No, fear didn’t take over my mind.

What I carried was something else—the resilience of the people. The way they kept moving. The way life keeps going, even when everything around it is breaking. How people adapt. How they find pieces of normal in places that are anything but. The quiet, stubborn will to live—when everything says not to.

Just 14 miles from the front line, I walked through a park after dinner. And it was calm. Ordinary. People jogging. Kids laughing. Couples holding hands. Dogs chasing balls. Tulips blooming. Birds singing.

It was peaceful. Weirdly peaceful. Like the world had forgotten a war was happening.

This is Kramatorsk. Big boulevards. Old elegant buildings. Squares full of sculptures and murals. Cafés on every corner. Apartment blocks with grass courtyards and laundry lines. I saw a child’s chalk drawing on the pavement—still bright, like it had been drawn that morning.

But the war is there. Just beneath everything. This city was hit hard in the early days. A third of the people left. Now, next to a grand old building, you’ll find one that’s blown apart—interior gutted, roof collapsed. Windows boarded up. Sandbags stacked by doorways. The fountains are dry. Shipping container-like shelters sit in parking lots. One building had “SHELTER” scrawled on the wall with an arrow pointing into the basement.

There are military checkpoints guarding the city. Armored trucks roll by. Soldiers in uniform mix in with the crowd. No alcohol this close to the front. Instead: lemonade, mocktails, espresso.

The barista learned my coffee order by the third morning. The hotel receptionist made small talk every day. We laughed—Google Translate doing most of the work. But when I told them why I was there, their faces changed. The smiles faded. Tears filled their eyes. Just for a second I saw it all:  the fear, the grief, the exhaustion. And then it was gone. Back to normal. Or what “normal” means here now.

This isn’t normal. People act like it is—but it’s not. You can get used to almost anything. Even war. But the fear, the tension—it doesn’t really go away. It just hides.

Air raid sirens go off a lot. No one reacts anymore. They’ve stopped meaning anything.

My Room at the Hostel

And then there’s the sound. The thud, boom.

Drones and missiles, day and night.

Sometimes far. Sometimes close.

It’s just part of the background now.

By curfew, we’re back at our hotel. A worn Soviet-era hostel. By 9 p.m., the streets are empty. The lights blink off. Total blackout.

Except for the distant echoes. Thud, boom, still rumbling in the dark.

Jennifer

Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