Concerts for the elderly, virtual studies and finding positivity amid the panic, Charlotte writes about life as a German student during the coronavirus outbreak.

Monday, 16 March

Today seemed to be like a normal day, any normal day. Except it wasn’t.

I got up at 6:45 a.m. as usual to have breakfast with the rest of my family. Eating together is one of the things my mother values most in my family. But this Monday, I was one of the first people to rise and I only met my father who was heading out for work. I decided to make breakfast and then wake the others up. We always eat some white bread with marmalade or chocolate and drink some juice with it. We had breakfast at around 7:30 a.m. which is not normal for a Monday. We usually leave around that time to bike to school. But on this Monday the schools were closed. If you’re asking yourself why, there’s one answer: coronavirus.

Coronavirus had a presence already before today. We all knew it had arrived in Germany and it was quite near to our city. There had been a carnival convention where most people got the virus and spread it from there. We were all aware and even in school there were lots of reminders to wash your hands and cough into your elbow. We didn’t expect school to be closed this early though. On Friday, we had our chemistry class (one of my favourites) with the school’s principal and he actually assured us that school would be open as long as possible. Our state wanted to keep education going without any disruptions. But looking back, all experts agree that it wasn’t responsible to keep the schools open this long.

At first, we were all sort of relieved. It was for the best we told ourselves and of course we enjoyed our little holidays. But that was going to change quite fast… On this Monday I was happy though and motivated to keep the good schoolwork up. I learned an hour of Spanish, did some math and studied politics (a subject I do not adore at all). It felt nice to do that at home although my two brothers needed some time adjusting to their new learning environment under the supervision of my mom. My family consists of my two brothers, Jonathan and Simon, my father, Ulrich (a very German name), my mom, Regine, and my two sisters, Chihiro and Hannah. Chihiro is a host student from Japan and is staying with us while Hannah is living with a host family in the U.S. I absolutely love my family although they can get on my nerves at times.

We ate some lunch together and then had to do one hour of family work, which in my case consisted of tending the garden and planting new grass seeds. It was afternoon when the terrible news struck us: My sister Chihiro from Japan had to go home because of the virus. We cried for an hour. The tiny bubble we had created to not think about the virus had popped and we were confronted with the possibility of her leaving. I tried to calm her down as well as I could, but I was crying a bit too. We hugged a lot, although my mom had told us specifically not to do that in these times. Normally I hug people all the time, using the excuse that hugs make you live longer. I am literally an addict! This was an exception and we both knew that.

I decided to watch a movie with Chihiro, and we found a fairy tale movie called “Die Sternentaler” (“The Star Thalers”), an old German fairy tale. After watching the movie, we went to bed and I finished the book I had started earlier. It was called “Cassardim” and I enjoyed it a lot. It had a typical romantasy [a blend of romance and fantasy] storyline but there were lots of surprises as the story went by. I fell asleep around 10:30 p.m. thinking about how everything was going to play out. My mother had already started to search for a loophole to get Chihiro to stay with us, so I had hope. And absolutely no idea that it was to be crushed the very next day.

Wednesday, 18 March

This morning I got up fairly early at 6 a.m. but I did not have the energy to really do anything. I haven’t done homework since we heard the news about Chihiro leaving because I’ve been spending all my time with her. Chihiro’s flight was at 7:30 p.m. but they planned to leave at 1 p.m. in order to get there early enough as it’s a two-hour drive.

The airport I was told was completely empty with almost no people at all. A somewhat strange and ghostly atmosphere since normally the Frankfurt airport is super busy as it is one of the biggest in Germany. We had already sort of gotten used to these kinds of moods all around the city: All soccer games were played without any visitors and soccer really is one of the most important things in Germany. I actually had tickets for the great match of Mönchengladbach (my city) against Cologne (their archenemy in soccer). Well, obviously I couldn’t go.

