Grateful for Slovenian help, but all she wants to know is when she can go home again

She spent two hard, endlessly long days on the journey from Kyiv. In the terrible crush at railway stations and on trains, in the company of ten thousand people fleeing an ever more terrible war, Miroslava constantly looked after her violin, the core of her identity. She also made sure the whole time that she stayed close to the group of sixty-two other young musicians and their chaperones, members of the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. Their evacuation from Kyiv was initiated by the Slovenian Youth Orchestra (SMO).

A logistical nightmare
»I was scared. I was almost a little numb. I didn't know what to do. I watched people fleeing. Just the day before I had been at rehearsals and at school. We were planning concerts. And perhaps a trip. Everything was normal,« Miroslava described quietly and composedly her feelings on the first day of the war, in the hellish cold that crept into the bones no matter how many layers of clothing one wore. »I am glad to be safe. I was told that in Ljubljana, where we are going, we would be able to carry on with music in peace. But my thoughts are in Ukraine. With my family and friends. It is hard for me,« said the young Ukrainian musician while waiting for the other young musicians. »I am grateful for the help, but all I want to know is when I will go home again,« she added. In front of her she held a sheet of paper reading Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, with which, amid the chaos at the railway station, they tried all day to »locate« the evacuated musicians, who were aged between seven and twenty. On Sunday, three full trains arrived from the Ukrainian side of the border, from the small town of Chop. Each carried around seven hundred refugees from Ukraine, among them several dozen students from Africa, whom Hungarian police immediately pulled out of the queue and sent for special registration. Some of the young Ukrainian musicians were also sent for special registration because their documents were not entirely complete.

Celebrating a birthday in an air-raid shelter
The trains from Ukraine arrived in Hungary several hours late. In Zahony, the exhausted passengers, refugees from the war, waited in the carriages for up to two hours to be registered. This made the logistics of rescuing the young musicians, who were travelling on different trains and from different directions, considerably more difficult. The group had to stay together. The whole operation was extremely hard to keep under control. Because the rescue had been organised literally overnight, practically everything was left to improvisation. Leading the way was Uroš Dokl from Maribor, who has a long history of helping refugees and of humanitarian work. The young musicians, some with their mothers and younger brothers and sisters, came to the Ukrainian-Hungarian border from all over the country. From Odesa, Kharkiv, Kherson, Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Lviv … cities that in recent days have already entered collective historical memory – and for entirely the wrong reasons. That is usually how it goes. Especially in this part of the world, which simply cannot break free from the grip of an excess of history. »We are a little relieved. But only a little. Our men stayed behind. Some are already on the front lines. I fear that soon they all will be. It is bad, very bad,« said 40-year-old Julija Šerbinska from Kherson, which Russian forces fully occupied after a week-long siege, in the car park near the railway station where two coaches were waiting for the long journey from Hungary to Slovenia. Together with her twelve-year-old daughter Marija (a violinist), she left her home on the very first day of the war. They drove for three days to Lviv, where relatives let them have their flat for a few days. They hoped the fighting would last only a few days. They too were wrong. Her husband stayed in Lviv, where he joined the city's territorial defence. On Friday she learned of the possibility of leaving for Slovenia. She did not think about it for long. »I hope, I can only hope, that my daughter and I will soon return home. And that my husband will survive. Everything else matters less now,« Julija summed up her feelings wearily. »My daughter, a violinist and pianist, celebrated her birthday on the third day of the war. We come from Irpin near Kyiv, which the Russians bombed. Bombs were already falling then, mainly on the nearby airport. So we blew out the candles on the cake behind three walls, in the corridor of our block of flats. I didn't want to disappoint my daughter. Today we are already here, but my husband stayed in Kyiv. I am confused and shaken,« said the red-haired Olga Mikoljuk before boarding the coach to Ljubljana. She still cannot believe that her homeland has been engulfed by the fire of war. Above all, she cannot believe that Ukraine has been attacked by Russia, where she has many relatives and friends.

This is not a school trip
Late on Sunday evening the second coach – the dedicated drivers also did a great job – started its engine too. In the warm interior of the coach, a few exhausted girls fell asleep for the first time in several days. The sleep of the just could hardly have been more literal. Frozen cheeks quickly thawed. The silence, permeated by the first signs of trauma, gave way to smiles and chatter. For a moment it all resembled a school trip. Mine, yours, ours. Youth, joy, warmth, happiness, love, innocence. But only for a moment. The project to evacuate young Ukrainian musicians from the war was initiated by the Slovenian Youth Orchestra, led by the orchestra's artistic director and conductor of the Slovene National Theatre Opera and Ballet Ljubljana, Živa Ploj Peršuh, and her husband Tomo Peršuh, producer of SMO. It was a guerrilla operation which Slovenian diplomacy also joined quickly and effectively – anything is possible where there is a will! – »As soon as I saw that war had broken out in Ukraine, I felt that something had to be done. We decided on Thursday evening that we would try to rescue the members of the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, with whom we had already worked, from Kyiv,« Živa Ploj Peršuh told us just moments after the second coach of young musicians had arrived in Ljubljana from the Ukrainian border and the children had already settled into two Ljubljana youth hostels (Celica and Tresor). The Slovenian Youth Orchestra and everyone involved in the evacuation are preparing for a long-term stay of the young Ukrainian musicians in Slovenia. According to Živa Ploj Peršuh, this will be based on immediate and full integration into society – on a full life. And above all on continuing to make music.

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