War chronicles p.4

Map of stories: War chronicles: Intro
Previous part: War chronicles p.3

February 27:

Spent morning in the basement. This day was a start of fierce fighting not far away from our house.

Today started as usual. We woke up and were planning to drink some coffee before breakfast. And suddenly, we’ve heard a loud explosion, and then another one, and another one. Quickly got down to the basement. First time closed the hatch and used candle for lights. Looks like the oxygen level is fine, the ventilation works.

Waited for explosions to end, getting back to the surface.

There is a huge column of black smoke outside, sounds of gunshots far away. So this is it, this is the day when the war literally came to our house. I understand that some people experienced this on the first day (e.g. in Hostomel), but it’s a completely different feeling to see this with your own eyes — definitely not the same as looking at videos from the news.

Lights out. Not good. Now we have few problems:

• Temperature outside
  It’s freezing at night. We need to find some way to keep ourselves warm. We have blankets and a fireplace. Started the fire, good enough.
• Food
  Our stove uses gas, it still works. But the freezer is dead. Taking out everything that needs to be held in cold. Here, the freezing temperature helps. Last resort — the water in the pool is very cold, so we can use a plastic bag and cool the perishable foods. Works fine.
• Connection and news
  Here I must thank our news stations. I have brought a radio-station and on almost every working frequency — there is a hourly news broadcast from nation-wide news marathon. For upcoming weeks this will be our main source of information.

Ann’s mom is a very virtuous cooker and was able to prepare a bread using the fireplace (the oven is electric)

Enjoying roasted marshmallow and going to sleep while hearing explosions far away.

Next part: TBD