Surrounded by trash bags (as I can't go to HEMA to buy nicely spotted boxes, the supermarket trash bags will do), I take a sip of the same tea I've been drinking all week, trying to finish the box before Thursday. Because Thursday it's finally going to happen: I will move out of my room, grab my suitcase, and, after a Covid-19 test, hopefully, embark on a plane to do my semester abroad in Madrid. After all ups and downs over the last weeks and months - even now not knowing whether I will be able to leave on Sunday - it both seems like fate and fortuity that I can now count down my days in Maastricht on one hand.
Leaving makes you think: what are some things you still want to do? I've never been to Piece of Cake (assuming I didn't once accidentally end up there) even though it's a place you hear every second student dream about. With the lockdown and barricades, I guess now I'm too late. And who are the people you still want to see? Though thinking about the Covid test I have to do soon, my grandparents I want to hug, I guess it doesn't matter who I see as long as it's online.
Does the lockdown make saying goodbye harder or easier? I think it's a bit of both. I'm already forced to depend on my memories rather than desperately trying to make new ones. Desperately giving everyone the tightest goodbye hug, touching every stone inside the UCM building, and eating every burrito, pizza, and vlaai Maastricht has to offer. I'm not trying to squeeze two and a half years of happiness into two and a half days. But the silence that goes together with this also brings its own kind of melancholy.
It's exactly this melancholy that proves that coming to Maastricht in the first place has been worth it. The friends I made, the organizations and activities I joined, the three rooms I lived in, and the courses I took - it has all been worth it. And I can only hope to feel a similar melancholy over five months when I return, leaving Madrid.
Jesler van Houdt