Ukraine

how are you doing currently? war is a terrible thing and i wish we would live without it, tribalism has got to stop.

Thanks for your reply and support

Had an ex-girlfriend in Kharkiv Ukraine at the time of the invasion. Tried to convince her to get out of there. Then the constant bombing, resultant lack of sleep, etc, proved more convincing, and she hopped onto a train with her Mum and sister, and they went to Poland. From there, there were coaches going to different EU countries, and she hopped onto the one to Berlin. Volunteers found her a place to stay in Lower Saxony - she was excited to be told she'd be going to Hamburg, and was mortified to find herself in a tiny rural town two hours bus and train away from Hamburg, staying in holiday homes adjoining horse stables...with no horses. Her distaste for this was because she was a wheelchair user and being a gazillion miles from civilisation when you have mobility issues - and having to traverse rural terrain with rubble roads full of potholes, was far from ideal. Anyway, she had been trying to leave Ukraine long before, and was in the final stages of getting EU citizen via her grandfather having been Romanian - so I got to visit her in Germany, and then travel with her to Bucharest as she obtained her EU citizenship. She had to travel to Romania again recently to get a passport, and it should arrive in two weeks time.

When the war first broke out, I ended up at the Roundhouse London, as I was a fan of Ukrainian "darkpop" duo, The Bloom Twins, and had been to most of their London gigs since 2013, and they had arranged an early "Night for Ukraine" fundraising concert. So myself and others were queuing outside a London concert venue with sunflowers in our hands.