The Scene at Berlin Hauptbahnhof

It's been a long day, but perhaps the most interesting part came in the later evening.

Before noon, a colleague had pled with us to bring food to the Berlin main train station if we could. She had been volunteering, and the tables were almost empty. To help show what was needed, she shared a donation request list.

It was around 7 p.m. when I finally wrapped up work. The following won't be my finest reportage, as I'm tired and there are, as always, other things going on:

First I went to two local stores. I tried to get as many granola bars as seemed decent (I didn't want to buy everything on the shelves), as well as a few deodorant sticks and a set of FFP2 face masks. Besides I was bringing along an empty notebook, for children to draw in, which I'd originally set aside as a gift for a colleague's birthday. My attempt at subtle purchasing didn't really work at the local Lidl store, I think, where the cashier more or less raised an eyebrow at my deluge of granola bars.

Then I cycled off to the train station. It was tremendously strange to be travelling past the German Parliament building, the Chancellor's residence with two policemen chatting quietly on the vast sidewalks (now almost empty of tourists), and then across the bridge to the train station itself, at this point in European diplomatic and political history. I don't come by there that often anyway; the last time was during the Berlin Marathon, for example.

The white pavilion tent of the German Red Cross city of Berlin, set up on Washington Square beside the station to deal with the more serious needs of Ukrainian refugees, was visible from a distance. Its rows of wooden benches in the seating area inside the pavilion were lighted but untenanted, however. Two volunteers in their twenties or thirties were partly sitting, partly standing, and chatting (one wearing a fluorescent safety vest, the other not) in French in front of it.

A few travellers speaking Ukrainian or a similar language were walking out of the train station and arranging their connecting journeys. At the doors and inside the glass hallway, there were quite a lot of fluorescent-vested volunteers.

I knew vaguely where to go. But I was also relieved to see the yellow and blue Ukrainian flag posters with arrows, which acted as signposts.

Mostly the train station was quiet. But the far end of the first floor below ground level, the area which has often been photographed and touted recently, was maybe not noisy but certainly crowded.

Security tape separated me from the absolutely packed area where refugees were thronging along the tables and collections of donated items. It was like a crowded bazaar where nobody had to pay anything, with a line of people coming in and a longer line coming out, almost tripping over each other's rolling suitcases and struggling to get through. The general vibe was of exhausted people in a hurry to be somewhere else.

It was a relief to see a group of black-clad policemen walking through the refugees, too. Recently there have been reports of Ukrainian refugee women dubiously being offered lodgings with single men, and the police are also there to prevent this sort of thing.

A woman, in a bright orange vest and perhaps a Ukrainian accent to her German, kindly let me through the security tape and led me over to where I could drop off the donations. And despite the recent deluge of do-gooders, she and the other volunteers seemed happy to see someone bringing donations and were extremely nice.

Food was handed out from a long series of tables: plastic bins with juice and water bottles, packaged sandwiches, cookies, etc. The volunteers behind the tables were struggling to keep up with the demand of the refugees in front. (While the refugees were keeping track of each other, what they needed from the tables, and their smartphones.)

In another area, baby food, diapers, toilet paper rolls, etc. were being dispensed, with waist-high bins of shampoo bottles and deodorants behind. The children's area was closed off into a safe niche; paper crayons bristled from the table where they could sit down and draw together, and a table held cardboard boxes with stuffed animals and other toys.

Two volunteers also stood over tinned sardines and other goods.

An information booth was also set up for LGBTQIA refugees.

I figured that speed would be most convenient for all concerned. So I figured out where to drop off which items, then hopped out of the building again as soon as possible.

In the end I had better luck than I deserved considering my stupidity: my key was still in my bicycle lock, because I'd forgotten to take it along with me; but my bicycle was still in the parking lot.

And I cycled home toward the stars of Orion, hovering over the canopy of the Chancellor's residence. Quite relieved to have been mildly useful.

That said, the situation in Ukraine does inspire despair.

I haven't caught up on most of the news yet. But the Russian government's suggestion of routing 'humanitarian corridors' straight into Russian territory from Kharkiv (which they've been industriously bombarding), for example, was quite enraging to read about this morning.

Besides I have the feeling that we'll regret not having NATO no-fly zones over Ukraine. — Not because I think they're a great idea, but because I have the feeling that other countries will be drawn into the war later regardless. So we're just refusing to accept the inevitable end of this, sacrificing the safety of Ukrainian civilians in the meantime. But hopefully I'm wrong.

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Tomorrow will be a statutory holiday in Berlin: Women's Day.