Who would have thought...😔🔙

Who would have thought? Since Friday, I'm back in Bielefeld. I needed a few days to process everything and rest, that's why I'm only reaching out now. The situation in Italy is surely known to you, and those who have been following my blog know what restrictions it has brought. Every day, we asked ourselves the same question: Do we stay here or do we fly home? Unfortunately, it was not easy for any of us to answer this question. We would have liked to have more information about the upcoming measures and base our decision on that. However, we did not get that information. Of course, no one has that information and can say how it will go on. The Italian government decides week by week.

So the question changed to: What would we wait so long for? For a semester abroad that is not as we imagined it to be. Or for a vacation without university life and events. Everyone had to weigh for themselves whether the significantly milder quarantine in Germany with their family is worth giving up the long-planned semester abroad. However, I was also strongly dependent on the decisions of my friends on site. Because many students had already left weeks earlier, no one wanted to spend the time there alone. Ultimately, we set ourselves a deadline by which we wanted to make a decision. The state of having to think about it every day really wore us down and stressed us out. On Wednesday, we decided to return together, even if that would mean the end of the semester abroad. It is definitely frustrating and sad. We only had one normal week in Italy and 3 weeks in strict quarantine. We were unfortunately not allowed to experience everything that makes such a stay. The only thing left for us is to hope that we can return for a few weeks of vacation in the summer. But even that is still uncertain. Some of my roommates are still in Sardinia and I hope they stay healthy because the hospitals there are catastrophic.

The pictures should give you a small impression of the rest of my quarantine time. You will find out how we experienced the exciting journey back and how it all went in my next blog post. Now I have to clarify many things with my home university.

Stay healthy!