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The Corona Diaries – Week 3

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Third week at home under curfew rules, which should last until the 19 April. If they don’t extend it…

4 April 2020 (Saturday): The weekends are not representative of my weekdays, obviously, so all of these posts start with the best two days of the week. In the weekends our routine is to take a short drive to the countryside around Würzburg to do walks (still allowed in Germany).  It’s only a 15 minute drive to fields, forests and vineyards – an advantage of living in a small town. I’ve realized that these walks are essential for keeping my pregnancy-related foot/leg swelling down, since they’re always less fat the day after a longer walk. We prefer walking in the countryside as it’s harder to avoid other people in town, and walks often involve a lot of road crossing. Of course, it’s also much prettier and more relaxing in the countryside. Continue reading →

The Corona diaries – Week 2

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Second week of curfew. For the first week, see here.

28 March 2020 (Saturday): Like Friday, Saturday came with awesome weather – Around 19 degrees Celsius and sunny. After a relatively slow morning, we went for a wonderful long hike that went through vineyards and forests near Würzburg. My husband plotted a circular route that comprised part of the Panoramaweg (Panorama route – through vineyards) and part of the Mainwanderweg (Main hiking trail – the Main is the river in the area). It was a good workout. My Fitbit says I did 12.5km, and there were quite a lot of hills. Not bad for a walk in the last month of pregnancy. There were no crowds; occasionally we passed other walkers or mountain bikers, at a safe distance. Most of the time we were completely alone. Continue reading →

The Corona diaries – week 1

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For how this whole mess started, see my previous post, In the time of Corona.

20 March 2020 (Friday): As expected, our state (Bavaria) declared an “Ausgangssperre” (curfew), to begin at midnight on Friday the 20th March. A curfew is a regulation that requires people to stay indoors. Apparently the officials went for these measures because a lot of people have been ignoring the advice to avoid others (practice social distancing), and have continued to hang out in groups. The wonderful spring weather we had this week didn’t help – after months of grey skies and cold, everyone ran outside immediately. We did the same, going for nature walks on both days of the weekend, but we avoided contact with others. However, some young people were even having “Corona parties”. Crazy. So, now we all have a curfew. We’re allowed to leave home to go to work (if necessary), shopping for essentials (food, medicine etc), to the doctor, to help someone out, for animal care, and also for sports/walks/fresh air (since this is good for health). However, you can only hang out together with those you live with and nobody else. Continue reading →

Würzburg: A rough start

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In the middle of November, my husband and I moved from Berlin to Würzburg to start our new jobs. I’d be lying if I said everything went smoothly and we adjusted easily to our new home.

Once you’ve been living in a place for a while, it’s interesting to go back and remember how you felt when you first moved there. For this reason, I kept a record of our first month in Würzburg. In future I’ll go back to more travel-oriented blog posts. Continue reading →

Weekly Small Pleasures #22 – Summer in the city

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Somehow the middle of the week is working out as a better time for me to publish these posts, so here is another Thursday-to-Thursday week’s worth of small pleasures. Thanks again to A New Life Wandering for hosting Weekly Small Pleasures. This week was one of those weeks where small pleasures were mixed with small annoyances and disappointments! Such is life. Continue reading →