By : C. William Hanson, Jr. August 1st 2023*

*An incomplete draft was issued May 29th, and has been replaced by the finished article below

Friends and family, looking worried, told me to be careful. Several wondered why on that 24th of June 2022 in Budapest I was boarding a train headed eastward towards Ukraine. It was a pleasant, warm, and partly sunny day. A Hungarian friend, Barna, much younger than me, accompanied me that day. An affable young man, well-groomed and clean-shaven, he was dressed casually in a collegiate style. Standing about six feet tall and weighing about 145 pounds with an athletic build, he insisted on carrying my larger suitcase downstairs and up en route to Nyugati Station. He had returned to Budapest after completing an academic year at New England Conservatory studying cello. During that year he had resided with me and my family near Boston. That Friday afternoon, Nyugati, undergoing renovation, presented a chaotic picture of confusion. The crowded spectacle included business people in suits commuting home from a day’s work, students wearing jeans and backpacks and transporting their bicycles and heading home for the weekend or for the summer, women with baby carriages, and foreign tourists looking lost. Most everyone was searching for a temporary ticket office or their train. Railroads provide a much more comprehensive network in Europe than in the USA, and trains were imminently departing from more than a dozen tracks to myriad destinations. Barna managed the purchase of my ticket and escorted me to the right track. 

During the week preceding my departure from Budapest, he and I had enjoyed the annual Budapest Wagner Festival. This included Der Ring des Nibelungen, a work running more than twenty hours (including intermissions) and performed throughout four successive evenings. This work tells the story of two adversaries, a loveless and evil creature Albericht, who is bent upon enslaving not only his people but others as well, and Wotan, who himself has a somewhat checkered career, but who stands for higher values of law, art (i.e. architecture), love, heroism, and wisdom. The saga leads up to a vast fire in the final evening’s performance, entitled Götterdämmerung. Later while waiting for my train to board, Barna remarked that Vladimir Putin is the new Albericht and that I might be heading into a real-life götterdämmerung. As I write this today, Putin is speaking more and more often about plans to use nuclear weapons. He says he is “not bluffing.” I think of the remark by Oscar Wilde, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.” 

Like my family and other friends, Barna may also have worried a bit while seeing me off on my journey, but he had some insight into my motives. He knew that in peacetime I had visited Odesa and Kyiv several times and had formed enduring friendships there. My circle of friends in Ukraine resulted initially from foundation work. That work had its roots in what I experienced while serving from 1985 to 1991 in the U.S. Army in Frankfurt, Germany. Though I knew only a few words of German on arrival, and my workday was conducted in English, I studied hard. Before long I managed to immerse myself in a German-speaking community. Sages have written of the virtues of knowing more than one language. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, “Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.” Ludwig Wittgenstein added, “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” For me, the learning of the German language and the immersion in German culture did indeed provide an epiphany. Also, my experience did not confine itself to Germany. More often than not, trains from Germany took me exploring places like Zurich, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Paris. I grew to admire the European way of life and became a Europhile. This meant admiring the commitment to maintaining a good society free from dire poverty, assured health care for all, relative safety from gun violence, comprehensive systems of public transportation eliminating the need for car ownership, abundant funding for the arts, and a work week allowing ample leisure. I saw that compared to Americans, Europeans tend more to speak multiple languages and to value international rather than nationalistic priorities. I learned that Europeans tend to engage less in casual social contact but to form enduring friendships with a relatively limited number of individuals. Nuances of cultural difference came to fascinate me. Upon returning to Massachusetts, I wanted to remain actively involved with Europe. In the early nineties, the Iron Curtain had lifted, and the cream of students in the former East Block Craveda visit to a long-forbidden destination, the USA. In 1991, the year of my return to New England, some friends and family and I established a small foundation to support exchange experiences for students in the former East Block. Among others, world-class music students from Ukraine had come, sponsored by our foundation, to study in Boston. Now I was returning once again to their country. Barna, having resided in my home for an academic year, told me he expects that our friendship will endure life-long. On that Friday afternoon in June as I boarded the train Barna worried a bit that “life-long” might be quite short if the trip turned out to be a one-way journey to disaster. 

