Hello there! I took a couple weeks off from writing for the end of December, but it’s a new year and I’m back at it. Let’s talk about December.
COVID-19 Update
This month was very odd. Like I mentioned in my post about November, COVID-19 numbers started rising in Germany through October and by November 1, we were in a “soft” lockdown. Well, the numbers weren’t going down fast enough, so on December 16, Germany went into a harder lockdown. All restaurants went back to being pick-up only and non-essential shops were closed.
Germany didn’t push for emergency approval for the vaccine, opting to wait for full approval by the EU medical council. The vaccine was approved and began distribution in late December. Vaccine centers have been constructed and there’s one just a couple tram stops away from our apartment. Being non-essential workers who are relatively young and in good health, we’re not expecting to be vaccinated anytime soon.
Frankly, our lives didn’t change much between November and December. But we kept our eyebrows up and made plans for things to do at home. Zack had 10 vacation days left, and it didn’t make sense to let any of them roll over. They would have had to be used by March, and…well, we don’t anticipate being able to travel any more then than now. So he took the last two weeks of the year off.
So for December, we baked some fun stuff, made the most of Christmas without family, and tried to get outside as often as we could.
Baking
Like so many others, we made a sourdough starter at the beginning of this COVID madness back in March. It promptly died.
But we started a second one, and Steve II is still going strong! But Zack has leaned into baking HARD in the past few months, including making challah on Fridays and making a killer Tart Tatine for Christmas!
Christmas
We didn’t go back to my parent’s house for Christmas last year because Zack had used all his vacation days for our wedding. The plan had been to go this year… So we had an opportunity to continue testing new traditions!
We found a company called Wundertree that delivers potted Christmas trees during December, then picks them back up again in January and plants them in a forest in Brandenburg (the area surrounding Berlin). It was decidedly more expensive than a tree lot tree, but Walter shed far fewer needles, smelled better, and will live a long happy life surrounded by fellow trees!
A couple more things we tried for the first time: I saw Die Hard for the first time on Christmas, and we roasted a goose! Die Hard was good, but more intense than I expected. It was clearly made in the 80s, back when they made gritty action films. Since then, we’ve seen Die Hard 2-4, and I gotta say that 3 hits my action film sweet spot. And the goose turned out ok. Our oven is very small, so I scorched the living hell out of the skin on the breast, but the legs braised up gloriously and the sheer amount of fat that rendered out has added a tasty note to our other cooking!
Outside
A friend of ours was craving time outside, and I happily joined. Apparently, the public transportation company here has partnered with the outdoors app komoot to curate hikes that are accessible by metro. We wandered about 7 miles between two public transportation stops along a water conservation trail. It was a truly lovely way to spend a morning.
Last year, we were told that it had been a warm and dry winter, and this winter is proving that true. Over the past couple weeks, it’s stuck in the low 30s during the day, and we even got some snow!
For New Year’s, we went to a friend’s apartment, had cheese fondue, and lit sparklers while watching the fireworks across the city. The US has fireworks on 4th of July, but here it all happens on New Year’s Eve. Our friend has a killer rooftop terrace, so we got a great view of all the roof-level explosions going on.
December was just as quiet and uneventful as November. To be honest, the most exciting things that happened were the sheer amount of reading we did (I’ll share about that soon) and Zack got me a deeply addictive video game for Hannukah. (It’s called Factorio and if you like to optimize things or enjoy processes, I wouldn’t recommend it. I played for 11 straight hours the first day I had it. It’s dangerous.)
Anyway, we’ll keep dreaming up fun things to do at home and hopefully have more to share next month!
