Post

Tanja Maier

Aug 11, 2023 • 69 tweets • 29 min read • Read on X

Just realized the last time I took a long distance bus I was a teenager. I feel wholly unprepared. I do not see the promised WC nor free wifi (eeek). Everyone seems to have done this before. The bus is completely full: women, kids, pensioners. Two drivers. €190 round trip 🧵

I found the toilet AND actually more importantly, the plug for the charger. Hallelujah! Did you all know Hofer is Aldi in Hungary? We just passed a huge distribution center. I am amazed by how quiet and considerate ALL the passengers are. Even the kids. It’s unbelievable.

I naively didn’t quite understand the bus actually makes all the stops. Budapest.

1.5 hours & counting exiting the EU at Zahony. Hungarians check the contents of cars and vans leaving with flashlights. Even looked at bus luggage. I stupidly didn’t bring any snacks. I assumed you could buy some along the way. Everyone exceptionally calm & patient.

Ukraine border took another hour. Armed soldier on the bus, twice to check passports, then they take all the passports, then they bring them back. The wait into EU on way back is several hours. These stamps feel like a decade apart, at least.

Pit stop for gas and coffee. The stray dog greeted us. And the sunrise. The road is bumpy but everyone seems happy to be on Ukrainian soil again. We will be 3 hours late getting into Kyiv. The wifi now works.

Mukachevo. A handful of women getting off here. The bus stop is the local gas station.

I was not prepared for this stunning, quite foggy, hilly countryside. Unlike anything I’ve seen before. I am so tired but I also want to see everything.

Stryi. I think this very quick stop was only packages being handed over. One granny who handed a bag over has Chevrona Kalyna as her ringtone.

Not the Lviv of the postcards. 15 min pit stop.

Now it gets flat and more familiar agricultural and semi-rural landscapes. Like Poland and parts of eastern Austria. Beautiful churches here; in nearly every cemetery you see at least a few large 🇺🇦 flags marking the graves of fallen soldiers.

On the other side of the road (and too far for my phone camera, it would involve a cameo of an intense game of Uno) local grannies are selling fruit and veggies in front of their homes, sitting with their plastic buckets, scarves on their heads tied at the back.

Rivne bus station. 15 min to run to the toilet (€0.15) & buy a sandwich (no idea I held up a card to her phone to pay). A lady came on the bus to collect donations for the army. Nearly everyone contributed something. By the local beach there is a sign for the air raid shelter.

Zhitomir. We’ve been traveling now for nearly 24 hours. A lovely mom & daughter got off here. They left Austria permanently. The girl made friends with the boy behind her. He will also stay in Ukraine.

Forests have finally appeared. Mushroom sellers sit on the side of the highway in designated areas with little tables and glass jars.

I made it, finally. Too many thoughts for a tweet. Gorgeous evening here. All feels very surreal.

I would like to share this, from Maidan this evening. Each flag represents a soldier who paid the highest possible price any nation can ask of any individual. It does not feel like a somber war memorial because soldiers are still dying in real time. It is horribly real.

Kyiv is hot and sunny. I went to Nova Poshta an amazing private company that is a national courier service open 7 days a week all works with mobile numbers, all digital. It’s actually totally mind blowing. Sent off 4 care packages including documents, insulin & needles.

My first impressions of Kyiv last night match the first TikTok on my For You: Fri evening interview on Kreschatyk with middle age guy saying nice Kyiv feels like one big summer party but he can’t mentally process it with comparing to life in Ukraine in cities near the front.

It’s not my place to judge and perhaps the one thing I keep thinking about is how are people supposed to act when the risk factor has risen but in an intangible way? Everything here looks & feels totally normal, with the exception of more visible military and the evening news.

The evening news is only about the war. There are talk show programs discussing the war whose format (not content) does not look that dissimilar to Russian TV talk shows. The humanitarian angle shocked me. A mom & grown son in Kharkiv living in a tent outside their apartment bldg bc their home is no longer livable and they have nowhere else to go. This raises the question no one has a good answer to: how much can be expected of the state / private volunteers / ordinary people? Who should be filling which gaps? I also think each person who went to EU is a burden off the system here, but also money being spent that left. Think of all the wealthy who left. They are no longer spending on day to day at home. The economy has to be suffering. The prices feel too cheap, that is perhaps a big indicator. Again — just my early observations, nothing scientific about any of this.

A few shots from last night’s walk & TsUM (surreal). I had a great burger, lemonade and coffee and paid €12.50 including tip at Honey. They close early. Stop serving at 9:45pm even though streets packed with people. Curfew is midnight - 5am.

