Sasha and other stories (Day 129)
Yesterday I met an incredible young man, completely by chance. His story and those of many other Ukrainians in Austria.
I owe you three days of stories but I am going to start with the last one. Please meet Sasha, with whom I spent a few hours yesterday afternoon, completely by accident. I told four different people to meet me on a subway station platform in central Vienna on Friday afternoon so I could hand them Hofer cards. They reside in dorms where I am not sure they receive their post. I handed out the three cards and then was looking for the fourth person when I saw a young man in a wheelchair. Are you waiting for me, I asked in Russian. Yes, he said, and smiled. I immediately apologised as I would not have asked him to travel across the city on public transport had I known he is in a wheelchair. I felt so badly. But Sasha just smiled and said it is no big deal and luckily in Vienna there are elevators at all stations and it is possible to get around much more easily than in Kyiv, for example. So we started talking.
Sasha is 23 years old, has been in a wheelchair his whole life from Kyiv oblast, and is an orphan. When he was a few months old, his dad left. When he was eight, his mom died of diabetes. His grandmother then raised him, but when Sasha was nineteen she died. He has been alone for the past four years. He has been in Austria for five days. He spent about a month in Hungary first, and then decided to come here. He would like to find a family in an EU country who could host him. He would really like to get a job in IT. Finding a job is his number one priority.
In Ukraine, Sasha completed a degree in IT and worked in as an administrator with digital documents and he also has a background in animation, montage, and graphic design (I am terrible at understanding these terms I am sure I have mistranslated half of them — apologies). Sasha understands English, although is shy to speak it. We talked about Ireland, Germany, other EU countries. Sasha is open to anything. He wants to start a new life and learn German or English and get a job in IT and find a home and if that home would be with a host family he would like that very much. He told his coordinator back in Ukraine he was leaving for Europe (Sasha receives a monthly pension for his disability from the Ukrainian government but it amounts to only €65 when converted), who wished him well and said it was a good decision to go. No one knows how long the war will drag on for.
Sasha of course didn’t tell me all this in five minutes on the platform. We spent a few hours together. Time I didn’t plan for but when life puts you in these situations I always think they happen for a reason, and my job yesterday was to help. Sasha has a sore throat, so we went to a nearby pharmacy (two steps at the entrance, not wheelchair accessible), and he waited outside while I asked for a throat spray and lozenges. €16 I was told. He has a Ukraine passport, I say. Only prescription mediation is covered and you need a prescription. So I pay the €16. Sasha is shocked by the price and thanks me for the medicine.
Next, he says he wants to go across town to Stadion to get a free SIM card. I say let’s go to the train station, it’s much closer, we can buy you one there and they can register it for you in the tobacco shop (yes, this too is Austria). So we take the subway one stop, and I discover Wien HBF in a whole new light, looking for the elevators everywhere. We make it to the tobacco shop, choose a SIM card with the most GB of internet for €10, and line up. The cashier cannot figure out how to register it for us for €7, so we pay for the SIM card and go to a nearby cafe for a coffee so I can do it with my phone with my Austrian handysignatur (like a personal PIN to sign digital stuff here). Sasha enjoys a cappuccino while I wrongly enter my password three times until I finally get it right, and his SIM card is activated. We cannot put it in the phone as he doesn’t have the little metal pin, but he thinks he will find one back at the dorm.
Sasha lives in the dorm where residents are “fed” and do not receive any state payments. He looks at me and asks where he can change his Ukrainian hryvnia. Only on Monday, I say, and ask the guys on Telegram which bank is still doing it. Sasha tells me he doesn’t have any Euros, as in zero. I pay for the coffee and we head across the street to a bank where I pull out €50 cash and hand it to Sasha so he has some money in his pocket. He is surprised and grateful.
We head back inside and see a huge line of Ukrainians as ÖBB has again moved the ticket counter for Ukraine train tickets and now about three dozen Ukrainian women are standing in a line next to a bakery at the entrance of the train station. We stop and chat. Germany, France still possible in one direction, they tell me. But the line is long. Clearly the message is you better be having a good reason to travel. I wish them good luck. They look at Sasha and me and then thank me for my “work”. They somehow understood the situation without me having to say anything. Sasha looks at me and asks, do they know you? No, they just heard I am a volunteer.
We stop by the food stand set up by the charity in the train station but there are no more sandwiches (I think this was a budgetary decision but I cannot speak for them), so we ask for a pastry which they do have, and Sasha takes a slice of poppy seed strudel with him. We head back to the subway, again looking for the elevators. And I say goodbye at my station, and Sasha assures me he can find his way home. I have also given him a Penny €50 card for a 90 year old man who asked a fellow resident to write me yesterday morning. Sasha promises to find him, and in the evening texts me that the card was safely delivered.
