seemed like nothing was working and yet look at all the progress we made together. Look at all the people we helped. Look at all the little gestures which made a difference in someone’s life.
Just got a text from a Russian-speaker in Vienna who met a woman from Mariupol now here with her husband, due on 1 September with her first baby (a girl). She handed over a €50 Rewe card, promised baby “equipment”, two more readers from Twitter promised to help, and I made a note they will probably still need more baby clothes and I will ask who can do what….and that is how you do it. Drop drop drop in the bucket until one day you hope, if even for a moment in time, it will be full with water.
Having said that, if a huge NGO or corporation would simply donate €50,000 to https://cards-for-ukraine.at/donate it would make our lives so much easier. My waiting list is 100+. Mario’s waiting list is 1600+. That’s €85,000. We cannot reach that on individual donations alone. So it means putting on another hat and thinking about how to spend time doing big donor fundraising. While still answering all those messages, and questions, and trying to help out in emergencies — putting Ukrainians in contact with people here who can help, making those involved in helping refugees in Austria aware of particularly precarious situations, doing the media work when required as you hope it draws attention and donations.
It feels like being spun in sixty directions at once but I guess that’s normal because everything is so fluid and changing all the time. Although many Ukrainians in Austria are settled and have more “normal” questions like how do I find a dentist or register my kid for kindergarten, many extremely vulnerable, very poor people are still arriving now from active war zones and they are coming with nothing but a suitcase, zero cash in their pockets, and maybe a cat in a plastic carrier, and although you don’t have the photos in the news anymore from the train stations because they are arriving by bus directly to towns across Austria, refugees from war zones in Ukraine have not stopped arriving. They still write me. They somehow find my number. So I feel a moral responsibility to keep helping but I cannot without funding. And I am not very good (yet!) at figuring out how to generate big donors. On the to-do list in my head.
My Telegram chat, even though it is incomplete (see tech problems above!) and only a few days old, already has 1,077 members who are actively discussing everything but especially where to get food — Red Cross on Saturdays at distribution points across the country, if you are lucky enough to live near one (not in Wien unfortunately), which produce markets to shop at in Vienna for the best prices, how to use the toogoodtogo app, a social project cafe in Vienna with pastries and hot drinks which serves homeless for free and now also refugees, even how to use the McDonalds app to get free items each day. Other hot topics include why social payments still vary from region to region, why some regions are not increasing the amount paid out per what the Austrian government voted on this summer, how to find a doctor/kindergarten/job/housing etc etc etc.
In short, I am learning so much. I hope I am helpful to them as well. I remind every day about the child benefit (Familienbeihilfe) with instructions in Russian. That was what really prompted me to start the group. I know the paperwork can be overwhelming. I am afraid of Austrian paperwork and I have lived here almost a decade.
Before I sign off, please read this. What an inspiring story:
€1,000 donated to us is a week’s worth of self-selected groceries for 20 Ukrainian refugee families in Austria. Quite an impact, I think.
Credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay super easy two clicks or Bank transfer (IBAN): https://cards-for-ukraine.at/donate
PayPal (Tanja uses directly for her waiting list): PayPal.Me/groceries4Ukraine
Or please feel free to send us cards, either to the address on the website above or if you are in Vienna I even have a teenage courier this month and will happily send him to collect cards and/or cash anywhere Wiener Linien reaches at your convenience.
DANKE! Thank you.