It was strange and rather ‘eerie’ when, on Thursday 12th March 2020, we all heard that we should stay home because the virus Covid-19 was among us.
Stay home, stay safe became the new keywords. As the Honorary Consul for Slovenia I received a lot of messages of Slovenian citizens wondering if they were able to fly home as all over Europe countries were going into Lockdown. Problems arose for Slovenian citizens in the Netherlands wishing to return home either by car or by plane. Which borders were closed, which were still open? Direct flights to Ljubljana required at least one stopover and no one could say how long the airlines would still be flying. So the main question was: will I reach home or will I be quarantined in one of the “stop-over” countries.
Like most EU countries Slovenia too suffered from a lack of protective medical equipment, so each time I heard of possibilities, either private (mostly) or government, of 3D printers making masks, shields, goggles or respirators I passed on the information to our Slovenian Ambassador in the Netherlands, H.E. Ms Sanja Štiglic.
With the lockdown now firmly upon us my husband and I promised ourselves a glass of champagne every day if only to celebrate that we were Corona free and ALIVE!. After two weeks we stopped this indulgence and decided we would do our best to remain healthy by walking and enjoying nature as much as we could. And so the lockdown deepened. We developed a routine working from nine to five, allowing ourselves a long walk during our lunchbreak. As April dawned the weather became so beautiful that the garden began to draw us into pottering around, cutting back hedges, planting seedlings and mowing (lots of mowing) the lawns. The birds sang their daily symphony and were busy nesting. Normally we would have missed their hidden homes, but now we saw how they built their nests in the most unlikely places.
As I work for a museum that was hit pretty badly having to close its doors to 200.000 families and schoolchildren that visit us on a yearly basis. The future of some 54 people working there, the rent, the lack of income forced us to come up with a plan for the post corona period. How to draw back the public? After thinking aloud, talking through the phone or via video, we decided the best thing to do was to renew the whole museum. A venture that would entail intensive fundraising. That said the business plan we wrote in the sunshine of lockdown became a visionary paper combining the audacious to the pragmatic.
We were now deep in May and still there was no let-up, though newspaper headlines told us that Slovenia was the first country in Europe to formally call an end to its Coronavirus outbreak.
The month May passed as silently as it had come and now June sees us finally opening up schools, museums, fitness centres and of course restaurants and terraces. A sense of freedom is in the air and the first requests are reaching me of Dutch citizens planning their travels to Slovenia for a holiday.
What does fill me with sadness is that many Slovenians – having studied in the Netherlands, married and raising their children here – have decided to return home for good. During the Corona restriction they realised how much they missed their Slovenian family ties. Homesickness got them in the end. With a heavy heart I wave them goodbye as they pack in their belongings and move back home to Ljubljana.
I wish them all well and hope we will meet again. Some day!