TUNTREET
JUL I KARANTENE Elina Turbiná Journalist
I knew I would be spending my Christmas holidays in Ås. In the country where I am from, Latvia, the cases have been consistently tiptoeing around a thousand per day. Going home to eat some mayonnaise-filled salads and watch tacky New Year’s shows on TV did not seem to be a good enough reason to risk the health of my loved ones. So, I stayed here to attend the events organized by the university for us - hundred-something students, unable to travel home for the holidays. Thanks to SiT, we were able to enjoy an evening of “risgrøt” and “gløgg” outside the Clock Building on the 22nd of December, and later cook ourselves a fancy Christmas eve dinner. The university equipped us with a box of food, decorations, board games, and anti-bac. The four-hour preparation of six kilograms of smelly turkey and a beautiful game of Secret H*tler brought us, complete strangers, much closer! Not everyone got lucky enough to be with people on Christmas. My course mate
Pauline Hovland Illustratør
Hamilton, for instance, had to spend his Christmas at the Gardermoen Quarantine hotel. His celebration seemed less exciting. “The experience wasn’t bad so much as boring - Christmas was mostly spent on video calls with my family and partner, otherwise spending my time reading, watching Netflix, or playing games on my computer.” During his two weeks at the hotel, Hamilton also got into quarantine hotel food photography. “The only real indication that December 25th was even Christmas, was the ‘holiday’ dinner that was brought to us. I certainly missed my friends’ Christmas that we’d collectively done over the last 6 years, but not being with them in person has really reflected 2020 itself, in a form of isolation.” Another friend of mine, Fanny, had to change her plans last minute: she found out she had to quarantine in Oslo, instead of visiting her family in Hamar, because her coworker got covid-19. “It was very weird”, she told me over Zoom, “once the 25th arrived, everything was okay, but the days
before it, watching the holiday movies, andI’m almost starting to cry now, all families meeting together, it was just like - yeah, I’m not gonna do that this year.” Her days consisted of walking her dog, Tira, with her friend, making dinner and watching TV. “It was weird because when I went outside, the only light on my side of the street was the light in my room. In a way it was good, because it would’ve been worse seeing families in those windows having dinner knowing I’m not doing that this year.” We have learnt a lot through this experience. I now know that most foreigners enjoy Latvian Christmas music, Fanny learnt to never agree to help if the help is not appreciated, and Hamilton concluded that modern age makes isolation not so isolated. As Fanny said, “I hate 2020, and I’m not going to be a good person in 2021.” And to be honest, she made some fair points.
Utgåve 01 Årgang 76
13
