A nearly one year-long friendship ends today. How do I feel about it?
As always in life and college there were some things I liked and some parts I was not amused and motivated to do. I liked that the more time I invested in this project, the more I really started to get some kind of a bond to the book, because I was lucky enough that all the tasks where referring to that same exact book I wrote about a month before. But to be honest I often forgot about my book and needed to look up to the previous tasks to recollect my memory about my friend. I would never treat a friend like this in real life.
The biggest issue I had with my book probably was that my book was written in Latin. I never was in contact with Latin before in my life. Even some internet translators couldn’t help me to get a better idea what kind of words I was looking at. So the conversation with my book was a really slow one and filled with effort.
But luckily the book could also communicate with me through some drawings, sketches and other kind of illustrations.
What I really enjoyed was the visit to the library in Zurich. Having such an ancient book in the hands was an event I personally enjoyed. I was really surprised when the librarian gave me the book, that the piece was that small. Before I only heard friends being astonished how big theire books were. I have to say that I stayed longer than the minimum of 20 minutes in the library. I never was that entertained in a library before. It is definitely the oldest and most unique book I ever held in my hands. It is over 430 years old.
I have to say that I was disappointed from my friend/book during the translation task. I was not able to get more than single words translated and with those single translated words I wasn’t able to form sentences. A huge part of fantasy mixed with a lot of creativity was needed to get a bit of an idea what the author wanted to tell me about.
The task I liked the most was/is the last one because I hadn’t sit desperately alone in front of my computer. The group exercise gave us an insight into other books that had or hadn’t become friends to someone. Also the freedom of creativity within the group was great. I think in those weird uni times during the corona crises a group exercise helps people to stay together and brings good memories from the first semester in my mind. We socialized via Zoom and spoke a little about the main topics of our books. Afterwards we used Google-Docs to write together on a suitable creative story.
To conclude with full honesty, the task of this year was filled with ups and downs. It was a true love hate relationship that in the end developed into a friendship that was a bit one-sided but worth the effort.