Just met the incredibly inspiring @NataliaPiskova who wears more hats than I can count! On my Substack soon 😉. Kyiv metro remained Lev Tolstoy square to Heroes of Ukraine square. Took me a second to realize as I changed stations.

@NataliaPiskova Spent the afternoon walking my legs off with K, who was in Austria and decided to come back home to Kyiv one year ago. She is a psychologist and has worked victims since Maidan and the war began in 2014. Am so grateful to her for her hours of insights. Still feels surreal here.

It’s 1:15 am and the air raid alert woke me up. Walked down to hot-ish hotel garage minus 2 floor where they have set up a dozen beds in the garage (!). I can’t sleep down here; took a table seat. This is what the app looks like.

It was short. We took the lift back to our rooms. I now understand better when Ukrainians tell me they follow the two wall rule rather than running up and down each time. I imagine living here you have to mentally accept risk, you can’t do this every night for months on end.

Morning started 7:30am with incredible @IvanSubbotin13 grocery shopping & delivering to Vera Grigorievna (stroke, bedridden) and Liubov Federovna (nearly blind). Ivan feeds 200 grannies 1x month. Each 🛒 costs $40. Donations needed. Please help. PayPal ivansubbotin1983@gmail.com

A 🇺🇦 monthly pension is $80. Of that, $50 goes to gas/electric/water. If you are elderly and don’t have relatives to help, you not only cannot go to Europe nor to shelter when sirens go off (bathroom is best option), you also can’t feed yourself & buy medicine. I thought I was prepared, but what I saw today shocked me. And that’s central Kyiv. Please help Ivan & team if you can:

PayPal ivansubbotin1983@gmail.com

@IvanSubbotin13 This afternoon I met a mega energetic 76yo synchronized interpreter who was in Vienna. We talked for hours, she took me to the local beach. I swam and met her friend who told me her family story, a century of Ukrainian history, all standing in the sun on the banks of the Dnipro.

This has been a never ending day (in a positive sense) much of which I spent in a beautiful suburb with parks along the river. I saw so many young families — babies, toddlers. The war does not appear to be stopping couples/women from having kids. At least at first glance.

Being in Kyiv is like having a newborn — you don’t get a full night’s sleep. In the garage floor -2 again. I met a nice woman from Mariupol who came here from Batumi, Georgia where she now lives for medical treatment. 2 1/2 days by bus via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania.

A longer one tonight. All of 🇺🇦 under alert now. A series of explosions in Dnipro reported. I can’t bring myself to actually go lie in one of the beds here in the garage but you do hear people snoring.

This morning I am on the marshrutka to Bucha from the end of the subway line in Kyiv. The road went right through Hostomel. The damage there is worse than anything I’ve seen yet.

In Bucha I interviewed the 72yo local librarian in the house of culture. Russian tanks were lined up on the street and the soldiers came to her house. She saved her son’s life by telling them he was a Soviet Afghan war vet while 4 Russian soldiers had a gun pointed to his head.

The drive back to the end subway station in Kyiv passes through Hostomel and the damage is still very visible there. The road signs are newly added again. Residents of Bucha told me houses were burned selectively — the Russians knew who lived where and held which position.

I am scheduled to meet a small group of volunteers in 20 min but I’m now stuck in the shelter and my interviewee lives on the left bank: the subway there goes above ground and doesn’t run during air raid alerts. Keep all this in mind when you see images of “normality” in Kyiv.

Parents, I’m told, are choosing schools for Sept on the basis of whether the school has a bomb shelter on the premises. All plans become good intentions, as even if most people ignore the sirens by now, public transport halts. You don’t know for how long…

Sirens are over and we all meet, one hour later. This is the new normal here. I imagine you get used to it, just like people can get used to anything, but it is a constant reminder that nothing about life in 🇺🇦 now is ordinary. I cannot convey enough how calm everyone is by now.

Had a wonderful coffee with three inspiring women all from Brovary.

Marina is in Vienna and we helped victims together after the fatal helicopter crash.

Oksana is feeding 1000+ IDP families.

Dasha is going to front line villages to deliver aid to those who refuse to leave.

Last interview done, this one by video, with Alex who together with a team of 5 is doing evacuations from frontline Donbas towns and bringing humanitarian aid to those who refuse to leave. Here is a CNN interview with him in the field: instagram.com/reel/CnxZQMoI7…

Alex told me about parents who hide their kids, just a few km from the front lines. One mom refused to leave, her 11 and 14yo girls were killed a week later while riding their bikes. Another family of 5 finally left but now asks Alex to evacuate their 🐄. Yes, really.

