48. The virus

Spending winter break at home this year was very hard. Due to the Corona crisis, Germany is now having its fourth lockdown and has remained in a state of lockdown since the beginning of December. In Texas the lockdown rules were extremely flexible and malleable, this strongly contrasted to Germany where no stores were allowed to be open apart from grocery stores, and one person was only allowed to see one other person from a different household. These rules were upheld by the police force and if not followed you could end up with a 20 000 fine or even jail. While this might sound like something taken from a movie it was a harsh reality for more than 80 million people. I often recall how I tried to explain the situation to my American friends here, but no one was truly able to imagine how horrible and strict it really was or still is. Families were forced to spend the holidays alone and you weren't even able to meet up with more than one other person from a different household. To put this into perspective,  I have three older brothers and each of them has a girlfriend apart from the oldest one who is married. All of the girlfriends wanted to visit Germany this Winter but as they are not married to my brothers nor are they German citizens they weren't even able to enter the country. Furthermore, my oldest brother lives in America where he and his wife have recently been blessed with baby Liam. Liam is now almost one year old and has never met his german side of the family, apart from me, as I am the only one able to travel to the US with a Visa. While this pains me I unable to imagine the pain that my parents must be in as they have yet to meet their first grandson. 

Additionally traveling home has become a nightmare. Usually, my trip from Texas to the US takes approximately 12 hours. Ever since Corona has hit it has taken me an average of 23 hours with several overlays, delays, and most commonly several canceled flights. While I have never contracted Corona during my travels, I always find myself to be extremely sick a few days after my arrival due to the stress, tension, and exhaustion from the travel. While I can now travel with a clean conscience because I have been fully vaccinated, I used to live with the guilt of returning home and putting my parents at risk of contracting this deadly disease. Additionally, you would expect that Germany would have high vaccination rates as one of the vaccines (Pfizer) was invented by German scientists in a German lab. However, only 15% of our population has been vaccinated thus far which only includes individuals who were labeled to be at 'high risk'. 

I remember walking on the streets of my Hometown and not being able to make a single turn without encountering police. If there was an incident where I was seeing one of my friends (evidently only outside as people were too scared to meet up in houses) and we would walk into another friend and just briefly say hello, the police would drive up to us right away and asked for our IDs. 

This situation is extremely scary but also extremely real. I understand the need for such extreme measures and just hope that there will soon be a future where we can all feel safe, loved, and welcomed no matter where we go.