Mariia Semenenko left her hometown, Donetsk, when the conflict erupted in eastern Ukraine and she was in China at the onset of the pandemic. She is no stranger to unexpected turns in life and claims the challenges she experienced taught her to always be on the lookout for brighter opportunities in the future.

My favourite memories from Donetsk are from the end of August each year. That is when we would have the Day of the City and there was a big parade. Having seen many parades since then, I now know that our parade was not big, but to me it seemed the biggest ever.

When the pandemic began, I was in China. I was doing a semester abroad, at a graduate school in Shenzen. It felt really apocalyptic. Nobody really knew what was happening, all of a sudden people at the canteen were being scanned with a weird device – a device we now know is used to measure your temperature. 

A few weeks later we were all given some time off and went traveling. This was around the time of the Chinese New Year. I went to Guangzhou. Restrictions were gradually being imposed. I didn’t immediately realise the scale of it. I compared the pandemic to H1N1 in Ukraine, which is when we had a bit of a lockdown and quarantine measures, and thought it would be over within one week or two. 

The way people initially reacted to the pandemic reminded me of the way everyone had thought about the conflict in eastern Ukraine when it broke out in 2014. We also believed it would only last a few weeks or months and that it would be over soon. Instead it’s still ongoing. 

In 2014 my family left our hometown, Donetsk, which lies at the centre of the conflict in Ukraine. We moved to the capital, Kyiv. I did my bachelor degree there and in 2018 I moved to Berlin to do my master studies.

We’ve been back to Donetsk a few times with my family since then. For a few years we travelled there in the summer just to see how things were. People still believed it was possible to go back and we wanted to take care of our house – or what was left of it. But I haven’t been back there for two years now.

My grandfather has moved away also, so I have no relatives there currently. One of my best friends still lives there and I’m in touch with her a lot. I keep telling her that she should get out of Donetsk too because there is nothing to look forward to there. 

The political situation is ridiculous. Authorities there aren’t focused on the future of citizens. Donetsk is a grey zone. The only people left are those who have no other options, no chance to move out. Some elderly people are stuck there. 

I was 16 when we moved to Kyiv. At first it was hard for me. So much change... For others the transition into university was smooth - they could still see their friends and family. 

For us there was no way back, everything was a complete mess and we didn’t understand what was going on, nor  what our future would look like.

People were open-minded at university in Kyiv so I didn’t feel like I was being treated any differently because I was from Donetsk. They asked me about the war all the time, out of curiosity. Just once, when my family was looking for a permanent flat to rent after we’d moved to Kyiv, someone rejected us because we were from Donetsk. Other than that, the atmosphere in Kyiv was great.

The move from Donetsk to Kyiv was a lot harder for my parents than it was for me. They weren’t young anymore, they’d left a lot more behind in Donetsk. They had to take care of many, many problems and everything was so sudden and scary. We would wake up at night because of the explosions. My dad wanted us to leave the city immediately and my parents would argue over what we needed to do. 

There was so much uncertainty. Before 2014, my parents had their friends, we went on vacations and had many plans for the future. My parents have lost a lot of their vitality. 

The war split up many families and broke up many friendships. One of our close family friends supported the pro-Russian side. Holding radically different political views made it impossible to stay in touch, even after sixteen years of friendship. My father’s brother lives in Moscow, he is a former military guy and has a completely different opinion from ours. He and my father haven’t spoken together for six years already. Every family has stories like this, and it makes it all harder psychologically.

When I turned 18 I felt a strong urge to see the world and travel as much as possible. I wanted more than just staying in Ukraine all the time.  I joined a student organisation that focuses on industrial engineering and management. I traveled a lot and met with students from all over Europe. 

Now I live in Berlin, at Ostbahnhof, right across the street from Berghain, the most famous night club in Europe. Sometimes when I walk through this part of Berlin I get a bit nostalgic, because it feels similar to eastern Europe. When friends from Ukraine visit me here in Berlin I would take them down to Karl Marx Allee and tell them that we are going to do a tour through Kyiv, Minsk and Moscow at the same time because Karl Marx Allee can be anything. It really reminds me of home. People can say that it’s ugly architecture, or call these buildings communist boxes, but to me they echo something that’s like home. 

After I left China, I traveled to a variety of places, Hamburg, Istanbul, Belgrade. I also travelled to Ukraine for two weeks. I returned to Berlin before the lockdown started. As a young person I’m just trying to stay optimistic, despite all the problems the pandemic has created. 

What happened to my family since 2014 has made me think that there is always a positive side to any situation. With that kind of thinking you are less surprised when life throws you a curveball, you deal with unexpected situations a lot better. Since 2014 I’ve learned that nothing is the end of the world as we know it. You just have to work a bit harder to get the things you want.