Oksana

Dasha

Tomorrow morning back to Vienna in what will surely be a 36 hour trip 😬 I will publish several Substacks when I get home. Far more detail to share. Thanks for patience 🩷instagram.com/posohfund?igsh…
instagram.com/nvofond.offici…

And another air raid. Life goes on. No one reacts on the streets.

Good morning from Kyiv bus station ☀️ ours is the yellow one. They say we will reach Vienna by 9am tomorrow but will probably be more like mid-day.

A lady was late asked the bus to wait 10 min for her. Driver yelled at her she yelled at him. The bus waited. The other passengers yelled at her. Then we almost got into two accidents just leaving the parking lot. It’s going to be a long one. There is one plug next to the WC 😢.

The situation on the border into 🇭🇺 is unpredictable. Our driver warned last time they got there 10 buses in line it took 15 hours (!) to cross. So the passengers agreed to drive through as fast as we can via 🇺🇦 without breaks bc we don’t know what awaits us at the border.

Just got an automatic text message from Rivne regional administration with a hotline and Telegram channel. This must be directed at IDPs. Western & central Ukraine now host 5 million+ IDPs from east & south. Similar figure to all of EU.

There was an accident on a two lane road and we’ve been stuck for an hour. A farmer with horse & cart just trotted past us. It’s blazing hot purist but luckily A/C works here. Reports some Kyiv-Vienna trains are also held 9 hours at 🇭🇺 border. I’m having flashbacks to the 90s.

Lviv was a zoo. They gave us 5 minutes. We are racing to the border to stand in line for hours. I don’t get the logic & slowly start to lose my mind. They put on music now. The driver likes to drive super close to the car in front; suppose icon on the front door will save us?!

We are now in the Carpathians, one our way towards Chop. Trying to mentally prepare myself for a long wait. We’ve been promised a pit stop at a gas station before the border🤞🏻

Border. We are the 16th bus in line. Each bus will be inspected 1.5 hours: they check for cigarettes and alcohol, mostly. Both 🇺🇦 and 🇭🇺. 2 packs per person allowed. Looks like we will see sunset and sunrise here. Unbelievable.

11pm and I’ve had lots of fascinating conversations but we’ve moved about 50m. You would think everyone would be done talking about the war but it’s like a painful itchy wound you keep picking at. It is all the conversations.

So it’s been 10 hours and they finally collected our passports. We wait.

🇺🇦 gave us our passports back but 🇭🇺 only lets in one bus at a time and does a full inspection. So we have now been waiting almost 12 hours on the border. Kids, elderly. Everyone is upset and wants to complain. But also want to get to their destination 😞. This is an EU problem!

There were two buses ahead of us with kids from Dnipro going to a camp on Lake Balaton. They also didn’t get priority. They also waited for hours. Another bus Zaporozhye - Napoli. Ternopil - Roma. Can’t even calculate how many days they will travel.

We arrived at 8:30 PM last night and it’s now 9:50 AM and Hungary still keeps us waiting to cross the border. There is no huge line of cars or trucks. This is not traffic. This is a man-made means of screwing over Ukrainians who are leaving war to see family & friends.

I swear I will never go through Hungary again. We now wait to see if they make us take all the luggage off the bus or not. We anxiously watch what happens to the bus ahead of us. Doesn’t look good. They use flashlights (?!). Like a bad movie.

We unpack the whole bus. I’m so done.

They went through every single bag. Even my dirty clothes. I will not spend a single Euro again in Orban’s Hungary.

So one young woman had 10g (!) “too much” e cigarette liquid and now the whole bus waits while she pays the fine. Everyone upset as they have onward train and plane tickets from Vienna. Can’t make it up. A total shitshow.

We finally left. 15 hours on the Hungarian border. Everyone is on their last nerves. They say another 6-7 hours to Vienna.

Budapest. Some passengers ran off to get their flights. When they booked for 5PM they didn’t think it was a problem as we were supposed to be here at 6AM. They don’t let us off the bus to buy a coffee…but one driver now offered to make me a ☕️ bc I said my head will 🤯 soon 🩷

🇦🇹 by all accounts looks like we will arrive 10 hours late. We were scheduled for 9 AM. My last actual meal was Tuesday evening. You lose all sense of day and night and rhythm. Thankful for such nice people to talk with along the way. That’s 🇺🇦 💙💛

Many are going onwards. Munich, Linz. They missed trains and buses. Some left from Kharkiv, they will travel for 3 days to reach their destinations in Germany. They say another 45 minutes. At this point I think we all lost track of time.