“Time to get up; the war has started”. 

Despite sometimes having a memory of a goldfish, I remember this moment in the smallest details: the surprisingly calm tone of my mother, the sudden brightness in the room when she opened the blinds, the cacophony of sounds when I turned off the “do not disturb mode” on my phone, the hundreds of notifications that began coming through.

Looking back, it really shouldn’t have been as much of a shock as it was—it’s not like I can say we weren’t warned. American intelligence gave the press the exact date of the Russian invasion; because of that, we had a discussion at school during advisory, where they gave us instructions on what to do if the war begins during classes. Staying away from windows, emergency exits, a tiny bomb shelter in the basement—it was all eerie, unsettling, alarming… Up until it wasn’t. Our geography teacher finished the meeting by telling us it’s all just precautions and “of course, nothing of that sort would happen, not in the 21st century”. 

Amongst a wide circle of my friends, teachers and family, my mother was the only person who knew for sure that the war would take place. As a historian, she would often say that as long as there were empires, there would be wars. The day before, she packed our bags and left them in the garage, prepared for our departure. 

On the 24th of February 2022, at five o’clock in the morning, one of the first bombs fell three kilometres away from my house, on an airport. The following bombs crushed the largest plane in the world that had been stationed there; that aircraft was called “Mriya”, which means “a dream”. Our Minister of Foreign Affairs later said that Russia destroyed our “mriya”—and he definitely meant more than just an aeroplane.

We had to flee. On the road, in my parents’ car, I found myself at the cinema. It’s hard to describe what I saw. Like in an old war documentary, everything was monochromatic, painted in various shades of grey. I had a sense of watching a movie where you can observe the explosions on the large screen and feel the ground rumbling under your feet. I even spotted armoured vehicles; like some enlarged versions of boys’ toys, they were playing hide-and-seek in the bushes next to the road. My dad chuckled awkwardly, then said that this was our military and that we weren’t that close to the border to be in danger. Deep down inside, I knew he was lying. Just mere days later, I saw pictures of dead bodies of car passengers who were shot by these tanks.  

We travelled almost 2,000 kilometres by car from a small town near Ukraine's capital, where I’ve lived my whole life, to Germany in thirty-eight hours, twenty of which we queued at the Polish border. I still remember seeing women and children with small bags in their hands walking along the highway. The long journey of a refugee does not involve a fancy suitcase on wheels. Your whole life has to fit into a bag or, if you’re lucky, into the trunk of your car. Out of the seven volumes of my favourite Harry Potter books, I had to choose just one. I settled on the fifth, the same way I settled on losing myriads of other pieces of my life that day.

My town had to survive in occupation for over a month. Without me. I was safe here, in Germany. My neighbours and their children lived in basements; they had internet but no potable water. We knew it because occasionally, they would call to show the damage done to houses and tell us how close the troops were to our district. During such moments, those who left would try to tell them that the burning phosphorus with which my town was shelled is best extinguished with sand, not water. There wasn’t much sand in my area, so now the view from the window of my already renovated house is composed of burnt, abandoned buildings, dark and gloomy, whose weathervanes sway apocalyptically in the wind. 

I received temporary war protection under the 24th paragraph of German law. I’ve always had in mind to go abroad, but the plan was to obtain a student visa, not a refugee status. Being a refugee meant legal paperwork every month, no possibility to travel for an undetermined period of time, but—and that was the worst—no one to talk to. My friends who stayed in Ukraine didn’t need someone complaining about a difficult life from the safety of the European Union; the people I met in Germany didn’t really understand. All I could do was empty-mindedly scroll through pictures and pictures of dead civilians, ruined houses and depressing news headlines. Even with my mum and brother by my side, even in a beautiful house in the peaceful forest in Germany, I did not feel peace within myself. Technically, I was safe, I was free—the peace was around me—but not inside.

Ironically enough, the day my town was liberated from occupation, and I finally knew my neighbours and friends would be okay, the international school I applied to sent me a letter of acceptance. I went back to studying, and for me, that meant returning to peace.

It wasn’t all perfect. At first, no one talked to me much outside of classes; I don’t blame anyone for that: in the end, they were trying not to say something that would accidentally upset me. I still remember the first time someone spoke to me about what I went through: a boy told me his mother also had to leave her country because of the war that no one cared enough to stop. He was angry, and I was angry too—something I hadn’t felt in a while, along with any other emotions that weren’t cold emptiness in my chest. 

Coming to school five times a week meant finding friends, learning fascinating things, worrying about tests, studying for exams with others (and not really getting any work done), celebrating good grades, falling in love for the first time and getting to like the classes you share with that person even more… Education wasn’t just preparing for life but living every moment of it, there and then.

This experience made me able to truly understand the tragedy of the Afghan women who are forbidden to receive education, the horrors that children in Aleppo, Syria, where schools have been targeted by air strikes, have been experiencing, the nightmares students had to go through during the war in the former Yugoslavia in the Balkans. I now know how important it is that in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv children were finally allowed to go to school again this September, even if it was opened in the depths of the underground. 

From now on, whenever someone asks me about what war feels like, I always compare it to what peace feels like as well. I think not enough people talk or even think about what peace actually means, apart from not hearing missiles over your head. I guess, for everyone, with their own experiences, that definition would differ from mine and definitely from the one in the Oxford Dictionary. For me, peace is the ability to plan long-term. Peace is the freedom to learn and grow. Peace is the canvas upon which the colours of knowledge are painted. But, above all, peace is the opportunity to dream. Peace is believing that your dreams, your visions of a bright future may come true since you have all the means to create a path towards them. In Germany, I am surrounded by those who can allow themselves to dream. People who live without peace cannot.