Lately, I have split my time between Lviv, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Shepetivka, between the places and people who matter, where my work matters. Any sense of predictability has gone out the window, out of the damaged windows of this building I rent my apartment in. Russian ballistic missile attacks against Kyiv have become more frequent, drone attacks against railway trains more insistent, disruptions in civilian logistics more commonplace.
I gave up on long-term planning and instead attempt to slow down as much as possible amid all this context demanding my attention. Agility is my central war-work-life balance practice.
I wish I could teleport. Or, also, I wish I could clone myself into several versions of me who could exchange energies and experiences. One of me-s would live out her life here in the war. Another me would travel back to the rural region of Ukraine where I come from; she’d take care of the land and of the fifteen cats, and of the endless insatiable needs of the family. One me would be abroad, telegraphing notes somewhere from the coast of Spain, raving at the queer parties. Some other versions of me would stay there with the people I miss the most. She’d send her experiences and energies between her various selves like a PayPal, like a Western Union transfer, to fill up the me-s that get tired, and share from the me-s who live in abundance.
I wish it was possible to go to a place and a version of me without traveling the actual distance, to just teleport away from the war for a week, recharge like an EcoFlow portable battery, sleep without needing to be aware of the air alert sirens, then back to the meaningful but dangerous livingness of Ukraine.
Instead, I took a vacation - a week away, in a ‘safe’ country, a stable country, a rich and expensive country without a devastating history of being oppressed in modern history. I took a vacation last week; I wanted to visit a friend. For that, I took this body of mine through several means of transportation, to end up, within hours and hours on end, in a place that’s so different from here, so seemingly secure that it’s almost surreal.
A video from Lake Zurich on the night of the solar eclipse, August 12
Zurich, Switzerland. Burning up just as the rest of Europe from droughts and climate change, this is one of the most liveable cities in the world - as opposed to the least livable city, Kyiv. Swimming in Lake Zurich and the River Limmat, seeing the beautiful mountains - albeit with hardly any snowcaps due to global warming - I did my best to slow down, to go with the flow of the river, to release the constant state of being alert.
That’s the wrong kind of wartime citizen, me. As a Ukrainian, I’m supposed to suffer most of the time instead of affording a vacation visiting a friend in Switzerland. But, to stay in one piece mentally, I wanted to separate from the war zone even if for a week. I had imagined it would do me good. And good it did, though I found myself feeling a bit dissociated from the place and the people around me, as though the rest of it was happening outside of a glass dome. On the inside of the glass dome, I was the observer looking out, cheering but not quite fully partaking in the cheer. I had the privilege to let go briefly, but not completely, knowing that I’m a guest in this possibility to switch the air alerts app off.
Airplanes would fly up above me while I floated on my back in the river. My body, supported by the current, was safe to be carried on and on underneath this aerial object moving fast in the air. I still find it bizarre and experience childlike wonder watching civilian aviation airplanes traverse the sky. It used to be so easy to hop on a plane in Boryspil or Zhuliany and end up some other place in Europe within three hours.
When I arrive at the airport in Zurich to begin my long journey back home, I wish for it to be just a couple of hours. Instead, I know I’d have to change several means of transportation, spend the night on a train, and arrive in Kyiv within no less than 20 hours. However, as Murphy’s law posits, everything that can go wrong will go wrong - and wrong it does go.
I get to the Zurich airport at 8 AM. I fill my water bottle to stay hydrated on the flight. All I carry is a carry-on backpack and a Hardride everyday carry waist bag. I learned that it’s better to pack less to be more agile and have the freedom of movement.
My flight to Warsaw is supposed to take two hours, but the plane lands in Lodz to fill up the fuel tank. As the plane lands, my insides flip. I get motion sick during landing. Then, the plane goes back up in the air for 15 minutes of flight, and we land again. My insides do another flip.
When I stand on solid ground again, I go to the public transit connections, where there are two ticket machines and one of them is broken. I stand in line until I remember that there’s an application to buy the ticket online. My insides and my brain flipped and fried quite a bit, taking away from the much-needed clarity to see the faster solution.
Warsaw Central welcomes me with a commotion. There are three hours until my train to Chelm, so I prioritize lunch and wolf down a Big Mac and a salad at McDonald’s. It’s fast and efficient; it does the job. I don’t look at the schedule board at first. Then I do.
My train is delayed by 72 minutes. Then 99. Then 120. I start working the alternatives: buses are too slow and too few, later trains are much later than the delayed intercity, and then a connection through Lublin remains my one option. Lublin would cost me an extra change of trains but land me in Chelm in time for the Kyiv train. But the Lublin connection is all sold out.
I queue at the ticket office, ask whether I can buy a ticket to Lublin, and am told my existing ticket will carry me on the connecting trains. Over the PA there are announcements, and apologies for the delay, and no information whatsoever about what happens next. I go down to the platform, which is full of people, my backpack heavier than it was this morning, to wait for a Lublin train that is also late.
Then a Kyiv express arrives out of nowhere. Every seat is taken, so I stake out floor space in the compartment by the door. Ukrainian youths come through asking whether anyone here is traveling to Kyiv - I am - we squish in, and go on squishing in, until there is no room anywhere in a train carrying roughly twice the passengers it was built to carry. We don’t know whether Ukrainian Railways will hold our connection at Chelm for a delay. All three hours standing in the train, we don’t know if we’ll make it to our train after all.
We do make it. Ukrzaliznytsia sends a notification to all passengers of the train. I feel seen, taken care of by the good old dear Ukrainian railways. They stayed for us, the passengers delayed in Poland.
At Chelm we board our train, and I can finally lie down. Direct now, all the way home. There are enemy drones somewhere far ahead; the train will stop for them, our attendant will kindly but firmly ask us to leave all our possessions on the train and go outside into the field, into the nearest space, outside of a train that could be a coffin if struck.
On this sleeper train from Chelm to Kyiv, we go through border control in the middle of the night. The guard, under the new regulations, has to take a fresh photograph of every passenger passing through. Eyes open, hair standing up, unkempt.
This little girl from the compartment nearby, inconsolable, woken out of her sleep, wouldn’t open her eyes for the picture. The kid, it turns out, was going back to Ukraine with her mother to see her father, whom she hasn’t seen in a long time. Her trip was also interrupted by delays in Polish railways. She put her little palms over her eyes and wailed. Her mother pleaded with her, cajoled her, tried to bargain with her, to no avail. She would not open her eyes for the border guard. I am with her; the little girl’s mood is how I feel too, after twenty-eight hours to get from one place to another, from a place where you can hold the illusion that it is safe to sleep all night long.
But the guard says ‘Open your eyes’. Keep them open.
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