When Chihiro left, I was really sad and went to the park where we had started to build a tiny wooden hut the other day. I wasn’t able to cry though. At some point I got really angry at the virus. I mean it just comes out of nowhere, kills that many people and then forces other people to leave the country? Not fair!

It was the number one discussion topic though, every single morning. My mom read pretty much everything she could find about it in order to know how to react to this new situation. So, every morning, the news is discussed. How many dead people a day in this country, which country reacted the fastest and the best, what should Germany do better, what is the EU doing right now, why haven’t the 2020 Olympic Games been cancelled yet. It is devastating to hear all these facts every morning. I know they are important, but once you know them you can’t get them out of your head. You are always thinking somewhere in your mind about all those people.

I started distracting myself from all this information by playing games on my phone, watching movies and reading books to escape from this reality, which is not good for my homework. Every day, and especially this Wednesday, feels so long and then they’re gone in a blink while I hadn’t even done anything. But whenever I tried to live with the reality of the virus killing so many people for some time, my emotions got a bit messy and I didn’t have the motivation to do anything, so I just didn’t.

I went to bed fairly early today as I was exhausted from being sad and from not doing anything. I had tried to make a wooden sword in order to gain some strength, but it broke shortly after and the only thing that remained were some blisters on my hands. The next couple of days were pretty much the same haze of being sad or numb and very unproductive.

Sunday, 22 March

This was the first Sunday morning we did not go to church. OK, probably not the first ever, but the first one where we actually had the opportunity to go. My mom did not find it safe to visit. She was especially upset that our pastor continued to hold the mass as if nothing was going on. In my community, mainly elderly people go to church so this was a huge risk to them.

As I had more time than usual, I decided to meet up with my best friend. We tried to meet up fairly often during the weeks of coronavirus in order to have social contact. We also didn’t know when and if there would be more restrictions on meeting other people, so we wanted to make use of the time we had. I had finally started some of my schoolwork and my sister was to arrive the next day. That was a huge relief, not to be an odd number in the house anymore.

My friend Hayato visited. We have been playing together in a musical duo for a very long time now, about five years. I absolutely enjoy playing with him, so I became quite motivated once he arrived. It’s funny how some people can have that effect on you. I was probably also just very happy to finally see a different face that didn’t belong to my family as the time at home slowly started to get me. I definitely needed some social contact with someone my age. We talked for a very long time while also playing some pieces of classical music. Afterwards we decided to play some soccer outside. We had lots of fun, a light in these days of bad news and isolation.

In the evening at precisely 6 p.m. another “light” was to happen all across Germany: A balcony concert. This concept was founded in Italy where people still aren’t allowed to leave their houses, everyone gathered on their balconies and sang together or played an instrument if they could. It gave people the strength and the certainty of surviving this whole mess together. So, in Germany there was a national call to do the same, just with a particular song played by everyone in the same tune at the same time. A great idea — until we saw the four sharps at the beginning (six for clarinet). The piece was called “Ode an die Freude” (an ode to the joy) by Beethoven, some old German composer. We opened our window and played as loud as we could, but no one actually listened and no one else knew about it in our neighborhood. It was still nice though. When I went to bed, I was really happy as the next day my sister was going to arrive.

Monday, 23 March

This morning my sister Hannah arrived. I was super excited, so I got up really early in order to see her. She arrived at 10 a.m. though when I had started doing my homework. We were both really happy — we hadn’t seen each other for almost two years in a row since I went to Canada the year before. We hugged and everything was really nice, although a bit awkward after not having seen each other for such a long time. My mother prohibited any more hugs and we had to keep distance from my sister for two weeks in order to be sure that she hadn’t caught coronavirus on the plane.

At the same time my mother started shopping for my grandparents as she didn’t want them to leave the house anymore. They are all over 70 years old so quite at risk and two of them have even had some lung problems before. The virus was slowly becoming a reality and creeping into all our actions at home. When we went to the supermarket there were only people with masks there and my mother got sort of upset as all these masks are missing in hospitals and retirement homes. Lately a lot of important people advertised the wearing of masks in the media ignoring that normal masks don’t even help much and that one has to switch to a new mask every 20 minutes. Most people that wear them here get less attentive with all the other safety measures such as washing your hands and keeping enough distance with strangers.

