Travelling to Eastern Poland is great: There are little tourist, the landscape is just beautiful and there are hundreds of places worth visiting.

Travelling to Eastern Poland, however, is also painful - especially for me as a German. In every city, in every village you will find traces of former Jewish life realising that those inhabitants were murdered by the Germans over 70 years ago. The very few Jews who survived the Holocaust never returned.

Shortly before the war nearly every third person in Lublin was a Jew. The city used to be a center of European importance especially for orthodoxe hasidic Jews.

Some of the great Jewish history of the city, you can find visiting one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in Poland. “The Old Jewish Cemetery”. We were lucky getting the key from the guard of the synagoge, usually it is not open for “random” people.

I am regular visiting Maria. I have known her and her partner Ryszard for nearly three years now. Since then they have been living on the streets of Warsaw, their new “home” is  a tent.

My blog “postmaidan” went offline again. This time my exhibition is shown till the 28th of february in the center of Kyiv, in the Ukrainian House. Thanks for a nice opening!

My last visit to Ukraine was in 2012. Before the war, before Maidan. I travelled to Donbass and Crimea back then, places I cannot (easily) visit anymore. Ukraine that I knew from my holidays was replaced by pictures of peaceful and violent protests and later by videos of war. Ukraine had obviously changed in those two years I hadn’t been there. But how?

October and November 2015 I spent in Ukraine and I met people: When I was shopping for some vegetables, I talked to them during my travels, staying with them on couchsurfing, I arranged meetings with “friends of friends”.

Alexander is from Luhansk, he has been living in Kharkiv for 6 years now. His mother and grandmother live in Luhansk and he hasn’t seen them for over a year and a half. His wife was pregnant during Maidan. He really wanted to go to Kiev but his wife is more important, of course, he told me.

“My mother has zombie influence on her brain. She doesn’t like our new government but she also doesn’t like how it is in the east right now. We trying our best not to phone each other…No one can hide from changes. If anyone doesn’t want these changes, nobody will ask him. These changes have come and are happening now. The older generation stopped their work in society and the now young generation has another construction of mind and they will make our society better. It is not necessarily my generation, I am 32 and was born in the Soviet Union, I am talking about the generation that was born after 1990.

I am a representative of the generation that just became older during this time.

My wife says: Ukraine must be strong without European Union but i say that Ukraine cannot be strong without the help from outside.

As for me I would rather go to Europe than stay here. I need him to have a normal life and a normal education for my son. Long distance love of one’s motherland is said to be the greatest love of motherland.

Oleksiy is waiting for a visa to Poland right now. He comes from Lugansk and fled to Lithuania when the fighting got to dangerous for him and his family.

„Not all people from Lugansk are separatists. We organised a Euromaidan there, we were a group of active people, who wanted to change something in our city. For two months I went to the central square. I was a professor at the university back then, we organised a street university where everyone could come and join our free lectures. We protested for a better education, for an European integration.

However, it became dangerous at some stage. Russians cleared the square in a march in 2014 and then the personal problems of activists got bigger: There was data of us on the internet. After I was threatened personally, I decided to leave with my family to Lithuania, we have friends there. We moved to Poland some months later but we didn't get a visa as political refugees. So I am applying for a business visa now because I have some ideas for an export business. There is a perspective for us.

Maidan changed everything for us. People are more free now, are closer to the European Union, Ukraine is on a different level now. People started loving their country because of the war. More of us understand now that Russia is an aggressor. Russian people think Ukraine is a part of Russia but after Maidan they understand that we have our history, our minds, our values.

Yulia is from Luhansk, she organised actions on the “Maidan” in Luhansk. When it got too dangerous, she left to Kyiv. There she and some friends founded the NGO “Vostok-SOS”. They help people fleeing from the war but also people remaining in the ATO zone with clothes and food.

“My life has changed after Maidan and after the war began. I was taught by Maidan, that we feel now that we are the country, people are the country. Maidan has altered our minds, we realised that we need to continue this transformation.

