A couple of weeks ago I was taking some photos of one of our new pieces on the studio terrace when a young man approached me. We had a friendly conversation and I learned he’d only recently arrived in Berlin from Ukraine, after which the owner of the Lobe Block (where HUNDHUND calls home), Olivia, kindly took him in along with his family to live in the apartment a few doors down from our studio. His name is Kostia, he’s a student from Odesa who likes to make rap music, and he was kind enough to share his story with us.
Below are some links to ways you can help right now.
If you would like to support through donations, you can do so here.
If you would like to host refugees, you can find more information here.
To learn other ways you can help Ukraine as a foreigner, please see this website.
And if you know of any stories or individuals who you think should be heard on our platform, please reach out to us.
Photo taken in Odesa by Sasha Matveeva.
“I was studying at the Odesa Maritime University to be a chief engineer on a vessel. I was studying there half a year, but because of the situation, I had to leave and stop my education. Now I’m in Berlin looking for universities that are somehow rooted with my hobby — because back in Ukraine I was doing rap. And I was actually pretty good in it, and we had a couple of gigs. But then a month later, the war… So I’m trying to find a university here for music because now I’m feeling like this is the way of my life.”
“I left with my Stepdad, my Mother and my little brother. But I also have my real Father there, and my elder brother, my elder sister, and my Grandma. We talk every morning and evening, just to make sure everything is okay. I’m pretty far from the country where the war is, and so I’m pretty sad that my Dad and my relatives and my friends are still there. My older brother is at the age where he cannot leave the country — between 18 and 60 — and my sister stayed because her husband has the same issue. And my Grandma couldn’t possibly leave. She’s from Odesa. She was born there, and she didn’t want to leave her Motherland… Yeah. This is Babushka.”
“I’m not the type of guy to get to sleep late, but I was having some troubles getting to sleep. I was having some bad thoughts about tomorrow’s day. Like some strange feelings inside. And then at 5am, we wake up because my Mom went rushing in the room screaming ‘the War’... ‘the World War’... I actually thought I was dreaming for the first 20 or 30 minutes. I was thinking this is not real. But yeah, it is real… My brother and my Mom said they remember three loud noises. Like fireworks or something. And then my Mom opened the news… So from 5am, in about 10 minutes, we were ready with our backpacks and with our bags of clothes and everything necessary, and we sat in the living room. Everyone was feeling so frightened, and no one was believing what was actually going on. We were making jokes about it just to make ourselves, you know, take a deep breath and everything.”
“We opened up the TV news and all the channels were showing these videos of bombs and rockets flying above in the sky and hitting the buildings. And so we were trying to make the decision to stay in the city or to leave the city or to leave the country. But we decided to stay in the city. We thought Odesa is a big city, they will not attack it… But then, at 10 or 11am we hear this really, really loud noise. It was at the airport. And our building is really close to the airport. And so then, in another minute we were in the car driving to a village outside of Odesa. We moved from the Odesa area to the Mykolaiv area, towards Voznesens'k, in a village.”
“We stayed there for four days, and it was horrible. Each day you wake up and the first thing we did, everyone, is grab the phone and open it up and spend two or three hours just looking up the news of what is going on through the night. The first night we didn’t sleep at all. And then on the second and third we were like, okay, we’ll just sleep to get our rest done, and then, on the fourth day of being in Voznesens'k, we got an idea to get our bags in the car and drive to Poland. And a miracle happened. There were three bridges. The first bridge was bombed by the military on the first day of us being there, and the second bridge also, on the second day, and so we had only the third bridge. But 30 minutes after we crossed, on the way to Lviv, it got bombed by Russians. So the city was then blocked. We were really lucky with it.”
“The journey to Lviv was a day and a half non-stop and we had to sleep in the car in some random gas station because it was in the minus degrees and the road was getting slippery. And on our way through the country, every time we were crossing those block posts, we were seeing all the military with guns, and the planes right above us all the time. And then, from Lviv we were staying in the line of cars trying to reach the border to Poland for another 16 hours.”
“After we crossed the border we got to the refugee point and we had to sleep in the mall on the floor. But then another miracle happened. There was a group of people driving three minivans from Berlin to bring some goods and food and clothes, and then they were heading back to Berlin, and they were waving their hands like ‘we’re coming to Berlin, we can take some people’, so we met them and drove to Berlin.”
“We found Olivia in like 30 minutes after arriving to the Ukrainian refugee point at Oranienburger Straße. And now we are here. It’s been a really, really long journey. The first thing we wanted to do was to shower because it was pretty cold in Ukraine and so all of us were wearing like sports trousers and then jeans and two pairs of socks and three coats and t-shirts, and we were in the car, sweating, dirty and dusty. So we just had a shower and fell asleep… But actually, we couldn’t really have a rest here. Because even when we came to Berlin, which is a safe place — where there are no planes flying over, no wars, no troops with guns and everything — every noise we heard, maybe a car, maybe a train, we would wake up through the night. Just to make sure everything’s ok. And we still do, really.”
“At home, I was always sleeping in my underwear at night. Winter, summer, whatever. But in Berlin, I was sleeping in sport trousers and t-shirts and everything. Like I thought maybe the war is still here… On the fourth day of being in Berlin was the first day to sleep without jeans… Now, after 20 days of being here in Berlin, I can say that I can finally have a cup of tea and enjoy the sun. But I think it’s lucky for me. How I got into life quickly. Because today, I met a woman with a son my age, and after the circumstances, they all went through, this guy is just closed inside. He doesn’t speak at all. We met and I was like ‘Hello’ and he looked into my eyes and his eyes were saying the words ‘fuck off’. Like, ‘I want to be alone’.”
“I still have some friends in Odesa, so we’re on the phone each day, just to make sure everything is good. And people at the school who are studying tell me it’s impossible. Because imagine 30 minutes after the lesson started, the Zoom meeting shuts down and everyone is frightened, and they get a message from the physics teacher saying there are some shootings outside and they had to go to a bunker, so they’ll have to proceed later… The teachers are frightened. The students are frightened. How can people study in this period of time?”
“In the circumstances of war, I’m still listening to beats and writing down the lyrics. And I’ve caught myself what I’m actually typing about and it’s about Putin and about guns and about blood. And so under this whole pressure, without me really understanding it, I was automatically making songs about wars. And so many friends of mine have also started to write poems. And actually, this poem writing is good for health; for your mental health.”
“As an artist myself, I think it’s better for me to proceed in getting Ukrainian artists and people and the culture popular. Through music and this type of thing. So I will proceed to write music. And I think I would like to tell everybody that I’m from Ukraine and we’re not bad people. We’re good. We’re cool to have fun with and we’d just like to not die as a culture, and to proceed to, let’s say, put some seeds in the ground, water it and let it grow into flowers. Because with Russia, it’s like, kindness defeats the evil, right? Not like Russia is the evil. Putin is the evil. And he’s going to lose anyway. We don’t know when, we don’t know how, but eventually, he will lose. And some day, I would like to go back. Maybe have a gig. And have fun with my friends and relatives. As it was before.”
Thank you to Kostia.
***
Below are some links to ways you can help right now.
If you would like to support through donations, you can do so here.
If you would like to host refugees, you can find more information here.
To learn other ways you can help Ukraine as a foreigner, please see this website.
And if you know of any stories or individuals who you think should be heard on our platform, please reach out to us.
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Interview by Ewan Waddell.
