Julia Kopatsch
Orbit Media Reporter
German mechanical engineering student Jan Kopatsch has kept a positive attitude during the COVID-19 lockdown by playing piano and enjoying the good weather.
The 19-year-old has always liked to go for walks with his family or to bike in the forests surrounding his hometown Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm, Germany.
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Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU) student Jan Kopatsch enjoys the warm weather a week before Easter. He compared the bright blue sky to the white and blue colors of the Bavarian flag.
“The weather is fine here in Germany, in Bavaria, as in the flag, the sky is blue and there are almost no clouds in it, so I go for a walk every day,” said Kopatsch, mechanical engineering student at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU) in Erlangen.
On a personal level, COVID-19 had an impact on Kopatsch’s studies as three of his exams were postponed and the university had to switch to an online format for the start of the spring semester on April 20.
“For now, I’m staying at home and…try to get ready for the exams,” said Kopatsch.
On a larger scale, it is new for Europeans of Kopatsch’s generation to see closed borders and border controls within the EU because this generation was used to living in a Europe without national borders due to the Schengen Agreement that 26 countries signed since 1985.
“I was on holidays just two or three weeks ago in France and it was…before the corona crisis and all the shutdowns. And if I imagine I would be still there and it would be so difficult to get home, it’s…rather frightening,” said Kopatsch.
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Musician Jan Kopatsch is studying his piano music. Playing the piano has been his hobby since elemantary school.
Apart from Kopatsch himself, also his sister Julia Kopatsch had been outside of Germany during the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I didn’t feel that it was a very huge problem that she’d come home,” said Kopatsch, “I always hoped she’d arrive fine and without the virus and it appears that it was so.”
In Germany and for Bavaria in particular, the members of the government that were most notably responsible for handling the crisis were chancellor Angela Merkel, federal health minister Jens Spahn and the prime minister of the Free State of Bavaria Markus Söder.
“They do a great job because as we can see, the crisis isn’t as…severe as in Italy or Spain or the US,” said Kopatsch.
The legal situation in Bavaria was that the people should stay at home but they were allowed to go outside with members of their household or to meet with one other person in public. To everyone else, a safety distance of one and a half meters had to be maintained.
“It’s a little bit…frightening, of course, because every morning I have a look in the newspaper and then you see the new figures for Italy and Spain and the number of deaths there,” said Kopatsch.
At the moment, it is not clear if the German government will loosen or prolong the measures they put in place to fight COVID-19. In the meantime, Kopatsch will study for his upcoming exams, get some fresh air and practice piano.
Julia Kopatsch wrote this story for MEDIA 150: Intro to Convergent Media, Spring 2020.
