Summer break, finally!
Vienna schools finished today. It was a long, emotional road for many Ukrainian families. I hit pause and you all kept donating; thank you. Some recommended reading & viewing before I go on vacation.
Today was the last day of school in the east of Austria, and to call it a day is really an overstatement — it is an hour, an hour during which the children are handed their report cards and a list of what to buy before the first day of school in September. For the many Ukrainian families whose children attended Austrian schools all year, it was the end of a long and emotional road. According to a poll I took in my own Telegram group, roughly 1 in 3 Ukrainian kids was told he/she must repeat the grade, again. I cannot imagine anything more demotivating but I don’t have the bandwidth nor the energy to extrapolate everything broken about Austria’s education system in this blogpost. The good news is — also per my selective statistic, is that 2 out of 3 kids were told today that their German is good enough to move onto the next grade. And, a legal solution has been promised by the education ministry (but to my knowledge not yet delivered) for the hundreds of Ukrainian kids who passed their “MIKA-D” German tests but due to a technicality were not allowed to automatically progress to the next school “type” (i.e. from elementary to middle school). Thanks to advocates and media attention earlier this week, that is hopefully now finally being addressed by the education ministry at the federal level.
Nevertheless, my Telegram chat was this morning a flurry of emotion: nervous parents, exhausted kids, frustration at having been graded / having not been graded / another child was moved forward but my child was held back, etc etc etc. The school year is long and hard enough, I really cannot imagine the frustration some parents and kids are experiencing right now. All in a new country and a new language. And of course this is not just a problem unique to Ukrainians. This is now what every family experiences who moves to Austria without fluent German thanks to changes made by a conservative-far right government in 2017, which have not yet been unwound by those running the federal government. Non-German speakers are usually (but not always) isolated in “integration” classrooms until they learn German well enough to be moved to “ordinary” classrooms. If you shake your head in disbelief, you are not alone. I cannot think of a worse way to learn a new language when children are put in classrooms with other kids who also don’t know that language, but I digress.
This week has been fruitful in terms of grocery card deliveries, thank you. I said I hit “pause” and I really did, but cards kept arriving. So I have done my best to distribute them to my waiting list, trying to still adhere to the priorities of families with children, elderly, handicapped. But there are always exceptions. Today a 17 year old boy wrote me. He is here alone, living in a dorm. Immediately one of my readers sent me an extra €100 just for him. Done. And pensioners from Donetsk region living now in a Salzburg area town I had never heard of. Also done.
Tomorrow morning I will go to the arrival center and deliver 7 cards to families most in need. This is thanks to someone on staff helping me to find such new arrivals. I appreciate this person being willing to help me despite this not falling under their official job description. We do it discretely. My highest priority has been and remains to ensure that this grocery aid goes first to those who need it the most. Ukrainians who have just arrived will not have received any payments from the Austrian state yet, and in some cases this takes months to start functioning properly, as they wait for housing assignments. I will learn more tomorrow about how housing is (or isn’t) working out at the moment. Most of my “customers” these past few weeks have been permanent residents of one hotel in Vienna and two hotels in the Salzburg area, but I also still receive plenty of requests from Ukrainians in private accommodation. Which reminds me to share this with you, too.
I would like to share a few things I found interesting over the past days, and apologies for being so brief. I am trying to get my own family ready to go on vacation, last day of school, middle child arrived home at nearly midnight at the airport from a school trip to France, I have to pack and drive like 800km on Sunday, etc etc etc.
Open Democracy discussion on the mess in Russia (from yesterday). Very good insights, I found myself nodding along in agreement with nearly everything that was said on this informative live Zoom.
If you read German, this very good opinion piece on the farce that is “neutral” Austria.
“There’s no such thing as a great power” by Phillips P. O’Brien
This thread by Tatiana Stanovaya helps put the events in Russia in perspective.
This powerful text by a Ukrainian journalist on returning to her hometown of Kherson.
Finally, and this deserves a warning because it contains graphic and disturbing imagines, this unbelievable 20-minute video report from a field hospital in Ukraine. It is truly a must-watch. I have never seen anything like it. I think you cannot watch it and feel nothing. It is so incredibly intense and provides a window into what so many ordinary people in Ukraine are going through, silently, away from the cameras.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000008893083/ukraine-frontline-hospital.html
Before we leave for the sun & sea (pinching myself because I am always scared of jinxing it), I will try to send out the last of my cards and then will build a waiting list while I am away so I can come back mid-July hopefully full of new energy and renewed patience. These last weeks I have really felt I need a break. Not so much from the work itself but from other people’s emotions and problems filling my inbox on a daily basis, while I don’t feel, usually, that I am in a position to provide any really constructive help or advice, unfortunately. I know they too need an outlet, but after many, many months, it is hard sometimes, you start to open each new message with a feeling of dread. So a mental break is long-overdue. I know I will not totally sign-off, but I will try to reduce it.
Meanwhile, the incredible Mario, who has not only exposed Austria’s entire supermarket business-of-pricing for what it is (check this out), updated us all this week that he and team will be able to distribute another 200+ Hofer cards (!!!) thanks to your ongoing generosity and his volunteer work (and envelopes, and stamps, and most importantly — TIME). Which is just incredible. I cannot thank Mario and you all enough for your continued support this many months in, with no end in sight.
Mario’s entire thread and update on Cards for Ukraine finances here.
THANK YOU.
p.s. this is so touching — one of the messages I received yesterday
Thanks again and have a wonderful vacation with your familiy. I so hope you'll find some peace.
I'll care for "my" Ukrainien familiy in Mödling during summer as before.
Big hug, Regina