“Vandaag is mijn moeders verjaardag”, I whispered to Eve as she helped me pack my belongings into the car boot at the end of Lent Term 2020, reminding her to greet my mother who was just making her way down my staircase. Like two best friends who invent a secret code to communicate in the school playground, Dutch had become Eve’s and my modus operandi since I decided to take it up as a Second Year MML Paper. I’d even managed to convince College to award me a travel grant to visit Eve in Amsterdam over the Easter Vacation to brush up on my language skills before the exam, and I was very much looking forward to the opportunity to pick up some new words and plenty of stroopwafels the following week.

What we, of course, didn’t know was that March 13th was not only my mother’s birthday, but also the last time we’d see each other for a while – the Covid-19 pandemic obliterating all of our plans in a matter of days, chucking the stroopwafels far out of the metaphorical Eurostar window and making travel across Europe an unimaginably difficult feat. All hopes of a quick weekend break to Amsterdam, Cambridge, and finally Vienna, where I’m currently on my Year Abroad, vanished overnight. A cheery ‘See you on Tuesday!’ has now reached the point where it’s looking highly unlikely that I’ll see my college friends before their graduation in June. The last College formal my friends and I went to was ‘Halfway Hall’. I felt strangely nostalgic as I flicked through some photos the other week and saw the sea of faces grinning up at the camera, blissfully unaware of the havoc that Covid-19 was about to wreak; the terms, friendships, and people, it would so ruthlessly snatch away from us.

“By the time my MML cohort arrives back from the Continent to embark upon our final year, we will have had an 18-month hiatus from Cambridge”

By the time my MML cohort arrives back from the Continent to embark upon our final year, we will have had an 18-month hiatus from Cambridge. The world of formals, supervisions, and meal deals seems distant and surreal, and the people you shared these experiences with at times feel like they belong in a previous life. The short terms and constant underlying level of stress intensify everything at Cambridge and friendships are certainly no exception to this. I went from spending time with Eve every day, knowing exactly what she had on her plate each week – not only figuratively, but literally too (6.30pm dinner in Hall being the place to catch up on the daily scoop), to being catapulted into a year of video-calls, voice notes, and the occasional postcard.

Weeks elapsed into months, the novelty of Zoom wore off quicker than I think any of us had hoped, and we eventually realised that we wouldn’t be sharing in the daily rhythms of university life anymore. There was to be no more swinging round for a late-night cup of tea, no waving through my window on the way to lectures, no frantic messaging about what fancy dress outfit we could pull together in an hour. Keeping up with Cambridge friends away from Cambridge can always be a tricky business, and especially so when friends are back in the microcosm during term time. I have to admit that the remote learning and lack of socialising triggered by the Covid-19 ‘Global Gloom’ situation has however ensured that I’m not experiencing an ounce of FOMO – Fear of Missing Out – this year. Yet there is still something a little odd about living such a different life in Vienna, with an entirely different set of friends, when everyone continues along on the Cambridge treadmill, churning out weekly essays and running into people you hadn’t even thought about for over a year.

“Keeping up with Cambridge friends away from Cambridge can always be a tricky business”

Maintaining friendships virtually can be draining, and I realised quite early on that regular catch-up calls was the most sustainable way of going about things. I learnt to accept that I couldn’t possibly keep track of what was happening all the time in the Cambridge bubble, in the same way that there was no need for Eve to keep tabs on who all my new Viennese friends were. Although I could never understand completely, given the lack of smartphones and instant communication at the time, I feel like I have a much better idea of how my Filipina mother felt when she first moved to the other side of the world and left behind all the birthday parties, weddings, and family gatherings in Manila. It’s always fun to phone in to such events – but closing your laptop and knowing that the party, and eating – and there’s always a lot of eating, continues without you, is a peculiar emotion.

Despite the lack of ‘the full-on sensory experience’, as Eve put it the other day, I feel like we’ve not done too badly after all. I’ve watched Eve’s final year unfold through my screen – a much more gripping series than any you’d find on Netflix – and I often think that the suboptimal situation has been a successful test-run for when both of us will find ourselves far from the unlimited side dishes and 6.30pm chatter of Christ’s College Hall. I look forward to when we’ll finally be reunited and the adventures we’ll have to share, and who knows, maybe I’ll get to those stroopwafels after all.