Tanja Maier Profile picture
Feb 6 27 tweets 8 min read
A year ago today I landed in Kyiv for the first time. I fell in love from the first minute. Mesmerized. Today, it feels like a decade ago. I am also having the most bonkers day ever. 🧵 to come. Sometimes it’s hard to believe what life throws at you.
The morning starts with me planning to ask a quick question at the bank and then buy 8 Hofer cards, 1 of which I must deliver to an elderly woman at the arrivals center who does not have a smartphone. She is waiting for me at 11am and I have no way to tell her I may be late.
The bank takes forever. School holidays so no staff. The Viennese pensioners are freaking out over the long wait. I take my chances and wait it out: 45 minutes. Mad dash to the nearest Hofer, I buy 8 cards but no time to post them. I rush to arrivals center. 10 min to spare.
I quickly stuff the other 7 remembering there is a post office nearby. I match each receipt & card before sealing envelopes while sitting in my car. My phone is buzzing. An eccentric character I met last week asks me to call journalists he wants to complain about the Red Cross...
...I tell him I cannot help bc I suspect there are two sides to the story as to why he got kicked out and moved to Stadthalle. Toss in these envelopes. All going to women with non-Vienna addresses. Part of my new prioritization system. Race back to arrivals center.
There I meet a woman I gave a card to last week. She came alone leaving behind her bed-bound mother in Kyiv and her 14yo kid to care for granny. If she has a plan it isn't really clear to me. I explain you cannot get housing for family members who aren't physically here yet.
She introduces me to an older woman with dementia who came alone. I hand the woman the card. She isn't able to answer many questions. She seems to think she will stay at the arrivals center indefinitely. What do you do in such cases? Doesn't seem capable of self care. Tough one.
They introduce me to an older, skinny man. His whole family is in France but his ex-wife doesn't let him join his grandchildren. He asks for cigarettes. Ok, I say, and ask where the nearest Tabak is. The long red ones. I nod and run down the street.
When I get back I ask about the eccentric guy who got kicked out and wants to tell the world and journalists and the Red Cross how they should behave. Oh, the lady says, you mean him? He was drinking.

I knew it. This is part of the problem when you put €50 in the wrong hands.
Run back to my car. Open my phone. Multiple messages from Ukrainian moms saying a "volunteer" called them saying it was from me and asked if they need any help. Takes me an hour but figure out who it was and where the miscommunication happened. Another 30 min to explain it all.
A 3 min long voice message from a mom from Dnipro I met last week. Now living with her 14yo son in a tiny room in a central Vienna "hotel". She explains she used her Hofer card for internet and toilet paper and soap bc the hotel has none and she hasn't received any money yet.
She would like that volunteer who is calling everyone to call her! She needs help! She cannot understand why basic things aren't available!

I am unfortunately so used to this by now I have to explain those in charge know and obviously do not care or they would do something.
Another five texts requesting cards. Same address -- I write only one per family. They write back, we are neighbours, not family! Ok, add you to the list.

Do I know if you can leave Denmark and come to Austria? Yes, I think so. A cook, you said? Here is a job offer I just saw.
A friend sends me photos of 2 adorable black cats she just adopted from Ukraine. They came with little Ukrainian pet passports. Perhaps I should write a blog post about all the animals of Ukraine? Perhaps, I answer.

A woman wants to sell her dog. May she post in my group?
Another €50 received, thank you. Make a note it should go to the old man I missed by a few hours. He got transferred at 9am. I asked him to send me his new address.

A woman writes, my laptop charger died, can you help me?
A message from Tirol. Am I aware that Austria is not recognising Ukrainian years of work experience? I am not really sure what she is referring to or why she is telling me this. I guess it helps to tell someone. I reply with a thumbs up emoji.
Another mom from Tirol asks me for the second time if I can help find a donor to fund her daughter's dance lessons. I have already explained once that dance lessons probably don't fall under the realm of urgent needs and therefore I don't feel comfortable asking. I feel badly.
Chat over Instagram with a fellow volunteer who also fund-raised for the mom of 3 with cancer. I found a translator, but shouldn't we offer the translator some compensation for going to the hospital? Back and forth. Another 10 minutes gone.

And so it goes.
A year ago on Feb 6 these kids were singing in central Kyiv and now I wonder where they all are, what happened to them? Some days I cannot get my head around how we all got here. How this became all of our lives. It is a blur and doesn't stop even when you try to set boundaries.
A card arrives in my mailbox from a Ukrainian-sounding name. I put it in the mail to a small town in Tirol. Her aunt just arrived. I remember that request.
A pregnant mom calls. She thinks she has pneumonia again but the doctor sent her away until the labs come back but she isn’t sure she can wait 48 hours, what should she do?

