Unraveling
I'm back after some much-needed R&R on the Adriatic.
This weekend I was able to get away, solo, for three days, and came back feeling like a new human being. This was, of course, because I went to the same place I have been going back to for decades to re-charge my batteries. And the funny thing is, it still has the same effect. It doesn’t matter that I am now old and in a different place in my life. Maybe each of us has that special place (or if you are lucky, places) which gives us new energy and where we feel completely at home. Anyway, three days of breathing the cigarette-smoke filled salty air drifting off the Adriatic Sea (saw teeny tiny pale pink translucent jellyfish for the first time this visit, as well), a little bit of sun without the summer heat, not too many crowds save for the pensioner tourists from northern Europe, and I felt like a very lucky person for being able to just reset. I know many are not so lucky. I do not take it for granted. God bless cheap flights and rental car companies offering cars with 90k mileage and wonky brakes for a fraction of the price. It was heavenly.
They even built a giant cable car leading up to the top of the highest mountain, providing a nearly 360 view of the Bays of Kotor, Tivat and the open sea towards Budva. I am afraid of both heights and Montenegrin-engineering, and yet I took the journey up (€18 round-trip), enjoyed a heavenly cappuccino and chocolate cake in the crisp mountain air (you would be wise to take a jacket as the temperature is significantly cooler on top). This was the spectacular view on the way down:
So now I am back to reality and I have been thinking about anything uplifting to write about, and to be honest, the pickings are slim. The news out of Russia is that Putin fired his taiga-buddy Shoigu and replaced him with a minister whom all voices on X credit with being someone who can keep a forever war going, economically. In Ukraine, the news is bleak, with Russia advancing in Kharkiv region, and Zelensky cancelling trips planned abroad this week as the situation on the home front worsens.
A good summary here from Semafor. The statistics also unfortunately speak for themselves:
I receive messages nearly every day from Ukrainians who recently arrived to Austria, heard about me, were passed my phone number, and at the moment, I have distributed all the Hofer cards I had. I have to disappoint them. I try not to feel too guilty about it because having helped some people is far better than not having helped anyone, but you still feel terrible that it is a matter of luck whom I can help and whom I must disappoint. I also wonder where they will all live as I do not hear about the authorities in charge of social housing expanding capacity. The systems here are already under strain: healthcare, schools. I was translating in a Vienna hospital this morning for a pregnant woman from Ukraine, and there was not a single patient in the waiting room who spoke German as her native language.
Ukrainians here are now intensely studying the newly-announced rules for applying for a “RWR+” card (an Austrian work permit which counts towards applying for citizenship or permanent residency at a later date). The program has a very high barrier to entry; a parent with a few kids would need to earn around €2000 per month plus have passed A1 German and to have worked for at least 12 of the past 24 months to even qualify to apply. So it is like window dressing. It looks like the government is offering some hard-working Ukrainians a path to a future in Austria, but they will be a single-digit minority. For the other 90%+, this is only another reminder of their fragility of their long-term prospects in Europe. The other 90% are desperately waiting for the EU to announce it will extend “temporary protection” beyond March 2025, but they also know that one day the war will end (no one has any idea when, that is about the only thing everyone agrees on), and the EU might very well tell them all to go home. These years lived in Austria under temporary protection do not count towards any kind of permanent status. It’s like being stuck in a time machine, except time moves forward, children are growing up, babies are being born, elderly are dying (the cost of burial costs, even with cremation, is devastating for families already in mourning), adults are learning German and finding jobs. And one day, that rug could be pulled out from under you. The men? Don’t ask them. They will soon have invalid passports. But they will be alive and with all of their limbs, something their compatriots back home cannot say with certainty.
It is grim. It is so grim that everyone avoids talking about it. You focus on the here and now. Many are working extremely hard right now to save some money and pass levels of German classes to try and have some kind of safety net. It is definitely the phase of each person for him/herself. I no longer have a feeling of what people in Ukraine are feeling right now. I can imagine it is a very difficult combination of anger and depression and fear. And just pure exhaustion.
