Quality time with friends – while social distancing
With new corona measures on the horizon, meeting and especially spending some quality time with our friends is getting more and more difficult. One is only allowed to meet three people at a time, and public spaces like bars are closing at ten. Therefore, I want to present you three possibilities on how to spend some time with your friends while keeping your distance.
1. Online-Game Night
There are only four things you need for your next online-game-night: a stable internet connection, some device (preferably a laptop), a platform to video chat (e.g. zoom, google meet, skype, discord) and of course some people to play with. Did you know that many of our favourite (party)-games are available online? In the following I will present you my online-game-night favourites and provide you with a short explanation.
First of all, there is my all time favourite, “Cards against Humanity” which is available on a lot of websites, but the version I am normally playing is linked here. It is a party game in which three or more players have to find the funniest/darkest/most horrible answer to a question or a fill-in-the-blank. Dark humour is definitely a must, but you can’t miss out on this game.
Another party game that you can enjoy online is “Codenames”. For this game you also need at least three people, but the more the better. It is a guessing game where a set of codenames (normally words) have to be related to a hint word. The game is actually really funny and at least with my friends caused a lot of laughter.
Then there also is skribbl.io which is a draw and guess game. You can either play it with a group of random people or create a room for yourself, but it’s made for at least three people.
Last, but not least, my friends and I discovered “board game arena”, where you have to sign up to enjoy a variety of online games. Bear in mind that not every game on this website is for free, but there are actually some quite fun ones which are.
My rating: 4.5/5 – almost as funny as a normal game night. But of course, minus points because you cannot play all the games you want to play.
2. Online Cooking/Baking Party
You miss meeting your friends for some nicely cooked dinner together? This is also something which you can compensate for by hosting an online cooking or baking party. You need a stable internet connection, a kitchen, ingredients for your dinner of choice, a device plus video chat platform and of course people to participate.
First of all, you and your friends have to choose a recipe which you will all cook/bake at home – you could try Pinterest or Instagram for some inspiration. After that, you start cooking “together” – meaning that if step one says chop onions, everyone chops onions and waits until everyone is done with it. Same procedure for steps two and following, so that you will have some nice dinner ready in the end. The last step is enjoying dinner together, unfortunately still in the video chat, but hey: better than eating alone, right?
My rating: 3.5/5 – a lot of fun, but cooking together is better since you might get around chopping the onions or washing the dishes.
3. Online wine or beer tasting (+pub quiz)
Are you especially missing those nights out, where you went from bar to bar and “tried” one beer after another in different spots? If yes, there is also an alternative for that. For this you need some different brands/kinds of beer or wine, a stable internet connection and, as always, people to join you online. Before you start your event, you should choose the drinks you want to buy, so that each participant has the same options at home. After having bought your drinks of choice, the wine or beer tasting can begin. In order to assimilate your situation even more to a typical night out, you can also dress up or prepare a pub quiz beforehand. Ideas for the pub quiz could be questions about your friends group, general trivia questions or maybe some special questions concerning beer or wine. Cheers to that!
My rating: 3/5 – can be really fun and it is also nice to enjoy your drinks at home, wearing sweatpants – but of course, not really relatable to a night out.
Of course, all those ideas can easily be transformed to spend some quality time with your roommates or family, which will probably increase the fun factor even more! Remember to keep the distance and enjoy these ideas in order to make quarantine/social distancing more fun!
Credits Title Picture: Imgflip