Over time while being stuck at home, I became less motivated and the days were all very alike. We still got lots of work from our teachers but although it takes less time to do than in school, I am always more exhausted at the end of the day. There was no difference anymore between home and school, there was only school left for the whole day.

In the evening some terrible news struck us: The social worker that was looking after Chihiro while she was with us had caught COVID-19. She had just survived a particularly rough lung illness, so the odds were pretty much against her. We included her in our prayers and hoped for the best, but this was also the moment when we realized that normal people, people we knew, could be hit by this virus. We understood how deadly and dangerous it could be. I didn’t sleep too well that night.

Wednesday, 25 March

This morning I got up, did my homework and then prepared breakfast. As we ate together, I started to plan out my day more and decided that I had the time to meet Hayato. Spending time with my family is really great but being stuck with them 24/7? Well, it’s different. You see more downs than ups and my brothers were fighting like all day. My mom was super stressed from caring for our grandparents and also from making my brothers work properly on their schoolwork. All in all, everybody was sort of tense.

“Over time while being stuck at home, I became less motivated and the days were all very alike. We still got lots of work from our teachers but although it takes less time to do than in school, I am always more exhausted at the end of the day. ”

— Charlotte Becker

My father, who works as a notary, has more work than ever since lots of people had the time to go there now and we were of course very thankful for it. Others had lost their jobs, couldn’t get paid anymore and didn’t work at all. All small businesses were at risk of becoming broke and to many it had happened already. But this meant that we only saw my dad in the evenings and sometimes in the mornings when we got up on time. He even had to work on the weekends to cover all the requests. But we really were thankful. Experts were already trying to estimate what damage the virus did to our economy, and it was unbelievably high.

My mom hasn’t worked for quite some time as she decided to spend more time with us, but during these times of the virus she got ready again in case there would be a call. She is a doctor and in Italy and Spain, all doctors had to work in order to cope with the amount of people sent into hospital every single day. Thankfully Germany hasn’t reached that state yet, so she is still at home with us. Otherwise we would probably have to minimize contact with her as she would be at a high risk of catching the coronavirus.

So, on this day I met Hayato in the afternoon and we had a long walk as his parents were concerned about direct contact with my sister. We have a lot of parks in our neighborhood and even a small forest we literally call “city forest” (one word, of course, to match the German stereotype of long words). We walked about ten kilometers and talked a lot about the current situation and how long it would take for schools to open again. My mother was quite sure that they would only open again after the summer holidays, but in our state the politicians were eager to go back to “normal life.” After the walk I went home and we had dinner. I had blisters all over my feet from walking those kilometers, but it was totally worth it. When I went to bed that day, I had a good feeling and hope that the situation would become better soon.

Thursday, 26 March

I woke up and it seemed like it was a normal day. Not normal normal, but corona normal. I made breakfast and prepared for the numbers of the day as usual. But it was shocking this time. I hadn’t really listened for quite some time as I had been busy with my homework, but I hadn’t expected this: More than 800 people that died in Italy yesterday. More than 800. A day. I was shocked, it had come to that point. Italy was a well-developed and rather stable country. I couldn’t imagine what it was like there during these times of fear and pain and death. More than 800. A number I won’t get out of my head anymore. This was the moment I chose to no longer be ignorant. I listened and I shivered at what I heard.

In France and Italy, patients above a certain age weren’t being accepted at hospitals because they didn’t have enough resources. Instead, the patients were given morphine to have a peaceful end. When did we reach this point? The thought of this haunted me all the time. My grandparents were above that age. I told myself not to think about it that much yet as Germany hadn’t gotten to that point yet, but I really feared something could happen to them.

