One crowded train; one overcrowded overpriced bus to a checkpoint; waiting hours or very possibly days in 36 degree heat, no shelter, no toilets, 500th in line for another overpriced bus to the next checkpoint; a walk and wait for that unpredictable moment: will your pass be valid? Are you on the list? Back on the bus to the next checkpoint; another walk; yet another very overpriced bus carrying fifty people crammed in space for thirty; everyone hauling gigantic bags full of tomatoes, salo, vodka, clothes, shampoo, laptops, medicines, whole lives in battered suitcases and red and blue checked refugee bags; panic that the shooting is starting again; roads more battered than the suitcases; yet more checkpoints, passports, unpredictability, all the men off the bus, everyone aged between sixteen and forty off the bus and back on, climbing over the bags and boxes, shouting and swearing, joking, calling for calm, for patience, for tolerance, for all this to be over.
This is the journey from Kyiv to Donetsk. For millions, this is their lives now. Once upon a time, before the war, all it took to reach Donetsk from Kyiv was one night train, with clean sheets and tea in glasses in silver holders. War is hell, is death, is grief and destruction. And war is a massive, expensive, humiliating, stupid, unbearable, gigantically pointless inconvenience.
This trolleybus is going East 
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