Sasha lets me take his photo, and asks me for help to find a good country for him to settle in and look for a job, and a family who might host him. I promise to tell you his story. Pull down your mask for a second, I say, so they can see your smile. I say goodbye and jump off, and at the station I get caught without a ticket for the first time in nine years. I pay the €105 fine on the spot, and think about fate and how some things are just meant to be. It never happened before but it was meant to happen one day. Same with meeting Sasha on a very hot busy Friday afternoon. If anyone would like to help Sasha figure out next steps, to find a family, a job, which country to go to to make this wish a reality, please contact me here or over Twitter DM.
I have three days of stories to catch you all up on, so I am now going to turn back the clock. On Wednesday morning I wrote this, and you all reacted immediately. Thank you so incredibly much. I was able to deliver 66 Hofer cards over the past three days just as a result of saying I am empty please help. That is 66 families who were able to buy a week’s worth of groceries, including Sasha, including the 90 year old man, including so many others.
On Wednesday afternoon it was Sahara hot, but I went to a dorm in Vienna where the residents are “fed” and therefore do not receive the state benefits of €215 per person, as these are in theory directed towards the food they receive on site. I am immediately surrounded by a half dozen residents, and am flooded with questions to which I have no good answers. I met a young woman in a wheelchair with cerebral palsy who would like to see a doctor and find out about rehabilitation programs. I meet parents of three children whose car died and would like to both find jobs and a place to live and need to find new shoes but there aren’t any in the charity shops they can afford and what is free is all picked over already. I meet the young mom with the toddler who lost her bag but another volunteer translator I connected her to helped her find it in the Wiener Linien lost and found. I meet a young mom of two who says she applied on the website and never got a card and I say please wait we will go now to the store together and just as this is all happening and they are all talking at once, a grandfather, drenched in sweat, says to us gruffly in Russian “are you all just going to stand there and not help?”.
We all stop talking and see an elderly man and an elderly woman completely covered in sweat standing with luggage and a cat in a plastic box. Oh no, I realised, they have just arrived. On their own. On public transport. Sent from Stadion which is across the city from this dorm. I take a deep breath. I ask the residents if there is a translator on duty inside. They say no. Ok, I say, I’ll go in and help. I grab the cat, the old man asks me to careful, I nod. We walk inside, I introduce myself to the charity, and say I can stay for 10 minutes to translate if they need help. They say yes please. I have to fill out the form because one of them only has an internal passport and those are handwritten in Ukrainian Cyrillic. The forms only take a second, I translate for the charity about meal times. There are three or four people from official organizations (charity and security from what I could tell) but none of them, at that moment, spoke Russian or Ukrainian. When the paperwork is done, I ask the old man and woman to wait a few minutes and say I will run to the nearest grocery store and bring them cards, too. They are so beyond exhausted they don’t respond but take a seat and wait. The man tells me he is a physics teacher from Kharkiv and maybe he could be useful. The woman is from Donestk oblast and is completely exhausted. She doesn’t want to talk. She has been travelling for days. It is all too much.
I run with the young mom of two to the nearest budget grocery store, we buy three cards. I had her one, we bring the other two back to the old man and woman. On the way, she tells me they have been trying with her husband and two kids to find an apartment to rent anywhere in Vienna and it is impossible. They even have a budget of €650 which is not nothing but the market is such there is simply nothing left now. Or so it seems. The little girl walks with us, she had a fever yesterday from heat stroke. The building is hot, no air conditioning of course, and there is a green courtyard I can see, the door is propped open, but this mom tells me they aren’t allowed out there. I don’t know why. I don’t look for logic in things anymore. Sometimes I wonder if cruelty is the point.
I leave the dorm, wish them all well, tell them to tell their friends if they need help they can write me for grocery stores cards, turn the corner, and burst into tears. Which doesn’t happen that often, but it was too much. It was all too much. I sobbed a bit, wiped them away and went to the next stop. Another dorm, but this one is better, housed in what I think is a former finance ministry building (there are strange rooms inside with plastic windows on all sides and wooden benches which I imagine might have been smoking rooms back in the day), and the Ukrainian residents receive the state money (€215 per adult per month) and can cook for themselves. Unfortunately, they too are prevented from working due to the law which limits earnings to €110 per month otherwise you lose your benefits (payments) and your housing. So they are stuck.
