While accompanying a journalist from Deutsche Welle to Nowoselyzja, I finally get to know A. personally. So far we have known each other from telephone conversations and messages via messenger, A. is committed to helping internally displaced people in the village, in Novoselytsia there are currently around 500. In normal life she was a notary, 25 years of professional experience, now she is a volunteer and raises relief supplies , wherever she can. Among other things, she works for the...
Power rationing is good for improving your own time management. One becomes effective in getting things done like never before. "Not a single time management seminar could teach me skills like the local power company did with their emergency shutdown plan," is the common joke. Feelings of happiness are generated that arise, for example, in the last few minutes and seconds, when you just manage to wash off that one pot under the running water, or yourself in the shower,...
This text only exists because I'm traveling. Because traveling abroad now also means having electricity around the clock and being able to work on your laptop whenever you want. And keep it warm. Not only indoors, but also outdoors - because I'm in Italy. On November 18, I am allowed to give a lecture at the University of Bologna, the oldest in Europe: "Contemporary Ukrainian authors: Writing and acting against the Russian war of aggression". If I had to describe...
My return journey from Germany back to the Ukraine on Saturday begins with a succinct "Train cancelled" on the electronic display. A promising start at 5.15pm in Bremen given that my flight from Memmingen is at 10.05am the next day. After a twenty-minute wait at the travel center, the information is, "Yes, unfortunately your ICE is cancelled. There should be a replacement train, but it's canceled too."A scene that Eugène Ionesco or Samuel Beckett could use immediately for an absurd...
For me, Monday morning and the last day of October begin in Darmstadt, after an event in the Vahle studio, the "Czernowitz Literature Day". It would be so nice if the circumstances were different. I would like to use the time before my departure to the north for work and open my laptop at six o'clock German time. It's seven at home. I chat with S., the head of the International Office, he came back from the University of Timișoara...
Sometimes it seems to me that humanitarian work creates a certain dependency. You can't live without it. Or at least I can't live without it. Or it is a therapy substitute. Otherwise all the stories I hear and read - from the front, from the liberated areas, directly from refugees - would crush, decompose, psychologically destroy me. The Tsar's slaves came to enslave Ukraine. The slaves are the worst when they suddenly have weapons in their hands that give them...
Some parents come to terms with the "Russian world", the children leave and get involved in their home country. source site
Putin is bombing the country again, but the Ukrainians are defying the attacks, thermal underwear is in high demand. source site
On Friday morning I'm sitting on the train to Frankfurt and chatting with my acquaintances from Zaporizhia and Mykolaiv after reading the depressing night and morning news. O. from Zaporizhia writes: "Supposedly 28 dead in the convoy, but there are still many more. There is a crowd of people there". I ask why people are going to the occupied territory. It's actually going to Vasylivka, O's home town. "Many have relatives there. For others it's a small business, they transport...
What do the Ukrainians do when three hundred thousand Russian soldiers are deployed? And the Russian President threatens to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine? Ukrainian social networks are reacting with memes and jokes, like this: The picture shows the supreme commander of the Ukrainian armed forces Valeriy Zalushnyy on the phone. He says into the phone: "Mr. Minister of Agriculture, please prepare your proposals as to where we will bury all the Russians. Exactly where the Ukrainian soil still needs...
