"No Putin, no Russia, only peace": Christmas in the in-between world

Created: 12/24/2022, 06:00

By: Josef Ametsbichler

Sitting in the festively decorated living room are (from left) Nataliia Bagdasaryan (31), her son Roman (7) and her family friend Nataliia Hryshchenko (39).

They fled to Ebersberg before the war in Ukraine.

© Stefan Rossmann

War is raging in their homeland.

We visited Ukrainian refugees, for whom the Happy Holiday is a real challenge.

Ebersberg

– The room glitters like a football stadium at the World Cup final in Qatar when Roman Bagdasaryan, seven years old, uses a body illusion to let the Christmas tree stand and plays the deadly pass down in his stockings.

He immediately storms along the white curtains with the LED light chains.

The only one who can stop him on the side table before the goal is closed is his mom Nataliia.

With a sharp "Roman!" she whistles off the imaginary soccer game in the Ebersberg living room.

Family and friends steered the Ebersberg couple Budnichenko from their Ukrainian homeland to Ebersberg.

The Ebersberger Zeitung reports at random how the refugees are doing here.

© EZ_Archive

There are probably a few sports-mad seven-year-olds who want new football boots and the World Cup ball from Qatar for Christmas in the district of Ebersberg – surrounded by mothers who roll their eyes and shards of Christmas tree balls caused by penalties.

But Roman, his sister Alisa (10), his mum Nataliia (31) and his dad Artur (41) never dreamed last year that they would spend Christmas in a different apartment, with a new school, new jobs and in a foreign country celebrate - in a life that no longer seems to be hers.

The war drove her from her native Kyiv to Ebersberg.

1365 kilometers as the crow flies from home.

The mother clears shelves, the father drags boxes

Together with two other Ukrainian families, the Bagdasaryans now live in a terraced house in Ebersberg.

The mother clears shelves at a discount store, the father, who was allowed to leave the country as a Georgian citizen, carries boxes for a freight forwarder.

Visiting from the floor above is Nataliia Hryshchenko (39), who fled Kyiv by train with her 14-year-old son Anton.

They are sitting at the kitchen table with a few pine branches in a vase in front of them and Ukrainian sweets next to them.

On the balcony, fairy lights shine in the dark.

In the room next door, golden and rose-colored baubles gleam alongside self-made snow crystals on the Christmas tree.

"It still doesn't feel real," says Nataliia Hryshchenko.

"Like a surreal dream that you eventually wake up from." And her namesake Nataliia Bagdasaryan admits: "There are days when I want to throw down the front door key and drive home." Then she says: "But we are here because we want to live."

The situation is wearing on nerves

The situation is eating away at the nerves of both families.

As they sit there in the warm, Christmas-decorated room, the news of another Russian bombardment slides across the mobile phone screen.

Large parts of the country are without electricity and heating for hours in the winter cold.

A cousin is fighting at the front in Bachmut.

Relatives from Cherson report from the river side, which is still in the hands of the Russian occupiers: "It's hell."

Although - or precisely because - the situation at home is so worrying, they will celebrate Christmas together in Ebersberg.

Just because of the children.

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They celebrate for the first time on December 24th

This year, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has given its believers the choice of celebrating on January 6, according to the old, Russian-influenced tradition, or on December 24, according to the Western interpretation.

This year, for the first time, Christmas Eve falls on December 24 for the Bagdasaryans, the Hryshchenkos and their circle of family and friends who have fled to Ebersberg.

Exactly ten months to the day after the start of Putin's terrible war of aggression.

"Away from the Russian calendar," they say.

Then they will attend the children's mass in Ebersberg.

And in the evening there are the twelve traditional vegetarian Christmas dishes - from the dumplings called perogies and the borscht, a soup with beetroot and white cabbage, to the kutja, the sweet porridge made from boiled wheat grains, which should not be missing when the coming year should be a happy one.

A lot revolves around food and singing.

The children put down tender roots in Ebersberg

It's a Christmas in a limbo.

There is no question for the families that they want to go home again - with small question marks: After ten months their children begin to put down tender little roots in Ebersberg and the German language is slowly getting better.

The visit of the reporter, who speaks neither Russian nor Ukrainian, they deny in German, without local translation help.

But Nataliia Hryshchenko lacks her parents and the Ukrainian air.

Whenever a package arrives from the Ukraine as a thank you for the help that they send from Ebersberg in return, it is just the smell when it is opened, a quickly evading breath of home that brings tears to her eyes.

Last New Year's Eve, the 39-year-old had a dream that she had to move away from Ukraine for six years.

At the time they all laughed heartily about it, now she gets queasy when she thinks about it.

You can find more current news from the district of Ebersberg at Merkur.de/Ebersberg.

Christmas baubles in the colors of Ukraine hang in the stairwell.

Hryshchenko bought extra acrylic paint for the blue ones because no suitable ones were available in the whole of Ebersberg.

While Roman hopes for his new football and boots, she and Nataliia Bagdasaryan have another, very clear Christmas wish, which they almost chant in unison: "No Putin, no Russia, just peace."

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