Tis the Season
Distributing the prize money, the US election (briefly), looking ahead to potential Christmas projects, a must-watch TikTok from Kyiv.
I have been busy delivering the prize money in the form of €50 supermarket gift cards. This is easier said than done! It requires picking up cash (my card limit is too low) at the bank, running to the stores to buy the cards, addressing the envelopes after I receive the requests via text message, usually over Telegram but also ordinary SMS, WhatsApp, sometimes Messenger, stuffing the envelopes, stamping them (thank you to all my readers who have kept me so well supplied in stamps that I haven’t had to buy any in months), and taking them to the little yellow boxes we have all over the city. I am superstitious, and never dump 30 in one box. I spread them out. You never know. In any case, I have distributed €6,000 of the prize money just this past week, plus I received several large and small donations of cards, and those have been sent out as well.
Sending out is the easy part. For those who live in dorms, hostels, and refugee “hotels” in Vienna, I meet them in person. In part because I am not 100% sure they would receive mail at their addresses, and also because they are the refugees I worry the most about, and want to see them in person, a quick chat, a how are you doing. Lately, I have also been distributing one-way Wiener Linien (public transport) tickets at these meet-ups, thanks to very kind readers who have also been mailing me tickets ordered in bulk online. Thank you. They are so grateful for the help. The anxiety of getting caught on public transport without a ticket and without the means to pay a fine is overwhelming for some, especially for the elderly. One lady didn’t want to come collect her Hofer card at all, that is how scared she was. I explained I live very far away from her address, and if you come meet me, I will give you a card and several transport tickets. She came. I gave them to her, as promised.
I have been trying to streamline my work to be more efficient. For the most part, it is working. I also remembered the benefit of having Ukrainians meet each other, meet those living at different addresses, comparing notes, talking to each other about their experiences so far, and living conditions.
There is a sense of comfort in knowing it is not just you who had bad luck. There is a lot of good and bad luck all around. The housing lottery is like that. A lottery. Some arrive and are immediately assigned a shared apartment or home that is by all means acceptable: clean, has access to some kind of transportation. Others get stuck quite literally in the middle of nowhere with unsympathetic and sometimes downright mean landlords. I thought a lot about that as we drove from Vienna to Graz yesterday. I will never see the map of Austria the same way again. I now see it in addresses I have written on white envelopes and placed cards inside, hoping they reach the rightful recipient as soon as possible.
So this morning I continue. Top of my list? This request. They live about a 15 minute drive from me in a small dorm where the residents can cook for themselves. Being able to cook for one-self is a luxury.
The most unhappy residents across the entire country are those who are “fed”. I have written about this so much and yet it cannot be stated enough. There are kids who go to school hungry in the mornings living in the very center of Vienna in a former actually really nice hotel because “breakfast” (which is anyway bread and butter and jam, no oatmeal or anything else on offer) isn’t put out until after they have to leave for school, because they attend school way across the city, as they recently were rehoused but the school assignments were made based on the former address.
So when I finish writing this, I will get to work distributing the next €2,000 worth of cards. The thing is, when you deliver successfully, word spreads awfully fast through the Ukrainian grapevine, and you are then flooded with new requests. So I am fully aware that in a matter of days, perhaps by the end of this week, I will be again back down to zero. Which means our pace of distribution will slow, and I will spend more time thinking about fundraising, as it will be necessary to keep going.
I would like to thank Mario Zechner and his helpers in Graz for keeping the entire operation up and running — managing the Verein and all the admin, the donations made via the website, purchasing cards in bulk, and mailing them. It is a HUGE amount of work behind the scenes. This is Mario just casually sending out €10,100 of direct grocery aid to Ukrainian refugees in Austria from his living room. Funded by you all. As one does. THANK YOU!!!
There is a long-established Facebook group in Austria for Russian-speaking moms. All nationalities. We are in talks to put together a kind of Secret Santa program, but I suggested rather than matching family to family (super time consuming), I will provide a list of dorms/hostels/hotels/group homes across Austria, and we will ensure each address receives donations of fruits, sweets, treats for the kids. I would also like to make such a list public here or on Twitter, but I need to figure out if there is any data protection stuff I need to worry about. In short, if you want to know where is a group home near you, and organise a delivery with friends, family or work colleagues, please do get in touch. Both Mario and I now have a fairly good map in our heads of addresses we see over and over. More on this in the coming days. Toys are great but when kids are hungry I would still prefer this to be more food-oriented. Fresh fruit is always in demand. Same with sweet treats.
I received a call yesterday from an advertising agency (I don’t know the right word for that these days, media? marketing? digital?) about a potential Christmas charity project they would like to do with Ukrainian refugees in Austria together with one of their clients, a food producer. As I explained our work, and more specifically, the living conditions for many Ukrainians in Austria right now, I realised the voice on the other end of the phone was probably hearing this all for the first time. Many people do not know about the €40 pocket money or being expected to live off of €200 plus minus. Many people do not know that the vast majority of Ukrainian families did not receive the child benefit (Familienbeihilfe) money yet. Many people do not know that refugees in basic care (Grundversorgung) cannot work and earn more than €110 per month without losing these merger benefits and their housing. I suppose the state likes it this way, keeping voters in the dark, and the media (not all, but most) think the story is old news.
So you end up with this. Carinthia blocking all of Austria raising the legal limit on how much can be earned by a refugee in basic care. Because, politics? Lack of empathy? Racism? All of the above?
Very briefly on the U.S. election. I realised at the very last minute I could vote and requested a ballot with 24 hours to spare. I sent it back to Ohio (I vote at my sister’s home address — the angel has been taking care of my admin for two decades and counting since I moved abroad at the age of 23 and basically never returned except to drop out of HBS and give birth to my firstborn). It cost me €15 to do my citizenly duty and it was worth every penny. My vote surely hasn’t been counted yet, and won’t make a difference, but the results do tell an interesting picture about where America is today. America is polarised, and confused, and even though the Republicans didn’t have the red wave they had hoped for, the Democrats still have a long way to go to explain to those American voters who make or break elections (white, working class) as to why they should vote for their health and their wallets and not their guns or wanting to control women’s bodies. Packaging is so important. This is the TikTok era. We are visual and impatient. No one has any time or desire to read policy proposals. They vote for people. People who look like them and say the right things. That is why Hillary never stood a chance. She wasn’t likeable. That is why Biden is a problem if he runs again. He is too old.
A few of my thoughts this morning, in no particular order:
I would comment on the whole Musk fiasco — to leave or not leave Twitter — but I am still really hoping, against all odds, that Twitter doesn’t die because I do not have the time or headspace to adopt yet another platform, and I am not a video person, not sure I can transition to TikTok. The thing is, after I listened to a few fascinating podcasts with interviews with Twitter engineers — Musk is running the company by tweet. They learn about his next move from his tweets, not all hands emails. So perhaps he will not kill the one thing that gives him pleasure, the ability to tweet out to the world whatever the fuck he likes. I am hoping for all of our sake he will fix what he has just broken, but I am perhaps too naive. No one is too big to fail, not even the richest man on the planet.
In closing, I would love to share with you this TikTok which is Ukraine in one video. I cannot wait to go back to Kyiv again. Maybe someone can send me on a humanitarian mission? When I visited this February, I was like, that’t is, this is my city. It was absolute love at first sight.
Thank you for reading and your continued support, and for your understanding when I don’t find the time to write as often as I would like to.
Kyiv has been on my list of places to visit for nearly 50 years. I hope I might be able to do something about that one day in the not too distant future.
Please, Tanja let me know about the Xmas project.