The business that was born under the Russian shelling.

There was a woman who lived in Lisbon, Portugal, with her 13-year-old daughter, a cat, and a dog. Life wasn’t all that bad. She ran an e-commerce business buying, restoring, and selling vintage lamps, had a small apartment in the historic center of Lisbon, and a car to get around.

Originally from Ukraine, she missed her family and her country deeply. It was 2024, and Ukraine was in its third year of war with Russia. That’s when she decided to turn her long-time passion into a career and become a web designer. However, she needed a few months to finish her courses and create a website for herself.

But, as a single mother in Lisbon, things just didn’t seem to get done.

That’s when she realized she needed to get away, somewhere she could work uninterrupted for several months. And what better place than her beloved Ukraine?

So, she rented out her apartment for the whole summer, sent her daughter to her dad, and left her cat and dog with friends. She then left for Ukraine for three months. She bought a ticket to Poland, from where she took a 27-hour bus trip to Kyiv, her home city.

This woman is me.

I arrived in Ukraine in mid-June, facing my first problem: a heat wave. It was nearly 40 degrees Celsius, and with daily power cuts, neither the air conditioners nor the elevators worked. My parents live on the 10th floor of a large apartment building. The power cuts were regular, from 9 am to 6 pm, or from 2 pm into the night. It was so hot in the apartment, especially at night, that I slept hugging a 1.5-liter bottle of cold water. It helped just a little, or maybe it was just me imagining that it helped. If the power cut was in the morning, my dad made coffee for me before I woke up and before the electricity was turned off, trying to keep it hot.

 Sometimes I would run to the shop, buy ice cream, and sprint back to the 10th floor, tongue out, to bring it home to my parents before it melted.

But there was a bigger problem than the heat. I didn’t come here for a vacation. I came here to work. And with the lack of electricity, there was no way to work. First, I used my power bank and mobile internet, but two hours into the power cut, the mobile network got so busy it would simply collapse. No internet, no calls, nothing.

So, I would go with my laptop to shopping centers and try every wall socket I could find. Sometimes I would be lucky and find a working wall socket and free WiFi, and I would sit on the floor and work. Other times, I would find WiFi in a café and sit there drinking iced coffee as long as the WiFi worked. But it wasn’t easy to find either.

Several times, while in the shopping center, the air siren would scream, and everyone was forced out to the street. I didn’t go far; I just stuck around, waiting for the attack to end so I could go back to work.

Then, halfway through my stay, I discovered McDonald’s. I will love McDonald’s forever; I nearly feel it was my faithful partner in creating my website. Because in McDonald’s, there was always electricity and free WiFi. You just had to get there early enough and get a table near a wall socket. And let me tell you the best part—in Kyiv, McDonald’s opened at 7 am. So, it became my office. It looked like a coworking space; every table was occupied by some nerdy guy with a beard and glasses, and people were drinking iced lattes and typing away or having conference calls.

You see, people in Ukraine do not make any excuses not to work; they just find a way. Electricity cut? Go to McDonald’s! Drone attack? Work from the metro! 40 degrees and no air conditioning? Iced latte!

And there were ballistic attacks, of course. Once, I was sitting at my desk in our living room, typing away, when the siren went off. I confess that I ignored it.

It was so peaceful, with a flock of birds flying between the two apartment buildings and signing away when it exploded.

Although it was kilometers away, it felt as if it was right in front of the window. The glass in the windows vibrated but held. The birds disappeared and a dead silence followed. I ran into the corridor where we hid together with my parents. A few minutes later I read on Telegram that the missile hit Ahmadit Children's Hospital.

Attacks happened almost daily. Mostly at night.

I remember the day I finally finished the website. Sitting on the bench in the shopping center. It was a quiet day. Hot day, but quiet. There were no attacks that day. It was a happy day. The Web Design Pros was born.