One of my favorite Christmas songs is "Driving home for Christmas" by Chris Rea. I was listening to this song on repeat, when I was going home for winter break. When I came back to university at the end of January, I was not expecting to get home again before the end of May.
But thanks to a little pandemic, I was home again sooner than I thought. Instead of being back by the end of May, I was back by mid-March.
At the beginning of this semester, I was not really concerned with Corona quickly spreading across the world. I totally underestimated the danger and I was more or less There were many rumors about university cancelling face-to-face teaching and switching to online-lectures. But it literally took until the day the university officially announced the change and friends of mine trying to get back home to their countries before they close their borders that I realized the largeness and urgency of COVID-19. Suddenly friends with whom I had breakfast, were gone back home by dinner and it was hard say, when we would see each other again. I was for a while paralyzed and I did not know what I should do. I am in a rather luxurious position for the problem, because I am studying in the same country as I grew up in. That means I would always easily get home because there simply aren't any borders that be closed. (as it turned out later, that assumption was not 100% correct). My family was quite concerned about me staying on campus for longer, because the region of our university, was far more affected than the regions of my hometown. Eventually I made the decision to go home for a while and see at how the whole situation will develop. However, than came the next question: How should go home? Usually I am traveling by train but for some reason a 6 hour train journey through the north of Germany and Hamburg a highly affected city did not seem particularly safe. Therefore, I rented to car to get home. The original plan was, that an old school friend of mine would come to my university and we will then go home together because she also decided to leave her new town and go back home for a while. But as the word "original" already implies, it did not work out that way. My friends could not come her, because she was in quarantine, because one her friends was tested positively on COVID-19. Well, the planned best friend road trip turned into a road trip of me and my quarantine car which I called Gustav. Though that was not the only obstacle. My mother called me the night before my journey home to inform me about a new rule of the "my" federal state. They have installed border controls to make sure that only people who actually live there are allowed to enter. People who simply had a second holiday home by the Baltic Sea were denied access. My mom told me that I needed a document that proved that I am going home to my family because officially my new residence is the campus. I was nervous the whole way back, unable to imagine inner-German border controls. When I crossed the "border" that were for a fact police men waiting and checking up on people. But they did not check everybody and I was able to just drive by without being obligated to explain my reason for entering. The journey itself was not adventurous. I listened and sang to my playlists while thinking about everything. I think during the journey back home was the first time that I actually thought about what was going on in the world with the pandemic and what consequences is will cause. I was driving back home, not knowing if or when I would go back. At that time, it was just the beginning of the outbreak and still nowadays nobody can make reliable presumptions for the next weeks, months or years. We simply don't know. And I think for our society which is used to planning out every little detail of our life, this situation is a true challenge. Instead of hustling everyday, attending meetings and trying to keep a work-life balance, suddenly we are forced to stay. We have the time we also wished to have. "Oh, I wish I could just get a week off to get everything done". Before Corona, many people used to say that. Well, now are more or less giving this "free" time at home but people are unsatisfied. We are missing our busy life, the spontaneous adventures and the anticipation of the next holiday. When it comes to the latter, we do not even know, when we will be allowed to go on holiday. But to be honest, I think when we are allowed to meet up again with more than 2 people, every gathering in the park will feel like festival and every time we go to a café it will feel like a French café in the French rivera. Maybe that is one positive thing that will come out of all of this. We have other priorities and we will understand that the best memories of life are the moments we share with other people.
Ironically, I am writing this blogpost on the day I drove back to campus. I decided to come back and spend the last month of this semester on campus to be in the right mindset for finals. Thinking about everything that has happened during the last couple of months is overwhelming, confusing and absurd at the same time. One of my friends said during one of our FaceTime calls that it is crazy that we are alive during this weird time of uncertainty, we will probably tell our grandchildren about. And I absolutely agree. I am interested to see how everything is going to turn out.
But for stay healthy and safe or get better soon,
Paulina
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