Good golly, it’s already been a month since my blog about October. I want to capture some of our day-to-day life while we live in Berlin, so here’s what we did in November
Germany and COVID-19
COVID-19 cases started increasing near the end of September and had reached higher numbers than April by the end of October. There’s a lot of speculation about whether the April numbers are accurate, due to less testing, but the fact remains that it spread far and fast in October. So for the month of November, Germany is in “shut down lite”, AKA no eating in restaurants, recommended avoiding public transportation, and masks continue to be required in retail environments.
As a result, we basically hunkered down for the month. It started getting cold (the last week, our daily highs were mid-30F), so it wasn’t too hard to cuddle up under some blankets and play video games in our free time. We try and take a daily walk to get daylight and generally take care of our best plant selves.
Expanding our food horizons
You know what’s in your apartment? Your KITCHEN. So since we couldn’t leave the apartment, we traveled with our cuisine. We found an Asian grocer and bought what we needed for dumplings, pad thai, and miso soup. At a Mexican grocer, we got what we needed for mole and homemade corn tortillas!
Homemade dumpling 
Hummus from Fatoush
We also explored some new pizza delivery places (a staple for my life), and a phenomenal Arabic delivery place. Berlin friends – give Fatoush a try. Their hummus is BOMB.
NaNoWriMo (and other work)
If you’ve been reading along, it would be hard to miss that I participated in NaNoWriMo in November and WON! I’m not ready to decide if I’m going to edit it or let anybody else read it, but I’m happy to report that it was an entertaining creative challenge!
Meanwhile, Zack’s team at Amazon had a huge deadline on November 30, so he was working long hours all month. After work, he was completely exhausted, so being restricted to our apartment wasn’t completely unwelcome.
America Stuff
Yup, we followed the election. We woke up at 2:30am to watch results roll in. We knew we couldn’t expect results that day, but it felt important to tune in, you know? Thank goodness for video calling – we spent the time with my siblings. We were having dinner with friends when the election was FINALLY called. Wine was had. It was a good night.
We also celebrated Thanksgiving with zoom calls with both of our families. Again, thank GOODNESS for video calls!
Summary
November was pretty quiet, but we found ways to entertain ourselves around our planned work. The quarantine has been extended until at least December 20, so next month, I’ll have more quiet stories to tell. Until then, here’s a picture of a bird standing on the frozen pond in the park across the street:
