Our team in the International Office is getting smaller, a young colleague is leaving with her 16-year-old sister. A. didn’t actually want to leave, neither did her sister S., the arguments with her parents were violent, A. had been pretty depressed in the last few days. Now it’s via Romania to Dortmund. We will miss her, a tough, confident, fluent English speaking young woman. The German television team also leaves Chernivtsi and travels further east. That makes me sad. After a few days of working together again and again, you almost feel related. This departure feels like a small personal loss to me.
A second aid delivery will arrive from the IKGS on Friday. This time it’s my turn to drive to the border. The relief goods are loaded in the customs area. The customs officer is in a bad mood and explains to the driver and me that it would be impossible to complete the handover without a Ukrainian translation of the papers, and that we didn’t have this and that required letter. However, the official letter from the military district administration (as the district administration is now called Chernivtsi) and the person of the pro-rector of the University of Suceava make him more forgiving. The Prorector is an integrative person for the universities and the region par excellence: He comes from the Ukrainian part of Bukovina, his mother lives here, he himself studied at the University of Chernivtsi and made a career in the Romanian south of Bukovina. The “Ștefan cel Mare” university in Suceava became one of the first of our international partner universities after reunification. I also receive a sum of money from the Prorector. We will certainly spend the money quickly.
It is very, very bitter to have to ask yourself such questions
The things are unloaded in a student common room of a dorm, quickly sorted and distributed – they go to the local defense troops, to the military hospital, but also to the people in the dormitories. L calls. Another 100 pieces of bed linen sets are ready for collection, I can also pay in euros, the sum will be converted. So we make another detour to the company, we’re lucky with the university bus driver, he’s relaxed and cooperative, that’s not necessarily to be taken for granted. Despite the lunch break in the accounting department there, everything is taken care of quickly and the sheets find their way to dorm number five.
On Saturday there is another shipment of aid, a private initiative by a friend who was born in Chernivtsi and our German ex-cultural manager B. This time it’s “my boys’ turn, I’m on duty at the university myself. There are positions that are now staffed around the clock. Our ex-colleague B. also takes four people with him from the border, they are his acquaintances, two wives, two children. The transport for them can be organized as quickly and easily as is only possible in a digital age: A few days ago an acquaintance, O., from Dnipro contacted me. He’s also in Chernivtsi, he’s there with his car, he’d be happy to help, a coffee together would also be nice. I am very pleased. In recent years, O. has been involved in our exchange projects with the Bredbeck educational center as a group leader. Now I ask him for the transfer to the border. It works, of course, a time is agreed, then I establish direct contact, everything is done with a few clicks, by the way. God bless the internet. And one of the last jokes (which is actually not a joke at all) goes like this: “While the last McDonald’s is closing in Moscow, the first Starlink station from Elon Musk arrives in Chernivtsi.”
The goods are distributed quickly, and some also go to Kyiv. The prorector of a university is in Chernivtsi and picks up the things with her private transport. The next large delivery of medicines is supposed to come from Halle on Wednesday or Thursday, probably a truck. We’re looking at whether and how we can send something to Kyiv again.
Even if you have no idea about warfare, you wonder how this is possible
At 5:30 a.m. on Friday night, the air raid alarm went off. My guest M. and I go into the basement, my mother stays in bed. In my sister’s half of the house, five of us sit in a small but well-protected cloakroom. As M. and I sit down on the chairs, I say: “When we met more than 12 years ago as part of the German-Ukrainian doctoral program, could we ever have imagined that we would one day be sitting in the basement of my house in Chernivtsi? ” Unfathomable are God’s ways. An hour and a half later I can’t sit anymore and I go back upstairs, it’s quiet outside. Our cats want to go inside. It’s bright sun. I stay in the kitchen, half an hour later the all-clear is given.
The news says that Ivano-Frankivsk airport has been bombed, again. During the day we carry an old mattress down to the basement, so you can at least lie down. The air alert on Sunday night is at 3:25 a.m., M. and I go downstairs, I lie down and continue to doze. M. dozes while sitting. Out again at 7:00 a.m. The Ivano-Frankivsk airport was bombed again, according to the mayor it is now completely destroyed. Furthermore, the military training area in Yavoriv in the Lviv region was fired at with 30 rockets. As I write these lines, 35 dead and 134 injured are reported, the numbers are not definitive. Even if you have no idea about warfare and the military, you wonder how this is possible – no air raid alert, no other security measures, when it was clearly to be expected that military sites in western Ukraine would sooner or later be attacked ? It is very, very bitter to have to ask yourself such questions.
Read more episodes of this column here.