WarDiary #28 Vacation in wartime (Part 2)
In the first four days of my vacation, I travelled solo. The first stop of my trip was Lviv where I met my friends from Kyiv. After moving to Lviv, they started teaching dancing there, so we had lunch with their group with people from different corners of Ukraine. Their discussion about Lviv challenges (like changing weather) and Lviv language was very entertaining. Many people from Kyiv enjoyed Lviv rhythm of life. Because of smaller distances, one did not need so much time to come from point A to point B. Compared to Lviv, life in Kyiv seemed too stressful and many people decided to move to Lviv. Indeed, people in the streets seemed to be much more relaxed. During the day, we bumped several times into people whom we met for lunch. The only things my Kyiv friends could hardly bear in Lviv were paving stone and driving style. My friend could not help pointing to the drivers who broke traffic rules every 5 minutes while we were walking.
As I could not find time and energy to plan my vacation beforehand, I improvised every day and took decisions for a few hours ahead. The idea that I could go anywhere in every moment of time gave me a strong sense of freedom. But after improvising several days in a row, I realized that such freedom was quite cumbersome and got an overdose of improvisation. I spent only one day in Lviv and wanted to move further as soon as possible. In the evening, I spontaneously decided to go to Wroclaw to meet my friend from Berlin who was on her way to Slovakia. Wroclaw was a city in the middle of the way between us. If I already made myself on the way out of Ukraine, I should make the most out of it. Many of my friends from Germany would not risk going to Ukraine, while I am reluctant to go abroad. That means there are rather few chances to meet, and I didn’t want to waste this one.
I took a night bus to arrive sooner. However, there were several passenger busses and I had to spend the whole night waiting for the border control. I do not know why, but I in my head, there were images of people moving in cattle wagons in the Soviet Union in the time of wars and hunger. People did not look that bad. But the idea of mass control made me think of jails and evacuations. One does not feel like personality or even a person in the moments of being controlled. The very fact of being controlled always seems to reduce me to my passport and suitcase. It was hard to look at women holding their babies in one arm and lifting a heavy suitcase with another arm at 4 o’clock in the morning. The employees of the customs control were apparently not enjoying that sleepless night as well. I decided to avoid buses as much as possible and always take a train, where border control is much more predictable and comfortable.
Wroclaw welcomed me with lots of sun. My friend and I spent one day together talking and, in the evening, we went to a bar. It felt strange to be able to go to a bar in the late evening without having any thoughts about the curfew. I like the curfew, because thanks to it, I always know when I would come back home. I do not have to take decisions, if I should stay out late or go home in each case. Everybody in Ukraine has the only option: go home at 10 pm at the latest, because the curfew starts at 11 pm. 9 pm is even better to avoid having problems with ordering a taxi. Nobody gets offended if you say: “I have to go home.” That is why in Wroclaw, I felt stressed for a second that there was no clear limitation of the evening. However, both my friend and I were tired, so we did not stay out late.
When I arrived in Poland, it felt like home. I thought that maybe I could speak Polish better soon. I still had one day before Samuel’s flight arrived to Cracow. For several hours I had been thinking of going to Berlin, because I suddenly felt that I missed it badly. But I imagined another 8 hours on a bus and then a lot of hours to go back to Cracow and decided to give up the idea. Also, one of my friends was on vacation and not in Berlin. Others would probably be stressed by such a short notice. I decided to follow my original plan and go to the mountain lake Morske oko (Sea eye) near Zakopane which is not far away from Cracow. I saw a picture of it on my friend’s Facebook in summer. That is how I got the idea. I wanted to get some power and calm from nature, and the combination of mountains and water seemed a perfect place for this purpose, especially when going there alone.
I arrived in rainy Zakopane in the afternoon and after booking a hostel and finishing some work, I went to a shop with clothes for mountains. I wanted to buy every single thing there. Although it was before Russian strikes on energy infrastructure of Ukraine, everybody had been warning about hard winter and the necessity to prepare for it. Those advice planted themselves in my mind and I had been thinking for weeks about the necessity to buy warm clothes. It was raining all the time and my clothes was not good for such weather. In any case, it was necessary to buy a waterproof raincoat and warm shoes to be able to go into the mountains and reach the lake.
When on next day, I was walking in the mountains in my new shoes and raincoat under drizzling rain, life seemed to be much easier than the day before, when I was freezing to bones. It occurred to me that soldiers and mountain hikers had much in common. Both mostly live outside. Their survival and health depend on the clothes and equipment they have, especially in rainy weather and at low temperatures. I thought that if people want to join the army, they should start with mountain hiking and learn to live outside. That would be a good basic training and a good test if they are capable of living like this. My friend, who is at the front now, took there all the equipment he used during our mountain hiking in the Carpathians two years ago: a touristic gas cooker, a sleeping bag made by his wife, etc. It all got burnt in his car. Now he is buying everything again. That little gas cooker was so nice that it makes me sad that it no longer exists.