Ukrainian youth is not used to taking responsibility, people are used to saying that nothing could be changed, everything is managed by someone, things happen as they are, it's better to stand aside. But after and especially during Maidan the understanding has changed - we are the people who should do something, we live in this country, we should change it.

Nazar was playing on one of the pianos standing in Kiev. Those instruments are a remainder of Maidan. 

“I learned piano on Maidan, I taught myself.

Vasili is a father of five children. He seemed to be a happy person and smiled a lot even though he doesn’t seem very optimistic.

Anton for me is an example of the generation that is totally optimistic and looking forward to shaping the “new” Ukraine. He is only 17 and studies at university in Kharkiv but he’d rather have his own business than take his studies too seriously. Education is still corrupted, he says.

Tanja and Sasha are both 18 years old. They study at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

Sasha comes from Zaporizhia, a Russian speaking area and moved to Kyiv only three months ago. Since then he has talked only in Ukrainian. Tanja comes from Kyiv. The „language question“ is a topic for both of them.

Tanja: „After Maidan people started to love their country, their Ukraine. We realised that it cannot be in another way. We cannot go on like we have lived in the past. I want to live in peace with Russia. I don't want to be at war. If we can live in peace, only then Ukraine can be a united country. Many of my relatives are ethnic Ukrainians who live in Russia. But they don't speak Ukrainian. I read Ukrainian poems to them, to teach them our language.“

Sasha: „Every Ukrainian should speak Ukrainian. 20 percent of ethnic Russians like my grandparents, don't speak Ukrainian. However, language is the core of national identity. Sometimes I pretend not to understand Russian. I ignore Russian speaking people, because I don't like Russia. My mother is the only one in our family who understands me. I have spoken Ukrainian since the first day of coming to Kyiv some months ago. When I was a teenager I thought about why we speak Russian at home when our teacher told us we are Ukrainians. This Russification is the only problem in our family, maybe in our country. Now I speak to people in Ukrainian and they don't realise that I am russificated from home. There are many reasons to hate Russia. I know it is not tolerant but they are also not tolerant. Here in Kyiv we can defend our identity. That is one reason why I came here. I didn't believe what I saw on the news when Maidan was on. Since Maidan I had the idea of speaking only Ukrainian, to teach my children only Ukrainian. Not our generation but maybe the next or the following will only speak Ukrainian and forget about USSR.“

Tanja: „But we should know about it. It is part of our history.“

Sasha: „I know from my grandmother who was Stalin, who was Lenin. In my childhood she told me, she was scared, there were many repressions.“

Tanja: „My great grandparents also were communists, that was their lifestyle.“

Sasha: „My grandparents also like communism. They like Russia. In my hometown Zaporizhia, there is still a huge Lenin statue. It is one of the last ones remaining in a bigger city. I am afraid for Zaporozhia and it's people. They don't understand why we must have monuments of great Ukrainians like Cossaks, not of Lenin. Why Ukrainian language is so important.“

Sasha is only 11 years old. He comes from Kyiv. He came up to me as he heard that I spoke English to a friend. He was excited, started talking to me and was more than eager to talk to me about Maidan.

“Maybe Ukraine is worse than Europe, but Ukraine is finally recognized, Ukraine is treated in a friendly way and given help. And naturally, we, Ukrainians, aren’t evil people. I think that my country has changed. Because Ukraine became closer.

I met Nikolaj in the market in Kyiv/Lisova. The first thing he told me was that he was based in Magdeburg in Germany as a soldier over 30 years ago. 

Michal is a soldier. He looked so peaceful sitting on a bench in Kyiv’s city centre. He didn’t talk much.

Alek was born in Chernivtsi and has lived there all his life. He is very active in the Catholic parish and an active part of Polonia.

Karyna is a student from Kyiv. She regularly dresses up as a rabbit to earn some money on Maidan.