After breakfast I did my schoolwork, watched some stuff on the internet and did a workout. I’m really not a workout-kinda-person, but sometimes I still do them. I love to run, although it’s hard to motivate myself these days of leaving the house. Later I had some more schoolwork and then I had to do the family work as we call it. My mom wanted to prevent us from being bored and on our phone all day, so she made us do one hour of gardening or cleaning every day. It was partly fun, although with all the schoolwork, I didn’t have much free time left. That was OK though for me.

In the evening we had a warm dinner as my father came home from work. He doesn’t really eat lunch anymore as my mom finds it not safe, so we cook an extra big dinner instead. We made some fried vegetables like zucchini and prepared some tomato mozzarella snacks. We weren’t vegetarians, but my mother tried to make vegetarian food at least once or twice a week as it is better for the environment. Later I watched some dance movies with a very predictable plot, but I still loved the dance scenes. I went to bed around 10:30 p.m. and slept almost immediately.

Monday, 30 March

Today was more of a special day as me and my siblings were to have a concert in the retirement home. We got up like usual, had breakfast and did the chores and the schoolwork until lunch. Then we prepared to leave as we had to arrive around 3:45 p.m. The concerts started to give the elder people in the retirement home some joy in these days of isolation. They couldn’t have visitors these days so a lot of them were very sad. The manager of the retirement home started an initiative to have some concerts in the courtyard. They had already had a guitar player before us, but we were actually the first ones to do this on a voluntary basis. We looked for some pieces to play — preferably with background music — and had to organize all the technical stuff. Once we had it figured out though, everything was fine, and we were ready to go. The retirement home is very near to our church, so we were able to go there by bike.

The manager helped us set everything up while keeping the right distance and wearing a mask. My sister, who plays the flute, had chosen a piece of the musical “The Greatest Showman” and my brother improvised and played “Skyfall” on his trumpet. I personally picked some klezmer [a type of Jewish folk music] pieces I absolutely adore. I’m a big fan of klezmer music and I have signed CDs of the David Orlowsky Trio, who recently split, as well as CDs of the best clarinet player (my opinion) in the world, Giora Feidman, whom I also had the opportunity to hear live in our little city. It was truly mesmerizing! The thing I loved about klezmer the most was how one took a minor harmony and turned it into a vital and uplifting or thoughtful piece of music. Pretty much no other genre of music I know has done that so well. I wanted to play it at the concert to give people hope to carry on with their life and to show them that they are not alone during these times.

The concert went quite well, and a lot of people listened to us. I had a lot of fun and it was a great feeling to make all those people happy by sharing some music. I was motivated until I went to bed and I had some really good sleep and nice dreams. This was really another light in these days of the virus. People notice their environment more and there is so much kindness these days when everyone isn’t that absorbed into their own life.

Wednesday, 1 April

This morning seemed normal, except for some great news: The number of newly infected people in Germany was sinking! This was really necessary in order to help the health care system and to relieve the hospitals. I had not expected that to happen nor did anyone else. We all saw how much France, Italy, Great Britain and Spain had to fight for saving as many people as possible, so we assumed it would become a mess here, too. That’s why everyone was so surprised and relieved to see the numbers sinking.

“The thing I loved about klezmer the most was how one took a minor harmony and turned it into a vital and uplifting or thoughtful piece of music...I wanted to play it at the concert to give people hope to carry on with their life and to show them that they are not alone during these times.”

— Charlotte Becker

But today wasn’t only a day of good news, there were also some bad ones: My uncle and his family in France had all gotten corona and were very ill. We have a group chat together with him and he was always sending lots of corona information as well as memes and other funny videos. I know that playing down and joking about an issue like that is not really good, but for us it was the only way to take it. We had to laugh about it a couple of times at least — to make sure we stay sane and don’t let the virus get the better of us. I think the balance makes it: It is OK to laugh sometimes at these things, but one shouldn’t forget the whole picture. One shouldn’t play something like this down like so many countries, so many politicians and leaders have. Needless to say that while they were sick, my uncle did not send anything at all.