I run around trying to deliver envelopes to rooms, and a door opens. A young woman from Kharkiv who applied via the website and never got a card. I apologize, explain we cannot send mail there, some cards got lost, we now deliver in person. We start talking, she tells me how she spends her days looking for a bargain, looking for summer shoes, or shorts, life takes on a strange schedule of looking how to survive on such little money per month when you cannot work. I ask the shoe size, promise to come back tomorrow with cards for her and her aunt. Aunt’s phone is broken. I have an old mobile at home, as Natasha and Pasha received plenty. I promise to bring that too. She starts crying, talking about home. I listen and say I understand, it is all really hard. We see each other tomorrow, I promise. And then I run out before I get in trouble for having walked in. Down flights of stairs because the elevator only works with a key card, and only one door is unlocked, but I know it now.
Thursday morning at 9am I waited for the family with 3 kids who needs shoes in front of a new charity “consultation” office for Ukrainians. I had €150 cash for them given to me by a kind Austrian who stopped by my apartment on Wednesday night after having read my tweets. They got off the bus in the wrong direction, I started running around the 16th district yelling after them to turn around. I gave them the money, they were so grateful, and walked them inside. It looked like a clean doctor’s office, lots of people waiting for their appointments. Later that day, the family told me they left with no result: there are no more apartments in Vienna, we cannot help you find a job as you must talk to AMS, you cannot receive benefit money while you live in a dorm that feeds you.
I then went to a Hofer to buy more cards with a generous donation, and while I was there I received a rather unpleasant phone call from an employee of an organization I once volunteered with as a translator for three hours, but never went back to because I was not impressed by what I saw there. You will note I am choosing my words very carefully. It is apparently still acceptable in this country to try to tell a private person what they should or shouldn’t write on social media. It is apparently also a thing to imply the Ukrainians are not telling the truth about their experiences. I imagine, as the situation on the ground grows worse (which I feel is already happening), more of official Austria will try to sell a story that simply isn’t true and will deny the reality of the lived Ukrainian experience here because that is easier than actually fixing things. And who will the public believe? Austrians or Ukrainians? Sadly, I think we know the answer to that, too.
I have always spoken my lived truth and I will continue to do so, choosing my words carefully.
I bought 20 Hofer cards after I essentially ended what was an incredibly bizarre conversation and thought to myself what is going on with this world. I am doing this all with my own time, not getting paid a cent, doing it because I really worry about all these vulnerable people, and then you realise many of the organizations actually in charge are perhaps more worried about their public image than anything else.
Thursday evening at 9pm I had appointments to meet 20 Ukrainians living in one big dorm. I approached the courtyard, and saw all the grannies sitting outside in their flowery bright housecoats, summer dresses to wear at home, waiting for me. I wrote that up already — you can read it here.
I met a seven year old girl with cerebral palsy who needs help to find a doctor and a school for September. She is living with her parents from Kharkiv in the 14th district, but her grandparents are in the dorm, and just like they did in Ukraine, they take her once a week for a sleepover to give her parents a little break. Such a lovely family. Amalia has her own Instagram page of her artwork. Anyone who would like to offer help or suggestions for navigating a new life in Vienna can contact her mom via Instagram DM.
One older gentleman was so amazed with the Hofer card program he asked about twenty questions, and wanted to leave a “review” for the website. The grannies talked and talked, and for a moment I thought I could close my eyes and be in a Kharkiv courtyard on a hot summer evening. We talked about getting buy on €215 per month. Do read this, even if you don’t read the whole thread. This is what official Austria does not understand. Or does not want to understand.
On my way out, a young woman runs over to give me a spontaneous hug. It was really unexpected. I am sometimes overwhelmed and embarrassed by the gratitude and I don’t want to be disrespectful but I keep saying this is not me, this is not my money, I am just delivering hope in the form of €50 grocery store gift cards paid for by people from all over the world.
I got home at 1:30am on Thursday (youngest kid flight delay, but she got home, sick, but home) and woke up at 6:00 on Friday (last day of school, husband had an early meeting). On Friday afternoon, I was invited for a facial by Zoryana, who received one of the first Hofer cards. She is a beautician who does facials and sugaring/waxing, and has been working in a salon in Vienna, but is now looking for a new job as the owner of the salon changed the terms and Zoryana has decided to focus on an intense German course (€220 for a private fast A1/A2 course taught in Ukrainian on Karlsplatz) and then to get a job in a local salon. The facial is lovely and super relaxing and I of course cannot accept it for free so I leave a tip that I think represents the cost of the treatment and we agree to have a coffee sometime and I will ask if I know anyone who knows a salon in Vienna looking for facials and/or waxing/sugaring. Zoryana has two little kids in kindergarten and has to rush to pick them up. It is not easy. None of it is easy. But she is optimistic and determined and wants to work only officially, above board, she has all her certifications, she has her AMS permission, she will learn German, she wants to work in a good salon. On my way out I am given a free sample of an Israeli eye cream and told how to properly massage my crow’s feet twice a day. I listen like a good student, knowing full well I will never remember.
