April 2021. More than one year has passed since this Corona nightmare put all our lives upside down and things are only slowly changing for the better in Europe. Hopefully on the verge of a turning point for travel restrictions within the EU thanks to the vaccination campaign, everyone in Germany is looking forward to travelling abroad again safely and we follow closer than ever the current restrictions applying to foreign countries near and far.
That is the moment we saw the need of a friendly and automated interface to the meticulous and ever-changing designations of the German authorities on the topic. And not only out of compassion for our beloved citizens in the Federal Republic of Germany, but also because the travel restrictions to and from Germany directly affect us, the developers of the Corona Atlas Website.
Our names are Diego and Rodrigo. We are two Spanish brothers; Diego still lives in Spain while Rodrigo has been based in Germany for the last half decade. We yearn for the pre-corona times where EU-borders did not exist and cannot wait for the moment we will be able to have uncomplicated family meetings again with as few bureaucracy and as much safety as possible. Until that becomes a reality, we have learned that a good coding project can keep us united in the distance.
Whether it is Heimweh or Fernweh what brought you here, we want you to help you count down the days until your next big journey. Stay safe.
Read more about this animated chronology on Diego’s blog.
About us
Diego is an R geek and he is all about data and maps. He is also a fan of beautiful web design and a Jekyll-Bootstrap sage. Diego is responsible of all the map visualization of Corona Atlas and its underlying design based on his very own template, Chulapa.
You can check Diego’s other awesome projects on GitHub or on his personal website:
The younger brother prefers to entertain himself with Python, which serves him very well to play around in business and private matters with signal processing, artificial intelligence and nerdy math in general. Apart from reaching out Diego with the project’s idea, Rodrigo has dedicated his efforts to scrap the data off the RKI website. Oh, he is also the one to blame if the German text spanisch vorkommt in some places.
Rodrigo also has a personal website where he explores some of his scientific interests and their connection to art:
Collaborators
We thank the following people from the bottom of our heart for their help with the translation of the site: