Ukraine's final challenge: getting out

After leaving Sytske and Paul, I wandered into the main train station in downtown Kyiv. I was about 90 minutes early, so I spent time in the main terminal hanging out and talking with Laura over the phone. Being that this was the main train hub for the entire country, there were thousands of people coming and going every minute. This was where I saw more of the wounded troops arriving from the frontlines. They looked wary, but not beaten as they met loved ones they had obviously not seen for months..

After about an hour, I decided to make my way to my track. My train was there, but they were still cleaning it and not yet letting anyone on. I bought a ticket for a sleeper compartment as my train would travel through the night and arrive in Lviv at just after 6am.

The main train station in Kyiv is located adjacent to the main power plant that supplies heat to residents of Kyiv during the winter months. Because of this, the Russians execute missile strikes in this area on a frequent basis trying to disrupt civilian life in Kyiv. Before I entered the train station, I could see that the area had not been hit recently, but I didn’t think anything about that.

At around 10pm, I was tired and ready to finally get on the train and go to sleep… and then the missile siren went off. Ugh.

Having never been present for a missile strike, my pulse quickened and I instinctively found a concrete stairwell to walk under. But… similar to my earlier experience with Volodymyr and Rita, no one else seemed to even notice there was a siren. Families walked by naturally, a man flirted with a pretty young woman a few feet away, and a few others also waiting for the train to open stood motionless scrolling their phones. After about 10 seconds, I decided I was too tired to worry about this, and if the locals were unphased… I should be too. After a few minutes, the siren subsided and there was no trace that anything had even happened.

Finally my train opened, and I was able to find my compartment and go horizontal. Before much longer, the train began to move and make its way West toward Lviv.

I awoke the next morning just before 6am. Even with the sound and harsh ride, I slept better than I expected. I got up, brushed my teeth, and packed up everything into my trusty backpack. I then noticed that my window had a frosted pane I could lift to see outside. Remember when I said I packed light, and only brought the bare minimum of items that would fit in my backpack??? Imagine my reaction to seeing that it was now snowing with a temp of about 25 degrees! I had checked the weather a few days before I left… but apparently not right before I left. I opened my magic backpack and decided I could wear 2 pairs of my light weight hiking pants, 3 T-shirts, my sweatshirt, rain jacket, and a knit hat I had in the bottom of my backpack. I also found a couple glove warmers I’d packed just in case and broke those open to get them activated. 

Good news! My backpack was now considerably lighter!

When I finally exited the train in Lviv station, it was COLD! (and with a few inches of fresh snow on the ground) I quickly raced through the station as I was told there were buses that would take me to the border. When I exited the station, there were no buses… and no one spoke English. Just as I was about to bring up Bolt on my phone, I heard someone speaking in English behind me. It was a young couple, Olivia and Joeri. I quickly approached them and asked if either spoke Ukrainian. Turns out Olivia grew up in Ukraine. They were concluding a trip visiting her mother in Kyiv. I asked if they knew where the buses were located to get to the Polish Border, to which they replied that they’d already hired a driver … and I could kick in and join them. Awesome. After a few minutes locating our driver, they shared that they were heading back to their home in Amsterdam.

Gift from heaven…

The drive from the Lviv train station to the border crossing is about 90 minutes, but our driver seemed to want to beat his previous record. We were doing some ground-level flying. At one point, he slowed for a bend, and then sped back up. I asked why he slowed? Olivia translated that when he drove the route earlier that morning, there was a guardrail there. Now it was empty with skid-marks into the field. After that, he was back in ‘Stig’s Ukrainian cousin’ mode passing everything in front of us. All this while we listened to a Ukraine cover band singing Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” … in Ukrainian. We finally made it to the border without ending in a ball of fire.

I’ve never crossed a border on foot before. Through the cold and snow we walked down a long fence-lined chute topped with barbed-wire. At the end, there was a nondescript square building with a cyrillic sign that I suspect must have read, “No men between 18 and 50 permitted.” To be sure, Olivia decided to go last in our group of three in case she needed to jump in for any reason and translate. Other than completely searching through all of our bags, and scrutinizing our passports, we were allowed to exit Ukraine and enter Poland… where we then met with the Polish border control after traveling through the no-mans-land between Ukraine and Poland.

The Polish border guards were equally strict. Each of us was grilled on why we were in Ukraine and what we brought back with us. And then they searched our luggage. I figured I was gonna lose my Ukraine flag from the 108th Arkan Mountain Brigade… but they seemed to think it was part of my dirty laundry as it was mixed in with the T-shirts and hiking pants I wasn’t currently wearig. Everything was stuffed back into my bag and I was free to enter Poland… through another long fenced in corridor topped with barbed-wire. We three were now in Poland.

