So, remember when I told you how happy I am, that I finally found a spot? With a flatmate I could talk to and room for my own and a balcony? Guess what happened….
Because of the lockdown and the perspective that it will stay like that a bit longer especially for restaurants etc. my flatmate lost his job. And decided to go to leave the city for a while and come back when everything is better. But since he didn’t know when this will be happening, I needed to leave too. When he told me this, my decision was quickly made. I decided to go back to Berlin. My flat was empty except of the stuff the girls left, but at least I have the possibility to do quarantine at home.
There are some pros to be back in Berlin. Rent is cheaper, I can apply for unemployment benefit and after quarantine I’ll be able to see my friends and family (is this really a pro? ;-)) again. But since it was unexpected and with short notice I am still struggling with the new situation. So what will be this post about? My return and some ideas I have for the Blog, so you’ll have an idea what will happen here in future.
After I made the decision to travel back home I searched at first a possibility to do so. Spoiler: it was no cheap decision to make. I found a flight from Milano-Malpensa to Berlin with one stop in Frankfurt. On the Sunday a week later, which was perfect. Or at least better than during week when I need to attend online-classes. After that I checked how to get to the airport and there were basically only connections way to early in the morning and if something went wrong then, I would miss my flight. So I decided to take a train on Saturday and booked a room nearby the airport. I was very happy to do so, even it was more expensive than taking the early train. I also used shuttle-service and taxi during that travel, which is something I normally avoid. But I was so fed up from everything I just wanted to get to the airport and to my home as easiest as possible. I left early for the train, which was good because I needed more time to get to the station (had some problems with my suitcase) than expected. At the train station I needed to fill out a paper where I am going and why. I did the same on the next day with a similar paper on the airport. This was for the Italian authorities. In the plane I had to fill out one for the german authorities and I got several more papers with explaining about the measurements in Germany. It was quite weird how differently the atmosphere at the airports were. Milano were mostly male passengers, most of them looked like they coming from or going to work, everyone kept their distance, the staff told you were to stand, everyone was wearing masks and yeah somehow more serious… in Frankfurt the plane landed and there was basically no distance in the line anymore. I waited till I was sure that I can keep my distance before I left the flight. The airport was quiet and more empty than usual, but I also saw some family who waited probably for a family member with a welcome sign and in general more people traveling as couples or in groups. Distance was not really an issue for most and you could tell quite easily who is foreigner, because they had at least masks (some put them down for the moment I saw them for eating or drinking or because they were annoyed and nobody near them). The staff at the security check were busy chatting with each other than to make the woman after me wait till I am away, and the toilets weren’t cleaned good. I can understand the last thing when there are a lot of people and no pandemic going on, but seriously? I was never germaphobic but… now I am. And furious how careless people are. I mean I spent a lot of self-discipline to not infect myself or others and to go into quarantine the natural thing to do. But to see how others don’t give a sh*t annoys me.
In Berlin on the other hand was an ongoing announcement that people coming from foreign countries has to go directly to their homes, make an 14-days quarantine and give notice to the health office in their region. Police officers handing out papers about the measurements and when I left the airport there were guys leading everyone directly to the next free taxi. I drove with it through Berlin and as I told you before, it was a Sunday afternoon. It was also a sunny one so I could see at lot of people outside, eating ice cream and taking walks or the bikes. It felt so weird after the empty streets of Bologna. Especially even when people in Bologna were outside they were mostly alone didn’t talked too much with each other and keeping distance or hurry to get home again. It was so weird to see how different the behavior is here. I mean of course the virus here seem to make a weaker impact so probably for most it doesn’t felt as dangerous as it felt to us in Italy.
So, since my adventure came to an early end, what will I do with this Blog? I still want to write about my university experience, but since I am still in the middle of the online courses, I may postphone this a little bit further. But there are three more kind of stories left:
First of all, I’ll tell you more stories about my past and hopefully future traveling.
Second I’ll share with you some of the recipes I learnt on my traveling or which are connected to places I’ve been. You already could see some of them in my last post.
Third, only because this adventure seem to be over, it doesn’t mean I’ll go back to my normal life (whatever that means). Actually right now I am thinking about how to go back and how to make it possible to travel even more. So, I’ll probably will spent some time to find out about that and give you a glimpse of my experiences.
Travel, learn, share, repeat... 