MEMO2 @ home

Hi everybody out there!

For our project we were used to lots of traveling, being in the field for sampling or meet our friends and colleagues during conferences. None of this is possible at the moment, but honestly there are currently much more important things in life. Supporting our society by not spreading the virus is the least we can contribute!

Thus, although we cannot blog about our exiting (field)work outside, we would like to give a bit of impression how MEMO² is doing while we are staying at home.

Semra is one of our ESRs at Royal Holloway, University of London. She wrote: Sun is shining, which is not common in the UK, birds are tweeting outside and I am  chilling out with my “kolonya” traditional Turkish cologne which is used almost all houses in the Turkey and sold out nowadays at the garden alone because all my roommates went to their family’s home. I am safe but not much merry. Stay home, stay safe! Best wishes from Egham, Semra

For Patryk, our ESR hosted at Lund University in Sweden, it was an adventure to return from holidays!

On 9^thMarch we had out flight to Amman (the capital of Jordan) from Cracow. Poland and Jordan had only one case of coronavirus on that day. However, the situation changed drastically during one week. Poland closed its boarders on Sunday 15^thMarch. We had our flight back to Cracow on Monday 16^thMarch. This flight was cancelled and Polish government started the action #LotDoDomu (it means flight home). On Monday morning there were no information about any flight from Amman to Poland and any direct flight to Sweden. We decided to stay in Amman and because of the lack information about flights, we went sightseeing the city.  Tour around the city ended faster than we expected because all historical places and museums were closed. Around afternoon we came back to hotel and checked both emails and the website with announced flights. Still any news. We decided to hang around the city and have some beer. We were able to check emails in the bar (we had the internet access only on the Wi-Fi). It was around 4 p.m. and we read a message that the flight to Poland was scheduled at 7:50 p.m. Then we raced to the hotel. Waiter didn’t have even enough time to serve us a beer! During this ran we caught a taxi to be faster. It was the first time when I had to show a taxi driver where he should turn. We packed our staff as quickly as it was possible and took another taxi to the airport. It was 40 km drive from the hotel to the airport. Thanks to our fast driver and no traffic jams we arrived at the airport on time. We met a Polish consul there and she told us that this Monday was the last day to leave Jordan. On Tuesday all borders in this country were closed for everyone. If we missed that flight, we’d stay in Jordan for a long time. We came back to Poland and now we’re quarantining (due to the Polish law, everyone who comes back by airplane has to stay at home for 14 days). We’re spending time at the in-laws’ (my wife’s parents) house and working remotely. Due to the quarantine we have to wave through the window to policemen once per day. (Policemen check whether we are at home).

Beside this Jordan is a beautiful place!

Local craft beer	Airplane seat with quarantine location form and chocolate wafer called “Grzesiek”