How the rest of the world is doing lockdown
Cooking. Walking. Trashy TV. When forced to stay at home, Tom Ough finds people have more in common than borders suggest
Confinement. Cierre de emergencia. Karantin. Apagórefsi kykloforías. Around the world, lockdown goes by many names, but the principle is the same: slow the spread of the virus by asking people to stay at home. All we have to do is pass the time, but that task has become harder and harder as the months drag on and the weather overtakes our inclination to meet friends and family outdoors.
Over the past year, we in Britain have amused ourselves by baking banana bread and sourdough, by putting rainbows in our windows, and by doing Yoga with Adriene and PE with Joe.
But we’re three lockdowns deep, and the charms of the activities we enjoyed in March and April have begun to fade. How best to spend this tedious period before the loosening of restrictions?
In our closeted state, it’s easy to forget that much of the rest of the world is similarly bound. More than half of the world’s population has been in lockdown over the past year. What can we learn from those going through the same experience as us? We asked 10 people around the world how they’re passing the time.
RUSSIA
Fewer restrictions have been placed on Russians than on Britons. Restaurants remain open, says Lara Polimeni, a 39-year-old from Moscow, and travel is still permissible.
Taking advantage of that, many Muscovites have gone to their dachas – country houses that they would usually visit in the summer. These are not the equivalents of cottages in the Cotswolds;
dachas, or at least the plots they are built on, were given free to Russian citizens, and are much more commonplace than a British second home.
Dachas are usually used as summer houses, says Polimeni. “In the winter, people want to go to warm places. But this year, I see that many people are staying in their dachas. They’re paying more money for electricity or for additional equipment to stay during the wintertime.”
She and her husband and son have spent the Christmas break – Orthodox Christmas Day fell on Jan 7 this year – in theirs, which is 60 miles from Moscow in the Novaya Riga district. It is -10C (14F) outside, says Polimeni over a video call, pointing her camera at a snowy landscape. Outdoors, dacha-owners ski and make snowmen with their children. Indoors, they are cooking, watching TV, and visiting banyas, which are a Russian form of sauna and spa.
INDIA
“Sourdough has caught on in a big way,” says Samir Tewari, a 53-year-old filmmaker from Mumbai. Sourdough, evidently, has conquered the world with almost as much alacrity as coronavirus.
But it’s cooking rather than baking that has helped occupy Indians through the pandemic. Indian cooking, says Tewari, just doesn’t involve ovens in the way that Western cooking does, hence the lack of baking. “Cooking is more on the gas here.”
Men in particular, perhaps used to being cooked for, “have discovered the inner chef in them. Everyone’s making exotic meat dishes, birianis and kebabs, and things like that.”
Tewari, who, like many people in his country now does fitness and yoga classes online instead of in person, says Indians have embraced video technology as a means of staying in touch, documenting their meals, walks in the park and workouts. “Everybody has turned filmmaker,” he says. “It’s one way of connecting with the world.”
HUNGARY
Some Hungarians, according to Jakab Barna, a 34-year-old senior product designer and the founder of wequire. homes, made their own jam and baked their own bread. Others “just went with escapism and got into hobbies like video games or model making”.
“But the main pattern I witnessed,” he says, “is that many people have tried to get back to a simpler and more selfsustaining life, the life that our grandparents lived. I have friends and family who left the city, moved back to the countryside and started farming on a small scale.”
As Barna puts it, “most people wanted a simpler, more predictable life during a time in which we felt our civilisation was trembling.”
AUSTRIA
Across the border from Hungary, Austrians have been in lockdown since November. Melanie Berger, a 24-yearold student who lives in Vienna, had been in the UK for the spring lockdown and noticed many similarities, from the overwhelming popularity of baking – “You couldn’t get any flour or baking powder in the shops for a bit” – to the trend of weekly clapping for emergency service workers.
At this time of year, the hubbub of Christmas markets usually fills Austrian city centres. Locals and tourists drink glühwein (mulled wine). All this is off limits at the moment, but Berger is one of many Austrians who have sought to bottle a little of the Christmas market magic. During recent outdoor walking meetups, says Berger, she and her friends “have just made some mulled wine at home, put it into a Thermos bottle, and then met up outside with everyone bringing their own mug. We kind of recreate an outdoor Christmas market.”
GREECE
A strict lockdown has been imposed in Greece. “This is a big social change for Greeks,” says Niki Smirni, a 50-yearold Athenian. “Greeks in general are very outgoing.”
Smirni, who is the founder of the travel company Travelgems, says that families and small groups are getting together outdoors to hold barbecues. “I can see this on people’s balconies. In Greece the weather is good so we can go out in our gardens and do barbecues. We could do that last winter, but we didn’t. Now we do this a lot.”
Smirni says that Greeks have become more inclined to walk in groups for pleasure. “We see people walking as families or as small groups of friends – always with their masks on.” In doing this, Smirni says, urban Greeks have come across their neighbours often enough to get to know them better. All the better to host barbecues!
UNITED STATES
New York suffered the ubiquitous springtime shortage of bread and yeast, reports Lucy Petropoulos, a 26-year-old Brooklynite. But sourdough is not the only import that New Yorkers have been gorging on. Believe it or not, Love Island became a surprise hit. “It’s trashy,” says Petropoulos, “but we love it.”
It’s the British version that has the most ardent following, although the second series of an American counterpart was filmed last year. “It was shot during the quarantine,” says Petropoulos. “That’s a testament to how much we have subscribed to Love Island. We made it happen during quarantine.”
Thanks to the pandemic, Petropoulos has lost her job as an events assistant at a performing arts centre. But like other Americans, she has found a creative pursuit to fill the tracts of time created by lockdowns. “I’ve taught myself embroidery, which makes me feel like I’m very much in medieval times, sitting in my chair for six hours. That’s been really nice, and it feels like I’m learning a new skill and being creative. And my family loves it, because I’ve given everything I’ve made to them.”
Pet sales have boomed in Britain and America alike. “I was also on the getting-a-pet train,” says Petropoulos. “I got a fish. It’s the least committal way of having a quarantine pet.”
IRELAND
The global hegemony of sourdough has a rare weak link in Ireland, with soda bread being baked in the Republic and soda farls in the North. Naturally, sourdough has a foothold, partly in the form of the Happy Pear bakery in Greystones, Co Wicklow.
Stephen Flynn, who runs the Happy Pear cookbook, course and café business with his twin brother, David, is a veteran sea swimmer, but has noted a large influx in newcomers to his local group.
Of sea swimming, Flynn says: “It’s a great way of meeting other humans while maintaining social distance.
“I think the sea’s a great leveller, the way you could be standing beside a doctor or a binman and no one talks about work.”
Sea swimming has become more popular across the coastal parts of the country, and with good reason. “By doing it,” says Flynn, “you’re embracing nature, you’re overcoming fear, you’re embracing a bit of discomfort, and then you feel, “OK, it’s all right to be inside and by a screen for a while.”