Earlier this year, a good friend of mine texted me telling me he was going to travel to Eastern Europe soon and was considering going to Lviv. A city in the west of Ukraine. He asked me if I wanted to join. Obviously, I had some concerns regarding safety. While Lviv has certainly not been spared from all of the horrors of war it is a relatively safe place. We found out that the last time fatalities were reported in Lviv due to a missile strike had been in July 2023. Almost a year earlier. Unsurprisingly this is the city may soldiers go to when they can leave to frontline to recover for a number of weeks.

We determined the risk was acceptable for our brief visit. We still had some reservations about the ethics of visiting Lviv. Would the locals approve? Would we potentially be a liability if something happened? Between the two of us we knew several Ukrainian, so we asked around and told them our plan. Most of them approved, and even encouraged it, as we would be supporting the local economy. Some had no opinion on the matter. Motivated by our interest in the region and our willingness to support Ukraine in any way we can we decided to go.

Our journey started in Krakow, Poland from where we took a bus that would take us to Lviv. As we passed the airport of Rzeszów we got our first glimpse of the war machine that has been built up in the last few years, as this is one of the airports through which much of the military aid arrives in Poland. No pictures for obvious reasons.

Despite all of our research, our nervousness increased slowly as we reached the border. While it took a number of hours to process everyone on the bus the border crossing was similar to many other land border crossings I have crossed in the past. The border agent asked for the purpose of our visit, and answering ‘Tourism’ did not seem strange to her at all. In fact, I like to think I saw a little smile when she heard it.

The first day in Lviv was a whirlwind of sadness, signs of hopefulness, and many other emotions I had never felt before. One of the first signs of this terrible war that we saw was a huge cemetery for fallen soldiers. As we walked around we found many guys our age and even younger. This truly made my stomach turn. We spend quite some time here trying to take it all in. We overheard a local woman telling her foreign colleague that she hates coming here. The reason was that she often found graves of acquaintances she didn’t know had passed.

As we continued the tour of the city we were able to witness some of the incredible resilience portrayed by the Ukrainian people. Restaurants were open and full of people having a good time. We spoke to a couple from Kharkiv, who despite witnessing daily missile strikes were still full of hope for the future. We saw open-air markets and people performing dances in squares. The local tourism center told us of many more events going on in and around the city. The contrast between what the media portrays a place to be like and the reality never ceases to amaze me.

While the city does seem normal at times reminders of the war are never far away. Most notable are the air sirens, which sometimes go off multiple times a day. The first time we heard it our hearts were beating in our throats and our senses heightened. We knew we were supposed to go to an air raid shelter, but nobody around seemed to do so. People had gotten completely desensitized to it. After a few more times we knew to check the app to see what was going on, and based on that go to a shelter or not. One time the air sirens went off at night and we decided to go to the shelter. Thankfully, no missiles hit Lviv. This experience taught us something: although people seem desensitized to the sirens, multiple nights of this will certainly leave you exhausted, whether you go to the shelter or not.

On our way back to Poland we met a Ukrainian guy our age. He was born in a village in Donetsk Oblast close to the Russian border. He was there in 2014 when the conflict in the Donbas started. He then fled to Kharkiv, which he fled again in 2022 due to the full-scale invasion. He now lives in Dnipro city. ‘War follows me wherever I go,’ he said. Despite seeming like a cheerful guy, the effect of this kind of trauma on a population-wide scale will be apparent for many years after the war ends.

Visiting Lviv left me with mixed emotions. On the one hand, the resilience of the Ukrainian people is truly incredible and inspiring. On the other hand, the atrocities committed are hard to fathom, and the shared trauma will take its toll for generations to come. One thing I know for certain is that I will go back to Ukraine soon to help in more meaningful ways.