Blablacar stories. №14
It's been a while since I wrote Blablacar stories... I decided to translate this one - to show part of life how it's going now in Ukraine. The 13 stories I published in a book "Rating 5.0" https://www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebook/rating-5-0-blablacar-stories - nobody buys it, but I don't have time for marketing and I lowered the price to $0.99
The time when I wrote these "Blablacar stories" is long forgotten in past, as if they were in a past life. A different time has come, a time of new tests and new decisions. But all about that - maybe later and in other texts. I decided to write the same story as an example of what incredible people you can meet by chance.
In the afternoon I left Chernivtsi for Kyiv. In the center, an older woman and a 12-year-old girl get into the car. I put on an English-language podcast, the woman asks to turn it down. I can put something in Ukrainian, no problem. I have some podcasts downloaded. This becomes interesting to her. Budanov, Kuleba, Karas - we watch these interviews almost the entire way, in which the speakers explain what happened and is happening. "Such an educational trip" - the woman compliments my choice and then promises to leave a good review on the Blablacar app.
In Kamнanets-Podilskyi I stop near the cinema on Hrushevskoho Street to pick up another passenger. Alina. This name has been haunting me lately, and I even see some symbolism here.
Alina looks as if she stepped out of the pages of a glossy magazine. Blonde, bright makeup, big lips, long pink manicure. Alina sits in the front seat, as there are already passengers behind.
We listen to these podcasts-interviews, she is interested in them - she periodically looks at the phone screen, which displays a video. At one of the stops, when several podcasts have already passed, I ask whether to play music or another podcast. "You can put one more podcast like this," says Alina, surprising me a little with such an answer, because I'm used to the fact that such girls are usually not interested in politics and war.
But now almost everyone in Ukraine is interested in the war. Alina goes to Zhytomyr to visit her husband, a military man. They have been together for a long time, they have a two-year-old son who stayed in Kamyanets-Podilskyi with her parents. Alina says that she herself would go to fight. She looks so beautiful, as if she is going to a night club, and she is going to her husband, just for a couple of days, and then back. It is even difficult to say what is more beautiful - her beauty or patriotism.
They lived in many places in Ukraine, in different cities, and she liked Poltava the most. Maybe after the victory, they will return there. She likes to live in different cities, in different apartments, and to travel. She even went to see her husband in Kramatorsk, which was under fire at the time. She is not afraid and would go to fight herself.
When we reach Zhytomyr, we have an interesting conversation, I drove here directly in the needed direction. The man does not know that she will come - Alina decided to surprise him. You can often meet such girls on Instagram (where she has more than 15,000 followers on her page), but rarely - on the road on Blablacar.
Alina does not think that the war will end quickly. But she did not think of going abroad either. Her Instagram, which previously featured some jokes or product reviews (as an influencer she was approached by brands), then raised funds for equipment for the military... She is studying to be a journalist and may become a military journalist in the future. From the understanding that there are such people - it becomes a little easier in the soul...