I walked some 9 kilometers on comfortable asphalted roads between the mountains. From time to time, I was sending messages in my smartphone without being able to stop doing this and to immerse in the beautiful nature around me. I almost forced myself to look at the mountains around me. But then I would hear a message notification or remember something “important” and stopped for a moment to type a message. Several Ukrainian families with children walked past me now and then. On the fifth kilometer or so, internet got so bad, that I finally could turn off my smartphone without wondering, if I should do something or answer to anybody. That is when I started to be more present in the moment and in the place where I was. However, when I reached the lake Morske Oko surrounded by mountains, it did not impress me. Nothing special. A perfect illustration of my current touristic “enthusiasm”.
I decided to try to walk around it, although rain would not stop. I was not sure if I would make it in time to reach the last evening bus to the city. Distances in mountains always seem to be shorter than they are. But I felt so separated from the nature and from myself, that I badly hoped to reconnect, to get closer to water, stones and trees. Looking on a lake from a terrace before a wooden hotel was not enough for that. As long as I made it there and even Berlin did not take me away from the idea of coming to Morske Oko, giving it a try was the only acceptable option. My new raincoat and shoes repelled water very well and made me feel protected and reassured, that no shower would make me suffer on my way.
There was a path between stones around the lake. On my way I discovered several waterfalls bringing water from the top of the mountains to the lake. I could cross them just stepping from stone to stone. There were almost no people around, because it was raining. It was a perfect possibility to be alone with the nature. When I reached the opposite bank of the lake, I encountered two young men who were listening to music when walking past me. They were speaking Russian. Their music sounded vulgar to me. I could not help feeling disgust. They looked like teenagers and wore sports suits. Later they let me overtake them, because I was going more quickly.
When I covered a large part of the way, I saw an arrow showing to a path above and saying that one needed one hour to reach Czarny Staw pod Rysami. Another lake! I got curious. I had invested no time in reading about the place I was going to. No wonder, surprises were waiting for me. I was not sure, if I manage to reach the last bus if I spend another two hours to visit another lake and if it was worth it. But my curiosity was stronger than fear. I calculated time and it seemed to be doable, although a bit risky. The way above was not easy, because one had to climb up stones, some of them quite high. I felt time pressure, so I climbed quite quickly. The higher I got, the more beautiful the lake Morske oko below me was. The view was breathtaking. When I reached the Czarny Staw, I was exhausted and fascinated. The place looked like the moon surface. I could not take my eyes away from water and cliffs. A waterfall was bringing its water to Morske Oko below. Suddenly I saw those two young men or rather boys. They were probably 19-20 years old, I cannot say. They were taking photos of each other at a quite dangerous place at the waterfall. I thought that it was sweet, that boys also took photos of each other. They did not seem rude anymore.
Time was running and it was time to go back. I hardly had any energy to step down all those stones. The way seemed infinite. The muscles of my legs were tired. The boys also went down, and I was going behind them. I was not sure if I manage to go back all the way. From time to time my head was spinning a little bit and I had to pull myself together in order to be attentive. The highest part of the path was quite dangerous. As I was trying to go down an especially high stone, one of the boys offered his hand to me. I took it. After I jumped from that high stone, he continued holding my hand. It would have been romantic, if he were not that young. I stepped down stone by stone and tried to stay focused, although holding a foreign hand and trying to talk made it hard. At the same time, I tried to choose stones which were not too high and mind my steps.
“Where are you from?” – he asked in Russian.
“From Ukraine” – I answered and feared that he would say that he was from Russia.
Instead, he cried with joy to his silent friend “Did you hear, Maxi? She is also from Ukraine! From Ukraine!”
“Oh, where are you from then?”
“From Bakhmut, actually from a village not far away from Bakhmut”.
I could not believe my ears. Bakhmut was in all the news back then saying that there were fierce battles there. And here was a boy from Bakhmut holding my Kyiv hand to help me descend a Polish mountain.
“What is your name?” – I asked.
“Serhii”
“Do you live in Poland now?”
“I moved to Poland a year ago. We work here at a supermarket.” – he told me and pointed to his friend walking before us. -At the beginning, I lifted up all those packages. It was too hard and later I learnt how to manage goods storage. But Maxi (he pronounced this name with care, as if he were his brother) didn’t want to learn. He is still doing that hard physical job.”
“I see…And do you have anybody in Bakhmut?”
“My mother is there. My younger brother left Ukraine in spring. He is going to study abroad.”
“Is it quiet there, where she lives?” [typical question in Ukraine]
“No, there are explosions from time to time. But we heard them also before, when it all started in 2014.”
Stepping down tricky stones hand in hand with a guy from Bakhmut made me totally forget the tiredness in my legs, the rain which again started to drizzle and the possibility of being late for the bus. I just listened to Serhii’s voice and tried to absorb every word he was saying. From time to time, on smaller stones I let go of his hand, because it felt weird to me not to stop holding hands. But then there would be another big stone and he would again offer his hand to me. Soon we reached the hotel at the bank of the lake, where my way around Morske Oko started.
(to be continued)