For more on the cabinet shake-up in Russia, I would recommend this thread by economist Alexandra Prokopenko and this analysis by Alexander Gabuev of what it means for Russia-China relations, too. In other words, what Ilya said:
I wrote at the very beginning, in February 2022, that this all ends only with Putin completely gone, and I still think that to be true. I have no idea when that could be. He has shown remarkable stamina. He recently re-crowned himself. It was almost a non-event. The tsar reminding himself he is still on the throne. I read somewhere there was only one tank on Red Square this May 9 — the rest are…you know where. And although foreign dignitaries from respectable countries were all notably absent, Russia is formally persona non grata, but in practice, Russia seems to be chugging along just fine. When you are young you think the good guys always win in the end. The older I get, the less I believe that to be true, and it is a terrible realisation.
I watch as Ukrainians comment in Telegram groups on the election posters the Austrian far right have hung up across bus stops and billboards. They express the same shock I had when I first saw them when I first moved her. Now this nationalistic-xenophobic populism is considered “normal” and we accept that a little less than a third of the electorate chooses these folks. They like to use that word in German. It sounds like the English one, brings back historical memories many would like to forget. And as the population here evolves, so many cannot vote. And voting is probably, to be fair, the last thing on many of their minds. They are just happy to be here and not somewhere else. But it is hard to call it a democracy with so many not able to participate in this part of civil society, and it is particularly visible in the capital. I use public transport every day, and the city is as ethnically diverse as it has ever been. I completely understand the concerns when people point out, as the news did today, that 70% of kids in Viennese middle schools (this education system divides kids at the age of 10 into “academic” and “not”, middle schools being the “not”) do not speak German outside of school.
Multi-lingualism is a great thing, but you cannot learn a language when you do not have native speakers to emulate. I sincerely doubt teachers are educated in teacher’s college on how to teach a group of preteens the majority for whom German is not their native tongue. This simply wasn’t in the instruction manual. And at the pace this education ministry responds to crises, it will be another decade before someone provides extra funding and resources.
Everything is changing here too, and we will see in the ballot boxes (in which only citizens can vote), what citizens will have to say about all that. I think the changes are very visible to the naked eye if you take just a second to look around outside your bubble. Even compared to just a half a decade ago.
And then events happen that startle you, wake you up like a jolt, like Mama Olya (still in hospital, still recovering from her stroke, but can now both eat and talk, which is already HUGE progress). Like this afternoon, when you open the news and see the prime minister Fico of Slovakia (a relatively pro-Russia politician) was shot and is in reportedly in critical condition undergoing surgery. In broad daylight. Just an hour’s drive from here. I have a friend who was there today, and another friend planning to go to Bratislava tomorrow. It is an easy day trip from here. Some people even commute. This tells me in the back of my head that something like that could also happen here, anywhere.
Just like that.
I said to someone recently I feel the fragility of everything at the moment. It makes you, on the one hand, truly want to seize all moments, on the other hand, it makes long-term planning extremely difficult. And we as humans need goals to work towards. I am grateful that we have been able to maintain Cards for Ukraine for over two years and counting, but I am also painfully aware that I may never send out another card, because all good things eventually come to and end. The public sympathy for families feeling war is not there, because it has been over two years, the images are not new, and frankly, compared to the hell on earth that is Gaza, judging from the few reports we do get, it is hard to argue Ukraine is the worst place right now (all wars are awful, obviously, but it is a matter of proportions, the unimaginable suffering we do not see, like when Mariupol was shut off from the world, these are the scariest times for sure).
So some days, a lot of days actually recently, you just want to take an extra few seconds and hug everyone you love a little tighter. Better once too much than not enough. You dreamed of doing that thing? Do it now. If you can. Or maybe it is just the warm, breezy spring air and the hope which summer nights carry in their thick air.
In closing, I would like to recommend a (totally unrelated!) podcast I stumbled upon completely at random and thoroughly enjoyed.
I have an incredible pile of books waiting on me, too. I am finishing a new Russian novel stereotypically entitled “Russian Winter”, which is actually very good beach reading, and I have next up in my queue, which I am very excited to dive into:
My brain is fried. That is all I have for tonight. I wish I had some kind of deep insights, but at the moment I find them evasive. I am focused on the present, the little tasks each day, one foot in front of the other, etc. Little victories. If you would like to help send a few Hofer cards to new arrivals, please do donate via our website, PayPal, or by emailing me e-giftcards if you are in Austria and can purchase them yourself online. The stores provide a pdf, I pass them on. Most Ukrainians at least in cities are able to find a printer. It even saves a stamp :)
Thank you. And thanks for your patience when I disappear from writing for so long. I like to leave my laptop at home when I do. The mental break is also important. I never get a break from the phone, something I have come to accept, but one less device is still one less device.