Another family texts: Metro didn’t let them in with their scan of their Ukrainian card.

What next?
A few hours of quiet. Go through my teenage girls’ clothes. I have abandoned such mom duties for almost a year. A Ukrainian takes some them for her niece. Her sister is at home, going through divorce, two kids. She will send the big bag via one of those vans. €1 per kilo.
My inbox. I reply with a voice message that if it’s private accommodation there may not be much to do other than move / find new. Yes ask the NGOs, but even a mom with cancer 3 kids didn’t get an apartment. Send contacts of free lawyers re rental contract.
This is from that same refugee hotel in downtown Vienna without toilet paper.

Midnight. Going to bed sad and wondering what we can do to fix this obviously fixable problem wishing the politicians would finally read this and act. Money. Small amount fixes 90% of issues.
@threadreaderapp pls unroll
This got a lot of views. Understandable. I watched it myself about 3 times before posting!

I write a Substack. It's free. A lot now abut life in Austria for Ukrainian refugees. Today an update from Vienna on (still) pressing issues:

tanjamaier.substack.com/p/wien
A few additional thoughts on this. There are so many layers involved. Federal. City. Donor organizations. NGOs charged with implementation. How can there be so many chefs in the kitchen and yet no good food? It is all over-engineered. Cash in hand. Best solution since day one...

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More from @tanjamaier17

Feb 5
My waiting list is 25 and counting. I am going to start putting women forward and men back. Exception: handicapped, elderly. It’s interesting it used to be only women & kids, then many pensioners. Now it’s everything. You have to be fair but that also requires judgement calls.
When demand exceeds supply and I never know when the next card is coming. Some aid organizations only help women with kids. Those in villages usually have less access to help than cities. So you shuffle envelopes a bit. Not a science. To donate pls DM or paypal.com/paypalme/groce…
My small wait list are only those who texted me directly. @badlogicgames has a huge wait list from our website. You’ll see from the data we have already helped a sizable percentage of Ukrainian families in Austria (~50k+ in total from latest data I saw).

cards-for-ukraine.at/donate
Read 6 tweets
Feb 4
It's not scandalous an infamous FPÖ politician made an openly xenophobic comment on TV to Viennese teens.

It's not scandalous ÖVP will send a nearly all male line-up to NÖ parliament.

It's not scandalous Russia could easily bribe some Austrian MPs.

All sadly very on brand.
Live a few days here as a woman who speaks German with an accent and has been helping some of the most vulnerable people navigate "the system" for nearly a year and NONE of this surprises you. People who vote for both parties know it and still keep voting. Private sector -- same.
I read this piece about Raiffeisen in Russia and thought good at least someone is finally reporting what we already know but should be talked about: creation of "shareholder value" vs having a moral backbone and being part of a war-mongering economy.

derstandard.at/story/20001432…
Read 6 tweets
Feb 4
This is so beautifully written and contains layers of nuance I have totally failed to convey (I didn’t even attempt) in my retelling of my exchanges with Ukrainian refugees.
The $50 per person per month is true and it is the only official support for IDPs. There are tensions between Russian-speaking Ukrainians who sought safety in western Ukraine and felt ripped off by locals. There are heated arguments even online about which language to speak.
I’ve met many families from Donbas who were refugees in 2014 didn’t feel like they got a warm welcome in Kyiv and other cities back then and now it’s deja vu but in Europe. Ukraine is a huge country and yes: it’s complicated.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 4
My inbox this morning

paypal.com/paypalme/groce…
From the arrivals center. How will she boil the eggs?!

cards-for-ukraine.at/donate
Завдяки Вам маємо на місяць запасів!!!!!
Read 5 tweets
Feb 3
I’m scared to jinx it but I smell tiny baby steps of progress here as the state begins to realize many Ukrainians are here for a while. They are not prepared to blow up their broken system, but they seem prepared to s l o w l y make some tweaks. Namely:
They will remove the additional step of employers having to ask AMS permission to hire Ukrainians (hopefully this will be passed into law by spring). This would mean full equal access to the labor market for those not asking for social payments.
For those living in free housing and/or receiving rent subsidy and social payments, there will be a new calculation as to how much they can earn legally & how much of those benefits they can keep. It’s complicated & not fixed yet. It should in theory make more paid work possible.
Read 7 tweets
Feb 3
Доброе утро Татьяна, моя первая покупка в Билле за ваучеры. Спасибо вам большое 🤗

cards-for-ukraine.at/donate Image
The cot. Food you can eat right away or make with boiled water. The reality for many right now. Image
4 more cards in the mail today. Danke ❤️

paypal.com/paypalme/groce… Image
Read 4 tweets

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