Vita is waiting for me in a central Vienna cafe filled with gaudy red velvet furniture. She is early and gives me a big smile when she greets me. We begin where these conversations usually start, turning the clock back a year ago. Vita explains she was convinced the Russians would attack. She plays online games, strategic games, with players from across Russia. “I know how they think. They always attack without a plan. They always act like ‘we are Russians and god is on our side’.” She knew players online from all over Russia: the Urals, Far East, Chuvashia, Tatarstan, Ulyanovsk. We agreed the further you go from Moscow, the worse the Russian delusion of grandeur grows. Vita knew how anti-western their mindsets were. “Monkeys with grenades,” she says, and I think to myself I never heard that exact phrasing before.
When the war began, Vita was working as a sales trainer (educator of salespeople) for a chain of print-shops with three locations in Kyiv. At work, everyone was talking about what may or may not happen. Those from Donestk, Luhansk, they knew what Russia was capable of. Everyone talked about will they go abroad, or not. Looking back, half stayed in Kyiv. They had husbands, elderly relatives who could not or would not leave.
On the morning of the 24th, Angelina was with her dad in Zhitomir. Vita heard everything that morning because she was living in a part of Kyiv near the Hostomel airport. At 5am it started “bakh bakh”. Vita heard things flying by in the air. She didn’t know what to do. She headed for the bus to go to work when she got a message in the group chat: stay home. Vita’s sister was leaving by car. She had a spot for Daniil. Vita took him by bus and metro to reach her sister’s car. His aunt would drive him out of Kyiv. Everything was closed except for food stores and pharmacies; the metro was packed. Vita’s boss called later. She was alone at home. He said she has 5 minutes to decide. He has a spot in his car. She packed a backpack and left. They took the road by Hostomel. They passed tanks on the way. As the drove, checkpoints were set up behind them. Vita’s boss explained he would be driving straight through to the Polish border. Her plan was to go with him and then bring the kids.
They drove in a caravan of two cars, packed with people, things, pets. The line on one border was 50km long. On another, 12km. They spent three nights in the cars with barely any sleep. Vita would walk along outside, waking up the other drivers. Local people brought them food. They had left Kyiv on February 24. On February 28, they crossed into Poland. Vita’s plan was to get to Austria and bring her kids to her.
Vita took a train from Poland to Austria, and asked volunteers at the Vienna train station where she could sleep. She was taken to Hotel du France (incidentally, which was then the “covid” hotel). She was then among the lucky first arrivals given housing in Vienna: a dorm room in a NGO-run dorm in Vienna’s 16th district. Vita called the Ukrainian embassy. She went to the Ukrainian church. She begged her ex-husband to let the kids leave Ukraine and come to her in Austria. He, an ex-soldier, had enlisted on February 24. At first he protested, but then agreed to let Daniil and Angelina leave Ukraine. Daniil was still 17 at the time. An aunt volunteered to make the journey with them; she wanted to go to Czechia. The aunt managed to travel with the children to Slovakia (leaving the country with just birth certificates in the case of the kids) and from there they took a train to Austria. Vita met them. Her daughter was put in her room, and her son is now assigned a room to share with a teenage boy here on his own. The boy’s family went back to Ukraine but left him because he is 18. It is hard for him alone and he is often depressed. Vita is happy her son can at least provide the boy companionship.
The first month was the hardest. They only received €50 per family, one time. The state payments had not started yet. Vita scanned the Telegram groups to find out where one could get groceries, where one could eat for free. She and the kids came to the cafeteria at the train station, only to be turned away, told it was only for those Ukrainians travelling onwards. I tell her I remember that cafeteria and how angry I was when I heard that, that I refused to volunteer anymore there because of that decision. Vita tells me she left that day and burst into tears. It was so awful to have to beg for food, and then to be turned away…
Vita received her first social payment from Austria in April. They went to ACV several times each time waiting in line for hours before the system clicked on something and her insurance was activated. On the third attempt, it finally worked. You needed an insurance number to go to German class. She enrolled with Daniil in May. Angelina was signed up for a local middle school, a short walk from their dorm. Daniil was placed in an evening school for older Ukrainian teens, with instruction in German, and some math and English. His age made it difficult so this program was create. It served 50-60 kids like him.
The conversation turns to Austria. “The Austrians see the war as something far away; they don’t want their utility bills to get any more expensive.” But, Vita explains, “don’t they see they are affected by the war already?
