Hi to everyone in AB1 family!
I hope you are all well in these difficult times. Here are some of my experience and feelings about this unexpected situation we ended up.
As Asmir said in his last month’s blog, I never thought that something like this could happen and put the whole world out of balance as it did. But when situations like this come, they remind us about the significance of life. This pandemic reminds us of how we take small but very important everyday things in life for granted. It reminds us to try to be humble, to respect our health, the health of our families, friends and our society in general.
When things like this happen, people realize that wealth and material goods the humanity keeps chasing can’t help – the strong economies of the world are hit the hardest. It reminds us how precious is the time we can spend with our families, how grateful and blessed we are if all of them are healthy and happy. It reminds us how irrelevant are divisions, the borders and the nations, the race or religion – we are all the same, and we need to stay united to fight this. We need to be there for each other, to stay strong and empathic, and to help humanity come out of this even stronger.
And, to be honest, I think we have passed this test so far, and we learnt some important lessons for the future.
From my perspective, the corona crisis was not stressful as for the rest of the world. For one thing, the Swedish authorities opted for a different way of handling the crisis, keeping our lives relatively normal. Here in Stockholm and Sweden in general, we did not have any restrictions or lockdown. Government trusted people, replacing restrictions with guidelines and advice, leaving individuals and companies to decide on their everyday life. However, football-wise, there was not much we could do. Sports events are mass gatherings and are considered to be a significant threat to public health.
We at AIK had to stop all our activities just before the cup quarterfinal away at Malmö FF. The long winter break in Sweden ends with the group stages of the national cup, that we play in February and March, just before the start of the new season. We won our group of four teams and qualified for the quarterfinal that is now supposed to be played on June 1st.
However, unlike most of the other teams in Europe, we are in the training process for a month now. At the beginning we were quarantined for three weeks, but then returned to a regular training routine. Or, almost normal – we can’t use any facilities apart from the pitch, so you go straight from the home to the pitch, already wearing our training shirts and boots. After the training session, you go straight to the car and back home for a shower. It is like that for a month now, we do all the training but with no reliable prediction when the season will start. It is not easy to keep the team sharp with all the uncertainty, but I think we are happy that we are outside and able to be active and train with the team.
Back home, my family and I try to spend as much time together as possible, but still follow all the guidelines and stay healthy. However, I can tell you that I discovered the new passion these days – cooking with my wife. We get to spend more time together, preparing some top quality and – well, at least for me – very demanding recipes. The Chef – my wife, of course – is giving me some useful tips on how to make our traditional Balkan dishes and I can admit that with every new day I like it more. We have some more time for evenings with buckets of popcorns, watching movies or binging series. But, we try to spend some quality time outside – Stockholm with its nature parks and green areas is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and we enjoy it.
I wish you all to stay well, with a message that, once life gets back to normal, we will all get out of this stronger and with new good energy for everyday routines.
Best Regards
Budimir Janosevic