Another thing that shook my parents a bit was that they read in a survey how some symptoms of corona were also a problem with smelling and tasting. My brother had been ill a couple of weeks before the coronavirus was widespread in Germany and he had some fever, didn’t feel good and couldn’t taste anything right. My parents were pretty alarmed to read that as it was quite likely for him to have caught corona. He was fine again now anyways and it was over two weeks ago, so none of us actually infected ourselves, but it was a wake-up call. We won’t know now as there was no test, but the suspicion was there sneaking up to us.

The schoolwork had to be done along with any other chores. I also finally found the time to do a ballet workout on YouTube. These online ballet classes are thriving in these times and this was a great opportunity for me to pick up dancing again. I absolutely enjoy dancing no matter what style. Dance really is an inspiration for me, a form of art, a way to raise awareness on certain topics or to express my feelings. It is a way to cope with my emotions that had been a mess for some time. I had times where I suddenly got overwhelmed for no reason and sometimes, I was just very tired, sad and numb. Dance helped me feel these emotions more and showed me a way to cope with them and to remain standing in this war against fear, uncertainty and the virus. So, in the evening I was very balanced for the first time in weeks. I felt like I would be able to deal with the whole situation without closing my eyes, without ignoring. I was at rest and this state continued for the next couple of days.

Saturday, 4 April

This morning I got up with a really good feeling. As I had a clarinet class today via video chat, I arranged to meet Hayato beforehand. We met at 11 a.m. and played some of the pieces. Then he invited me to come over for dinner at his house, the first barbecue of the season was planned! Of course, I agreed. I can’t say no to food.

My clarinet teacher is absolutely kind, understanding and very gentle and I love having class with her. When she plays, it sounds really awesome and totally like her personality. Her tone is very soft but still very intensive and just really enjoyable. I have been able to take her ideas to improve myself more seriously lately and I was able to make a lot of progress. With a friend who plays the oboe, I took part in a competition and we played some very difficult pieces. We got really good feedback though and made it to the next round. The competition consists of three rounds and the third one is really hard to reach. But this year, we would have actually had a chance as our duo was quite unique and we put in a lot of effort into improving, but it was of course cancelled because of the virus. I know it’s for the better, but I can’t say, I wasn’t disappointed.

After the class I got ready to go to Hayato’s house; he lives like a five-minute walk or a one-minute bike ride from my place, so we are able to see each other quite often and easily. When I got there, we played a bit again until I really couldn’t do it well anymore and then we prepared vegetables for the dinner. The dinner was really delicious, and I probably ate a lot, but it was fun.

Afterwards we talked in his room for some time about “God and the world” as one would say in German. So, basically about any topic that crossed our minds. Finally, I showed him my blog, Phantasien, where I share my opinion on certain books, I’ve read and where I publish some stories and poems I’ve written. I’m really happy that I have a person I can confide with no matter what. I used to have a couple of good friends, but not really like a best friend — and I really didn’t need one — but being able to talk while someone listens who knows you, who cares for you, who understands you, who doesn’t judge you or expects too much from you, is really something special. I absolutely appreciate every time we talk, and he listens to me.

I think that appreciation is really important these days. To all these people fighting to help, all these doctors and nurses that do extra hours every day, that are at risk every day to help all of us: We truly appreciate it so much. Thank you so much for keeping us all alive and going in times when we really depend on you! I feel that by talking about the dangers of problems like this virus, we sometimes forget to be grateful and to appreciate things. I believe that by appreciating all the little details, we are more content and happier, and the world becomes a better and kinder place to live in. So, thank you all for your distribution to helping all these people cope and live.

Needless to say that I fell asleep easily and had some nice dreams that I couldn’t remember later.

Charlotte Becker

is a 16-year-old student from Germany. She likes some difficult math problems, reading while eating chocolate and meeting new people from all around the world.