I have half an hour until I need to be on the subway platform. I answer the mom with a paralysed adult daughter and the husband with cancer about a TV, explaining you have to pay for a license in Austria, and she should better apply for a donated laptop. I send her the link to PCs für Alle, but I worry she won’t be able to do the form on her own. Note to self to help this weekend. Except I have no time. I never have any time.
I run to buy six more Rewe cards (because Penny is near one of the dorms and for those with limited mobility this is ideal), and back to the subway. A woman in her 60s from Mykoliav has brought three fellow residents of the dorm where they are fed and don’t receive money. But I only have a card for her. I take down all their names and room numbers, and say it will have to be another day. I cannot give you what I do not have. I am so sorry. One of the women has cancer surgery scheduled for July in AKH — I warn her make sure you have a translator with you, I spoke with someone who had procedures cancelled on the same day because she showed up and couldn’t speak German or English. They look at me like I am crazy. I say, I don’t want to upset you, I want to warn you. Send me the day/time, I can ask in the volunteer chat.
In general, we need translators everywhere. And social workers. We need so many of them. And money. And lifting the ban on the right to work if you live in state housing. And stopping this terrible business of “feeding” people and providing them instead with independent living and money to buy their old food. And if people are very old or handicapped and cannot do this, then put them in the same kinds of homes we have for Austrians. Or staff them with 24/7 care in their language and put them in group homes. Send in a social worker who speaks Russian or Ukrainian and make lists of needs. Go to these group residences. Ask people what is on their minds. I feel sometimes like Oprah; I hear all the stories, except unlike Oprah, I cannot offer any solutions. I am not an NGO I am not the state I am simply Tanja who sometimes has Hofer cards. And one one time. One per family.
I meet young dad with 3 kids, one of whom is a teen with a serious disability. They are living in a charity-run group home, but from what he describes, it sounds like they are better off than others. He met two grannies while lining up at 4am for €10 coupons, and they called him on Thursday night, and by Friday afternoon I was meeting him on the subway platform and handing him a grocery card. He needs an ENT. I promise to send a link of our friend the doctor. And so on and so on and so on…
My phone beeps and pings and rings day and night. I have to put it aside. My family is ready to kill me, and they have been so understanding.
Natasha called me this morning. They put Pasha in the local polytechnic school where they are living. A local volunteer helped them. He will come to Vienna for volleyball. We had a nice chat. She sounds ok. They will go to German class on Monday. I offer my 16 year old son for extra tutoring. We agree to stay in touch.
Back and forth with a journalist on a story that needs to be told but you just pray that by telling it there won’t be a boomerang effect and the situation won’t get worse.
This morning a 16 year old boy wrote me over Twitter. He is still in a Salzburg hotel with his mom. There isn’t enough food. Could he have another Hofer card? I don’t have a second Hofer card, I have to explain, which is awful and feels awful. I promise to connect him if someone can help them directly.
But this boy is one of thousands. All across Austria there are thousands of Ukrainians expected to survive on €215 per month per adult and €100 per month per kid and if they are “fed” in hotels or dorms then they get only €40 per month pocket money if this is paid at all and everywhere I look in my phone and in my conversations I have the feeling people are being left totally alone while official Austria throws around fancy words like integration, and I am thinking about how can they buy fresh tomatoes. I think if for months you eat bread and rice and yogurt it start to go to your head. I think kids and adults and elderly need fresh fruit and vegetables. I think what is missing in the whole response is giving people their dignity back. Give them the money, they will figure it out. Take care of the neediest cases the same way you care for Austrians in need. This mom bought these ingredients with the grocery card they received. She has three kids and is here with her husband too. They are from an active war zone. Their car died. They will not be going home anytime soon. They are desperate for housing and work.
This is far too long and for that I apologise. I have to get this off my head and onto paper for my own sanity and so I am not walking around alone with all these feelings. Mario and I are not alone though. We are just a tiny tiny drop in a huge bucket. Just read this about all the micro groups working in Ukraine:
If you would like to donate towards Hofer cards distributed via the website, please see here for credit card or IBAN donations. We have raised over the website more than €81,000 in just one and a half months and this is in addition to all the cards I received by post and passed onwards and the donations I received here which I use to buy cards directly in the shops in small batches. I spent my last €750 on Friday to buy 15 cards which have already been distributed.
Thank you all. Thanks for reading and thanks for your continued support. If you would like to help Sasha or any of the other Ukrainians in Austria I wrote about, please get in touch.
Tanja, I will always follow and support your efforts to help the people of Ukraine. I wish I could be there to help personally--although I only speak English. For now, I will continue to support your projects and @walter_report and @MriyaAid
I would like to know how I can help Sasha? Please contact me and let me know danigonzarubio@gmail.com