Wie geht Heimat?

On a Saturday in early summer, Kateryna Chechelnytska weaves her way through the crowd sat the weekly market on Boxhagener Platz in Berlin. Past tulips, strawberries and a stall selling varenyky, Ukrainian dumplings. Chechelnytska is here every week, with her mother and her dog Senil, a white terrier. They’ve only lived in Friedrichshain for a short time, and visiting the market was one of their first rituals in a place they’d rather not be.

The first thing they bought were German potatoes, Chechelnytska recalls. Also beet, white cabbage, fresh dill. From these, her mother cooked borsch, a Ukrainian stew. In Ukraine, Chechelnytska recalls, everyone knows that the best vegetables are available in the markets, much fresher than in the supermarket. “My family loved the markets. That’s why this place reminds me of home”.

Home, for Chechelnytska, was Kyiv until Feb. 24, 2022. Then Russia attacked Ukraine, Chechelnytska, then 27, packed a few shopping bags full of clothes and drove with her mother and dog across the border, through Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to Berlin.

Text: Tanya Flenchyk
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Assignment for “Spiegel”