Vita mentions one of her Ukrainian neighbours has received a grant and is documenting the memories of those who survived Mariupol. She talks about the Russian soldiers who committed war crimes, how they lived in “swamps” and could not believe how well ordinary Ukrainians lived.
I ask about school. Angelina will have to repeat the year again. She didn’t pass the MIKA-D test. Vita told her not to worry about it with a wave of a hand, like forget about it. She would like Daniil to attend the evening school for one more year, to improve his German, maybe then he could apply to university. She hopes he will be able to work this summer. If they both start working, it might be possible to rent private accommodation. At the moment, the mathematics don’t add up.
Vita is frustrated with her first experience with German language courses. A Serbian woman gathered a whole group of Ukrainians who didn’t know any German (so they should have been A1), told them they could all go to A2, offered the course, pocketed the money, and they didn’t learn anything. Vita then researched teachers and found a very good one for B1. She read reviews. She passed A2 in December.
We talk about work. Vita would like to work in Vienna but doesn’t know how to look for work in her profession without fluent German. She was given some advice about how to write a cover letter in German and put together her CV. Maybe a professional re-education course? If both mom and son will be employed, maybe they can rent something in summer…Vita has painstakingly set aside money from each payment they received. She hopes she has enough for a deposit saved up.
Vita says over and over she fears the war will last a very long time. She believes Ukraine is protecting all of Europe right now. Russia would not stop there. She knows Austrians are angry about the war, about the expensive cars from Ukraine here. She explains she met many people here who think Ukrainians receive the same social benefits “like the Syrians” but “we do not get €900”. She is referring Grundversorgung vs. Mindestsicherung. “We only get €200.”
I ask about child support, Familienbeihilfe. They stopped paying as soon as her son turned 18 even though he is in school. They wrote that the school he is attending does not count as school. So Vita went to Diakonie. They called the Finanzamt. They asked “what should this woman do?”. The answer was: show the curriculum. So from finance ministry to NGO to school, Vita ran around trying to gather the information which would magically reinstate Daniil’s payments. She even asked the social workers in her dorm to help formulate the proper response in German. Imagine just how many paid hours have now been spent of social worker / NGO employee time just because one bureaucrat in the finance ministry stopped a payment and now it has to be fought for. We are talking about €140/month roughly. Unbelievable. Vita is still waiting for an answer.
She did receive a Klimabonus. She was thrilled. She has been donating plasma. You get €30 per donation. She has gone twice already. She bought her kids new sneakers. They joke that mama paid for the shoes with her blood. Vita runs a very tight budget. She is saving up.
Her ex-husband was wounded on the front, recovered, and will be sent back again soon. Her brother is also on the front, but her parents don’t tell her much. Her parents are managing. Vita has not gone home to Ukraine once yet. Her son can’t go home. They need to make him a new internal passport with 18, and that will only be possible if a “mobile” unit from Ukraine comes to somewhere in central Europe. Ukraine’s own consular services are under an enormous strain trying to issue new passports to all the millions of their citizens who suddenly went abroad as refugees.
Vita refers to the book, Black Swan. The war, the Russians thought, would last three days, and now it is looking like it will last a very long time.
I ask about her personal life. She has been dating. She finds the Middle Eastern men quite aggressive, but an Iranian did give her a Guess handbag as a gift (she shows me proudly). Sometimes they find her on Telegram, sometimes they approach her on the street. Sometimes at the gym (she bought a membership for €1/month for 6 months and then €24/month for the last 6 months). She has been dating a Syrian guy. He is young (28) full of energy and she finds him really inspiring and so interesting. He was recently in Turkey where his relatives were near the area of the earthquakes. He came back very depressed. He studies very hard. They give each other tips about German classes and the like. He too has been here one year. Vita tried dating Austrians but wasn’t impressed. She sent one a link to a used fridge on Wilhaben, hoping he could help make a phone call in German. He refused to make the call. She realised he was a dead end. Vita tells me what a good cook she is, how she made a special rice dish for the Syrian last night. “People who have experienced being a refugee, they know what we are going through.”
We talk about Ukraine now, the uncertainty. We talk about navigating life here. Vita is very grateful for the advisors at Diakonie. “They don’t just stop when they hear ‘no’. They ask what can we do to fix it, to make it happen?”.
I explain to Vita I have to get on the road. I am driving out of town to deal with a Ukrainian family in personal crisis. She nods in understanding. Vita shows me a few photos on her phone. I love this one of her kids. Just normal family life. When everything is everything but normal.