At first, I did not understand that there was a war. She was so misunderstandable the first time. Until the moment with the train. Then I realized that the war had begun. When we left the station of Nikopol.
There was another siren at 3 a.m. in the second week, and my mother and my aunt decided to leave home. We were sent to sleep with my sister, and they went to collect all the things. We left the house at about 7 a.m. At 7:30 we were already at the station and at 8 o'clock there was already a train. Jerik, my sister's dog, didn't want to climb into the bag, so we didn't take him. It was a difficult decision. But later we realized that it was right.
The electric train arrived, they said it was straight to Lviv. There we all sat on benches. At the village of Pyatykhatky, we were told that the train was no longer running and we were all dropped off. It was about 13 o'clock. A huge crowd of people just got on the track. We ran to another train, but we did not get there. Everyone was pushing each other: people were fighting for a place and pushing women and children out.
My mother's sister, Aunt Tanya, saw that there was a train somewhere far away, right behind the train. We had bags and a cart for my little brother Artem. We were already thinking of throwing everything away to get on that train. But we were not allowed there either. We shouted and cried, but in front of us, we just closed the door and cleaned the iron stairs so that we would not jump. Aunt Tanya shouted to the guide, "How can you look your children in the eye if you don't take these children?" And we were let through. But we were the only ones who came in, most of the crowd stayed on the tracks in Pyatihatki.
On the train we sat and slept on bags, mom and baby just sat on a bench in a compartment where there were 9 people, and we sat in the train corridor. We drove like that all day and all night. We arrived in Lviv in the morning. Only after the shower, I realised that I was safe.
I miss my grandfather the most and Ryzha, it`s my cat. I like Lviv, I would live here, but with the whole family.