The Polish side of the border lets out into the middle of nowhere. You exit border control into a muddy parking lot with people milling around. There was a large truck filled with military backpacks next to a bus filled with foreign fighters volunteering to fight for Ukraine. On the far side of the muddy lot, we saw a bus. Being that there was nothing else out there, the only place that bus could be going was Przemysl. Lucky for us, Polish and Ukrainian are very similar. Octavia was able to verify this was THE bus… and it was going where we needed. So, we piled in with a bunch of Ukrainian families and headed to Przemysl.

Once in Przemysl, we found our way to the train station where we bought tickets to Krakow. Our train wasn’t for another hour or so. We found a nice cafe and enjoyed a relaxing breakfast before making our way to the right track and boarding our train. What I didn’t realize until after leaving the cafe was the disparity I had walked right through to get my morning croissant.

My breakfast cafe in Przemysl

Przemsyl has become a major junction for people moving between Ukraine and the EU. As such there are the fine Euro cafes with beautiful architecture and fine food, but those are there for the wealthy Europeans going back and forth. The fleeing Ukrainians see something completely different. Where my experience over the last several days felt like the ultimate adventure, I learned life is very different for Ukrainians fleeing the war.

Enter my new friends Darina and her 4-year-old daughter, Anastasia, and Ludmila, a Ukraine student) who I shared a passenger car with on the 2.5 hour train from Przemysl to Krakow. Octavia and Joeri were in a different car, so I spent the entire time engaging with my newest friends.

Darina is married to a professor at the big university in Kyiv. During one of the last major Russian bombardments on the city of Kyiv, Darina and her husband made the painful decision for Darina and Anastasia to move to Berlin where they could live safely. Darina’s husband, like all males between 18 and 50, is not allowed to leave Ukraine. Darina and Anastasia return to Kyiv periodically but the strain is very difficult. Their path from Kyiv to our shared train compartment started at the same train station I did, but differed in most every way. Darina boarded with a 4yo, and luggage. She sat upright in a seat the entire night while Anastasia slept in her lap. They did find the bus in Lviv that took them to the border where they too did the border crossing on foot. Where I entered the chute for EU citizens and Americans, they went through a separate chute for Ukrainians. For them, the Ukraine side went smoothly, but the Polish side was something else. They were interrogated while all of their luggage was unpacked and searched with little compassion or regard for what they had endured for the 16 hours let alone the last few years. Once they had been thoroughly searched, they repacked everything including all Anastasia’s books and toys necessary for 4yo to travel the 24 hour trip from Kyiv to Berlin. Given my experiences in Poland, I suspect it was a good thing they did not have anything of value. From there they were herded like cattle through another chute through the snow with barbed wire on both sides where they emerged into the same muddy parking lot and boarded another of the old Russian buses like I rode that would take them to Przemysl. When I went to a warm cafe and got a croissant to wait, they huddled together on the snowy outside platform for an hour waiting to board. The wonder of it all is that I never heard even a whimper from Anastasia even though they had another 8 hours before arriving in Berlin. And they’ve been making this trip every couple months for short reunions with Darina’s husband.

Darina also shared about life in Berlin. For my American friends, Germany is a country where you don’t find a lot of English speakers. To survive, you need to learn German, especially as a refugee. This was a stressful topic for Darina who shared that she is learning what she can, but Anastasia is now speaking Ukraine and ‘Deunglish’. Although she sees most Germans as welcoming, she’s seeing a growing number who are less than happy that she and Anastasia are in their community. More than anything, they just want to go home and be a happy family in their own country.

I asked Darina and Ludmila about Ukraine's sentiment for Americans. Both said that after the White House meeting with Zelenski, there was anger against Americans, but they said that was short lived as people realized that not all Americans supported Trump’s policies on Ukraine. They apologized to me for having their initial feelings of anger towards Americans. I told them I didn’t blame them, and in fact I completely understood them having those feelings. Even with that, they were adamant that it was unfair for them to be mad at Americans and that they were very appreciative of American help in Ukraine. They were not thrilled with Trump, but they were careful to temper even those feelings. It was completely surreal that they would be apologizing to me.

As we arrived in Krakow, I wished Ludmila, Darina and Anastasia safe travels for the remainder of their trip to Berlin. I then met back up with Octavia and Joeri where we grabbed a Bolt to the airport. After about 17 hours of trains, crazy drivers, sneakers, Soviet era buses and Bolts I hadn’t even traveled half the distance home from Kyiv. But now I could board a flight without anyone trying to shoot it down. 

My body had an intense reaction once it settled into the plane seat. It was as if my pulse-rate dropped 30bpm and my blood-pressure did the same. Only then did I realize just how tired I really was.

Three hours later I was home with Laura and Alex in Amsterdam. This was one crazy week... and I look forward to doing it again!