I heard about the virus at around mid-February. Finland didn’t have any cases till that point, and the consensus was that the virus is not lethal. That time, period three was getting over. (Aalto University have much shorter course duration than IITB. Spring semester is taught into three periods, and each course generally ends in 1 period. However, a few courses could also spread over two periods, but it is infrequent.) This provides an excellent opportunity for semester exchange student where people could complete their classes in the first two periods. At the last period, they could go on a trip around Europe, which was our plan. Since the first period was getting over, we have one week of a gap, so we decided to visit Lapland (Northern part of Finland and Norway). While we were there, we heard the first 3 cases poped in Helsinki (Capital of Finland), but no one was worried about it. When we got back at the start of the second period, news of countries closing their borders (other than China) starts to grow. And in mid-march Aalto university issues guidelines for social distancing and all of our instructions went online within the notice period of 3-4 days. It affected the sports events, all the classroom instruction and all the cultural events within the jurisdiction of Aalto University. This measure was supposed to be over by 13th April, which was one week before the exam period, hence many courses were usually conducted with final exams as their primary assessment component. However, instructors were advised to look for another method other than classroom examination. Few of my courses changed the review to other things right away; however few instructors waited for 13th April for further instruction and take action. One of my course replaced examination with Learning diary, which was relatively new to me; one was assignment based. After 13th April when the further lockdown was announced, other courses opted for home exams which were hosted over LMS (Learning management system, e.g. Moodle) which surprisingly went smoothly. During this time, I started hearing the panic at IITB, where my sister is in the first-year civil department. Initially, there was a choice to stay back if anyone wanted to, I suggested her to stay at the institute since back in the home there is no way to work properly. We have poor cellular connectivity, no dedicated room for work. However, just after a few days, IITB made it compulsory for students to leave with 31st April as a suggestive date to come back. I arranged for her to stay in Mumbai as flights were extremely costly and I was assuming this was going to be over by the end of April. But courtesy to my mother, she was called back even with nearly three times of flight price, which turned out to be the right decision. After three days of this GoI announced a complete lockdown in all areas for 21 days, which I was just like everyone else was assuming to be over in 21 days to at most 1 month. However, it is now 50 days with a possible extension until June. Meanwhile, in Finland, all the public transport were running with the same frequency, but with the closure of public places, the occupancy was very low. However, all the groceries and different shops were open, and there was no shortage of any supply anywhere. Only transport that affected was intercity trains which reduced their frequency possibly due to low occupancy. The good thing about Finland is that here the population density is very low, the whole population of Finland is 5.5 million, which is several times less than Mumbai. Hence it didn’t affect the average life of people. They were still far apart, as usual, gardens are still populated by the same number of people, possibly even more, but no one was worried about the social distancing. Finnish government also didn’t make to use of masks in public places mandatory. After the announcement of lockdown, all the international flights were indefinitely suspended to India, and we are stuck in Finland with our residence permit expiring at the end of May. Here everything is tied with the right of study, i.e. lease of our home, bank account etc. With the end of the spring semester, we don’t have any valid reason for the stay. The Finnish immigration service is reluctant to extend our permit or grant a temporary visa based on the pandemic. Due to this, our exchange coordinator provided us with an extended right to study on the basis that we will join the summer school at Aalto University. This problem was shorted. But since this is after the spring semester, our scholarship will stop. The living expenditure without any financial help is huge in Finland as compared to India, especially in a time when the businesses are closed at home.
However, I considered myself to be grateful since I get to go out, exercise, even travel to nearby cities and post about them on Instagram. The air in the Nordic countries are of the best quality with a clean environment, and it certainly helps to reduce the risk of exposure. There is however massive uncertainty in terms of flights resumption and possible financial burden in the near future, but in spite of all, this semester exchange was a memorable experience.