Onboard the train I experienced a manifestation of European cultural values, namely the provision of cost-free public transportation for passengers over the age of 65. En route, I had time to ponder what lay ahead and to recall previous travels both to Ukraine and to Russia. A decade earlier on behalf of our foundation I had visited both St. Petersburg and Moscow. Each of these cities showed itself to be a modern European metropolis. As I proceeded eastward on a Hungarian milk train, I remembered traveling in really quite affordable first-class seats on a high-speed train between St. Petersburg and Moscow. That high speed provided the most luxurious travel experience ever. I remembered the pampering provided by the first-class attendants, which was akin to that lampooned by David Foster Wallace as a passenger on the cruise ship Nadir. 

During the four-hour train trip, gourmet food came along with elegant linen napkins and a choice of fine wines. Handsomely uniformed attendants stood observant, ready to cater to a passenger’s every whim. After arriving in central Moscow, a stroll along the streets showed that meticulous renovation and modernization were underway. Familiar restaurants, hotels, and shops from the Schengen countries and the USA showed energetic international participation. While strolling one could catch aromas from Cinnabon or KFC or hear familiar-sounding pop music, and wandering past a theater venue or concert hall one see inviting posters advertising performances of a Tchaikovsky symphony, a Prokofiev ballet, a Moussorgsky opera, or a Shakespeare play to be performed in Russian. Surrounded not only by the same hotel, restaurant, and shopping chains that are ubiquitous in Europe but also by a realm of European art, music, dance, opera, and sports, one judged that Moscow and St. Petersburg were almost indistinguishable from other leading cities throughout the continent. While the Cyrrilic lettering in signs demarcated a language of Eastern Europe, many signs used English. Though English does not come readily from the mouths of most salespeople, taxi drivers, or even staff at international airports, all these people stand ready to help, using Google Translate on their cell phones. Moreover, the Russians we met in our foundation work spoke fluent English; while engaging in cooperative projects these people showed a degree of civilized refinement and urbanity unsurpassed by their peers in Paris, London, or Berlin. 

One decade ago one concluded that an enduring new Pax Romana had developed in Europe. European nations would no longer launch military aggression on their neighbors. Such would be “relegated to the dustbin of history” (Bohanon). Integration of economies would ensure peace. Fear of isolation and expulsion from the international community would succeed in deterring nations from engaging in such barbarism. 

One man did not share this conclusion. President Vladimir Putin of Russia decided otherwise. On February 24, 2022, the Russian military as commanded by Vladimir Putin invaded the smaller and peaceful land of their Ukrainian “brothers.” Subsequent events did not proceed as expected. The Ukrainians, despite having far fewer resources, fewer people, and fewer soldiers, soon launched an astonishing counterattack. This has progressively been driving the Russian military from lands which Russians occupied initially. 

How has it been possible for the Ukrainians to overcome and defeat Russian forces to such an extent? Who are these fierce, determined Ukrainian people, and what have they experienced since the invasion began on February 24th? These reflections as I traveled posed the puzzle which my journey would endeavor to solve. But first came the task of getting there. 

Before the Russian invasion, the journey of 900 km from Budapest to Kyiv might have been accomplished by a flight of little more than one-hour duration. As an air war has begun, civilian flights have ceased and the journey requires train travel requiring about 24 hours. Before February, Ukraine was easily entered by sea or by land from its six neighboring countries: Moldova, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Russia, and Belarus. Three of these seven 

options are now excluded. These include of course Russia and its satellite Belarus as well as the Black Sea, which teems with Russian warships. I chose to depart from Budapest as my son and his family make their home in that city. Most official delegations visiting Kyiv such as those containing national leaders have been departing from Poland. 

