At the beginning of the year I accompanied the Green Party politician Katrin Göring-Eckardt to Kiev and attended a concert with her. To this day I still doubt what I should say about it in Germany.
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It was the first time I had traveled to a country at war and I was nervous. Yes, in Kiev in February 2023 the front was already quite far away and I was supposed to accompany the Green Party Katrin Göring-Eckardt, which is why BKA people trained for war zones were there. But I also had a bullet vest and helmet with me and downloaded the air alarm app. Göring-Eckardt could tell that I was excited; a few days before departure she assured me: Everything will be much more normal than I imagined.
And actually, it only took a few hours in Kiev for me to feel more relaxed. Everything was much more normal than I could have ever imagined. At one attraction, someone was walking around in a Minion costume – in case tourists wanted to take photos. There was a big breakfast at the hotel with a view over the city. In addition to alcohol, the minibar also contained hemp chewing gum and condoms, which was not normal, but also not a state of war.
And then we went to a concert just outside of town. Zhadan i Sobaky, the ska band of the writer Serhij Zhadan, was supposed to play. The bar was wood-paneled, there were flags and neon signs hanging on the walls, and the people there were young, wore snake-patterned bell-bottoms, and had tattoos on their necks.
The naivety is a bit embarrassing today
But before the band took the stage, it suddenly became dark. I thought, and this naivety makes me a little embarrassed in retrospect, that the concert would start, but the people didn’t start cheering, no one went closer to the stage, no music. In fact, nothing happened, the concertgoers ignored the darkness, continued talking and drinking their beer. There was another power outage – normality for the people there, but for me a sign that nothing was completely normal.
Before the concert, the power suddenly went out – Kathrin Göring-Eckardt (right) had to talk to the journalists (author on the left) using a cell phone flashlight
© private
Shortly afterwards it really started, Zhadan screamed into the microphone, the crowd screamed with him. He was dressed as a clown, and in between he was auctioning off random items and I really didn’t understand what was going on. That was a shame, because I already understood that much, of course it was about the war, the country, the resistance against Russia. “Slava Ukraini,” people kept shouting – victory Ukraine.
It was very difficult for me throughout the trip to decide what to share with the outside world, what to write down in articles, and what to post on Twitter (really Twitter back then!). I was in this country for a week. But other people lived there, they were there again and again or had relatives in the city – many had lost loved ones. For me it was a week of exciting impressions, for others it was everyday life. I felt disrespectful sharing my insights or pretending I understood something better than others. So I was rather reserved, shared my observations with friends and family, but hardly wrote anything publicly.
Back to German online reality
After this concert that changed, I had the feeling that this should be shown: the people here don’t let themselves get down, they keep partying, they dress up, they drink beer. So I tweeted a video from the concert. And then something I (with my modest Twitter reach) had never experienced before happened.
The video ended up in the wrong circles. A lot of trolls commented that they saw the video as proof of everything: that there was actually no war in Ukraine; for the Greens letting people fight in the war and going dancing themselves; for the war tourism of “those up there”. It was the first time I posted my notices on Twitter and blocked everyone who commented. I knew they were wrong, but at the same time I wondered if I shouldn’t have posted it, if it needed more categorization, if it was disrespectful.
Back then I would have thought that I would always think back to that day, to that concert, to the mood in the country. That I would now perceive every piece of news from Ukraine completely differently. To be honest: it didn’t happen that way. I hardly think about this concert, I no longer read every report from Ukraine, and I deleted the air alarm app from my cell phone a few weeks ago.
But now, while writing this text, I checked again: Zhadan i Sobaky continue to play, not only in Kiev, but also in Kharkiv, Dnipro and Odessa. Hopefully at some point there will be no power outages again.