Hi! My name is Alex, and I'm 13 years old, and this is how I escaped Ukraine.
On February 24th, in the morning, I was getting ready for school. but suddenly, I got a message in our class group. One of my classmates was asking if we are going to school. I thought: "Hm, I think they found that on the internet". Because everyone always asked our teacher something about COVID, when they saw some news about school lockdown. This time teacher replied: "I don't know yet". After 5 minutes, She said, that the invasion has started, an that the schools are now closed. My dad told me to pack my bag in case we would need to run away. My mom went to work, but she came very soon. Her and dad went to pick up my uncle's car, because he went to German with his girlfriend, for a surgery, 1 week before the invasion. We didn't have a car, because we sold it the last year. We went to the pet shop when they got home, to get our cats' food, and 2 leashes in case we would actually go. There were more then 100+ people standing outside the bank. And we waited for 30 minutes to get into the pet store. In the night, we heard sirens. I was scared, because I never heared them before. In a few days it became the normal routine. Sirens rang every day. On the first days, I've did research, on how to escape to Poland. Of course no one agreed to run closer to the Polish border. We were luckily living in Lviv, just near the border. My dad kept convincing us to go by ourselves, but he, my grandma and my great-grandpa couldn't come. My sister, mom and me insisted for us to stay but one day things turned around for us. We have decided to go together. My sister, me, and my mom. March 7th, we were packing all our suitcaces. March 9th, the day we were going to the border. Unfortunately, the car ran out of battery. My dad's friend helped us to charge it up, and in no time, we were driving to my mom's friend's friend, and her son, because we had to pick them up to go with us. After we did, we went all the way to the Polish border. It took us 3 hours. We arrived at 10 pm. There were TONS of people, standing there. My dad wanted to go with us to the end to say goodbye, and then traveled home. We stood there for 30 minutes. We got cold, so My dad and I went to get some hot coffe and hotdogs. after 3 hours, the line moved for 10 meters. It was vey slow. The line was split in 2, because the road was seperated. We stood there until 7 am. Then we found out, that it wasn't moving the whole night, we still don't know why. People got angry so we moved forwards. We were standing between more then 100 people, and we couldn't even move. Next to me was a 11-12 year old girl, she was feeling really sick. Suddenly she fainted and was rushed to the hospital. We moved forward. We were at the border at 10 am. My dad got us some food from volunteers, we were starving. When it was our turn, we sad tearly goodbyes to my dad, and we went forward. We went to get our passports checked. A lady pushed my mom, and they got into an argument. Fortunately they got along. After getting our passports checked, we went to get to the bus to Warsaw. We waited on street again, for 1,5 hours. It was finally our turn. We went into a long tent, in which we stood for 2 hours. Finally, a Poland police officer has let us to the bus. We went by bus to the volunteer centre in Poland, near the border. A man guided us to one volunteer. He was really sweet. He drove us to Warsaw, and at the end gave us a big bag of sweets! We went to a cafe, ate lots of food. We were so starving! We had realitives in Spain, so my mom found a volunteer bus to Madrid. It was arriving at 1 am. When it arrived and got we got on, I fell asleep instantly. Next day we were in Germany. there was nothing really intresting while the trip. At the evening we were at France. We stayed in a hotel. The next day we woke up at 3.40 am. At 4 am. we were already in the bus. We have reached spain in the evening the same day. When we reached Madrid at 11 pm., we were greeted by my "aunt". She drove us to my aunt (my mom's cousin), and her mom. We stayed there a night. The next day we went exploring Madrid. In the evening all my realitives had dinner at my "aunt's" house. There my other aunt (my mom's cousin, aka my best friend) showed up. We were in spain in 2011, so since then, I missed her very much.She also has 2 childer (my cousins). After the dinner, we went to her house. My online school from Ukraine started, so i didn't need to go to school yet. We stayed there for 1 month. It was so much fun hanging out wth my cousins! After 1 month, we have moved to my aunt, where we stayed the first night. At the moment I'm staying with them. I decided to write this story to share my experience. I hope it was intresting for you.
P.S: The woman and her son who went with us, went to a bus, without telling us, and rode it, leaving us behind.