My journey’s duration was much less daunting than the journey’s uncertainties. The usual trip planning processes fail one currently in such a journey. Online searches led either to dire warnings as to the dangers of such travel or to advisories that schedule information may be unreliable. The official Ukrainian tourism website provided the following message, “Visit UkraineToday is being transformed into an information portal for help, where every Ukrainian and foreign citizen will be able to get the necessary information on how to act in a critical situation.” Other websites to which one normally turns showed a lack of updates and continued to display extensive information on flying to Ukraine from various departure points, although no flights have occurred since February. 

The Hungarian railway system (MAV) website and ticket agents did readily provide detailed information about travel to the Ukrainian border but not beyond that point. Feeling uncertain about what to expect at the border crossing, I opted to take a train to a Hungarian border town and sleep overnight at a hotel. There was one problem- that town, Záhony, with a population of 4675 did not appear to have any hotels in internet searches. Just 14 miles along the train line before Záhony lies a town Kisvárda of more than triple the border town’s size, and Kisváda does have public accommodations listed on the internet, though no functioning taxi service. This I learned to my surprise after arriving at the railroad station there. 

Perhaps I should not have been surprised after surveying the Kisvárda station, as it was a quiet, older building with relatively few passengers either arriving or awaiting a passing train to depart. No doubt it was just the sort of old station that one should expect to find in a sleepy little Hungarian town quite remote from any substantial city and not far from the Ukrainian frontier. Unable to find a taxi or Bolt (the Hungarian counterpart of Uber), I asked a couple of friendly people in the station if they knew where I might find a taxi service. Everyone I met there was friendly and no one seemed to be in a hurry or able to help. Eventually, I asked the agent behind the ticket window, the lone railway agent in the station, and she kindly phoned trying but failing to locate a taxi. This I felt I needed, as my accommodation lay a bit too far to walk comfortably with my luggage. Giving up on a traditional solution, I opened my iPad and managed to create a sign in Hungarian offering to pay anyone with a car who might transport me with my luggage the 2 km distance to my lodging. A kindly school teacher, seeing the sign, who had brought her teenage son to catch a train to a nearby town, took me under her wing. She not only drove me to the address but also insisted on waiting until she was sure that I was all settled. It was a fortunate development. Though English language speakers appeared in Kisvárda 

to constitute a distinct minority, my teacher told me that the subject she teaches is English. As happened on my arrival, the door was locked to the small flat where I had arranged to stay, but it turned out that my teacher knew the owner, a man from Belgium, who appeared soon after she called him. English was a struggle for him, so he was happy to tolerate my broken French. Soon I found myself comfortably settled in for the night. The Belgian proprietor before departing that evening insisted on arranging personally to transport me back to the station in the morning. 

The peace, quiet, and friendliness of a small Hungarian town just 20 km from the Ukrainian border presented a striking contrast to what was soon to follow. Probably 20 km psychologically represents a greater degree of separation to a Hungarian resident than it might to a visiting American. The kindly school teacher, presumably one of the town’s intelligentsia, allowed that she has never set foot in Ukraine. 

Ukraine does have a significant Hungarian-speaking minority in areas not very far across the border from Kisvárda. The number is estimated at 150,000, at least in an estimate made before February. The teacher informed me that there has been a stream of Hungarian-speaking Ukrainian refugees resulting in an ever-increasing number of Ukrainian children showing up at her school. The Belgian proprietor mentioned that Ukrainians heading west have booked short stays in his accommodations much more often in recent months. On the other hand, quite a few other Hungarians with whom I inquired while in Kisvárda reported being unaware of having ever seen a single Ukrainian refugee. The United Nations reports indicate that several million Ukrainian refugees have fled west, but such a migration seems to have left a small town in eastern Hungary with minimal impact. 

Somewhat exhausted from my busy day, I fell asleep rather quickly that night while wondering what further challenges the days ahead might bring.