And now for news from Berlin! Every month, I’m reporting on what we’ve been up to, both to preserve my own memories and also to keep in touch with loved ones afar.
COVID-19 Update
Since December, restrictions have been tightened. As of this month, we can only meet with one other person from another household, and we now have to wear medical-grade masks in grocery stores and on public transportation. Luckily, my recent foray into woodworking meant that I had a handful ready to use!
Happily, infection rate has been steadily dropping for the past couple of weeks, and the 7-day infection rate has dropped below 100 per 100k people. Hopefully it continues going down!
As of right now, restrictions are to stay in place until at least February 14. But I’m not expecting to leave my apartment much until at least April.
So…what did we do this January?
We did almost nothing this month. We’re working on having regular date nights, where we either order in or make increasingly involved meals for ourselves. But taking the time to dim the lights, light some candles, and really linger over food is turning into something to look forward to.
We’ve been playing video games and reading a lot. In fact, I read a full half of the Wheel of Time series in January. That’s 7 books, each at least 600 pages. I might have gone into a full frenzy last week and read 3,000+ pages in six days.
It’s a quiet life we’re living.
LOOK AT THE ADORABLE SEAT FABRIC!
Worms!
The most exciting thing that happened this month is buying a worm composting bin! There’s an Austrian company called Wurmkiste that sells kits to make benches that hold worm compost bins!
We’re now the happy owners of about a pound of worms. Their upkeep involves feeding them our food scraps and torn-up cardboard. After 4-6 months, we can expect a bunch of powerful fertilizer to incorporate into our container garden.
And in case you were wondering, it doesn’t smell! If you shove your head in the bench, you can catch a whiff of a forest floor after a rain shower. But all in all, we’re happy to have our little worm friends eating our eggshells and teabags.
Oh, and we named them. For efficiency, they’re all named Willy, Winnifred, and Todd.
We’re anticipating February to be just as quiet as January was. But this month, I started to feel the doldrums of winter set in. I would normally call it Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I think I’m just letting the despair over COVID get to me. We have a couple ideas to keep things interesting, though, so I just need to keep my eyebrows up!
