POLAND II

Unfortunately, the renewed attempt to take a semester abroad was only of short duration. I had just found new permanent accommodation until September, which was extremely difficult at such a late point in time, but after only 3 weeks I had to leave Gdansk in a hurry. The reason for the spontaneous return home was the outbreak of the corona virus, which had meanwhile also arrived in Poland.

 I have dealt with the topic "Coronavirus" very much and early on, because my first choice for the semester abroad was China, the Tongji University in Shanghai. I had been looking forward to this very much. Nevertheless, since the end of January I have been trying to understand the importance and the risk of the coronavirus with my parents. It was the first time we had heard about this new type of virus in China in the news during the Christmas holidays, but we had not yet given it much thought. The Chinese health authorities initially said that the virus was not transmissible from person to person. In addition, the spread was mainly limited to the Wuhan province. My parents and I compared the numbers of infected people in China every day when there were no cases of the disease outside China. We recognized the exponential growth by creating a table of case numbers when the problem was not yet in the media. The number of infected people has continued to grow unabated. I have learned from the Chinese site WeChat on the university site that the start of the semester has been postponed more and more by Tongji University. Nevertheless, I was able to secure a room in a shared flat near the university and at the beginning of February I still sat for hours in the Chinese consulate in Düsseldorf to pick up the visa for China. Even a school class with teachers was there and was still convinced that they would soon be able to take a class trip to China. After a few days I received the official notification from Tongji University that the semester start for Erasmus students is not possible. This caused different feelings in me. On the one hand, I finally had certainty, but was very disappointed, because I had been looking forward to the semester abroad very much, especially with the challenge of another continent and the confrontation in everyday life with our so different culture. On the other hand, I was relieved, because the developments in China and the uncertainties were already scary. It was clear to me that I needed a new plan. I really wanted to go abroad this semester and asked the International Office of the University of Liechtenstein whether it was still possible to travel to another country. Thanks to the help from the International Office it was possible to move to Gdansk. I gratefully accepted the opportunity. Then everything went very quickly and I travelled to Gdansk at the end of February without having accommodation for the whole semester. I found it only half a week before my forced departure, a nice and inexpensive shared room near the university. I felt very comfortable, a nice community among the architecture students had developed in that short time. Within a few days at the beginning of March the situation outside of Poland came to a head and again I was at a loss, because the Polish administration warned the foreign students not to leave, the number of sick people everywhere in Europe was much worse than in Poland and if we left, we would not be allowed to enter Poland again. A difficult situation but here too the International Office of the University of Liechtenstein was helpful, advising us to listen to the advice of our parents and gut feeling in the end in this extraordinary situation. That was very good advice, because then, in mid-March, a few days before the lockdown, I took the last possible plane from Gdansk to Cologne, albeit with a heavy heart. Here the last stage of the semester abroad started in the form of home office, combined with a lot of digital group work. Here the intensive time of the introductory events paid off. As described in the first blog, I always had the feeling that the students on site were very open-minded and approached the Erasmus students very openly. One did as much as possible at the beginning, as one did not want to miss anything. Everyone felt the need to fit into the group. In the following difficult time of digital teaching and learning, this had a very positive effect on the communication among each other and the common work, because a basis of trust and a sense of community was created, which held everyone together until the end of the semester.

Alexander Meissner, SS20