Touched By Tragedy: Todd Was Supposed To Be In Barcelona This Weekend
AbroadCoronavirus April 9, 2020 The New England Classic
WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NEW YORK — Having returned home more than two months early from his semester abroad in Dublin, Todd Lombardi (CSOM ’21) has reportedly been reminding his family he was “supposed to be in Barcelona this weekend.” The sentiment, while heartfelt, seemingly ignores the push notifications on his phone reminding him that the world is burning and the global death toll is rising dramatically each day.
While Lombardi had, in fact, been planning to spend this weekend in Barcelona for months, having booked a flight and Airbnb and created a detailed itinerary to make the most out of his three days in the Spanish city, Lombardi was seemingly unable to grasp the severity of the global pandemic. Rather, he chose to drown himself in self-pity and focus on the fact he was supposed to have “the sickest weekend” with a group of fellow students he referred to as “The Boys Worldwide.”
“You don’t understand how much I was looking forward to this weekend,” Lombardi told a staff writer for the Classic on an unsolicited FaceTime call. “Some of my boys studying in Parma were going to meet me there, and we were going to absolutely go off. The beaches, the bars, the clubs. It’s honestly nothing short of a tragedy,” he said.
“And it wasn’t just Barce that I missed out on, I had plans to see Berlin, Rome, Budapest, Vienna…,” Lombardi said, visibly holding back tears and continuing to name places he had planned on visiting, despite being reminded of the millions of Americans who have been laid off or furloughed and struggling to put food on the table as a result of the virus. “It’s going to take a while to recover from this… with all this heartbreak and all. It won’t be easy, but all I can do is take it day-by-day and hope I can get over having to leave Europe early.”
At press time, Lombardi was seen creating a GoFundMe page for himself to help cover the cost of his lost Airbnb deposits.
