27.07.2022, Ukraine, Lwiw: Blick aus einem Autofenster auf Menschen, die vor einer Bank anstehen. Foto: David Goldman/AP/dpa +++ dpa-Bildfunk +++

10.8.2022

“I think I’m standing in front of your house,” is the message on my messenger. Oh, is it 12 already? But George is exemplary on time! When we made an appointment last night, I promised him the cake from the oldest bakery in my neighborhood, but found out 25 minutes ago that it was closed and I rode my bike to the second oldest, where I bought a piece of cheese and apple pie and it looks like the tour in the bike basket didn’t do the apple pie any good. A shame!

I let George in thinking, he’s so young, he couldn’t be much older than my son Boris, who’s 17. After a very intensive school year, Boris is currently camping with his friends in Brandenburg, while George came from Kharkiv yesterday. He’s spent the last three months in Ukraine – not only in my hometown, but also in Lviv, Kyiv, but also in Zaporizhia and Mykolaiv and I don’t think I’ve ever seen an American remember the names of Ukrainian cities could say so without tension. And when he pronounces it, it also occurs to me that it is also the correct, Ukrainian spelling, which unfortunately has not yet arrived everywhere in the West.

He’s been interested in Ukraine for a long time and wanted to go there one day, tells me George, who graduated in political science in the USA, he even finally booked the plane tickets, but when the day of his flight came, there were no flights to Kyiv passenger planes anymore. That didn’t stop George though, he says, trying to place the piece of falling apart apple pie on his plate.

On the train from Poland to Lviv he met a compatriot who was planning to join the International Territorial Defense Legion. Actually, George wanted to do it too, but it turned out differently for him. In the three months he was in Ukraine, he did a lot – helped where he could, where help was needed – delivered food and medicine, helped a lot with the evacuations – the networks of volunteer helpers are well developed and quite effective, he claims.

According to George, there are a lot of Americans out there right now. “It’s very American to say, ‘I’m needed, that’s where I’ll go and get in the car and drive off.’ Sometimes my compatriots overdo it, but in this case I think it’s okay.”

He talks about how he loved Lviv and Kyiv, what great cities they are, and how he’s almost sorry, although it might sound a bit mean, that he couldn’t visit Kharkiv before February 24th. Something else strikes me – I often hear voices in Germany for whom this war only started in February 2022. For the Ukrainians, however, it began eight years ago with the annexation of Crimea and the occupation of Donbass. To differentiate, the current events are called “large-scale invasion”. However, George refers to it as “an attempt at full-scale invasion”. I think it’s great.

He was also in Saltivka, the residential area in the north-east of Kharkiv, which was shelled more often than the others. “There is hardly a house that has not been hit. Everyone has at least one black hole, sometimes more.” The guy he made friends with on the train to Lviv was killed in Donbass a few weeks ago.

He should definitely tell friends and fellow citizens about what he has experienced and seen in Ukraine, I mean to George. Yes, he definitely wants to do that. We say goodbye, George promises to get in touch with me in October before his next trip to Ukraine, which he is firmly planning. First we go home, earn money, continue learning Ukrainian.