Life in lockdown: week five

The Easter holidays are over and so is the first month of quarantine.

If I had to find a word to define each week up to now, it would be:

week one – anxiety

week two – homeschooling

week three – tonsillitis

week four – Easter

week five – exercise and cherry blossom (ok that’s four words).

I have practically got over the virus that I presumably caught from my son, who most likely caught it at school (back in the days when children went to school). So, I have been able to exercise properly again this week. I joined two yoga classes via Zoom, I went for long walks with my son, among the cherry trees in bloom, and for a family bike ride along the Berlin Wall trail at the weekend. Exercise is one of the things that has helped me remain fairly sane until now.

Spring has brought colour back to Berlin: pink and white cherry blossom, green leaves and blue sky. The sun has continued to shine every day from morning until evening, breaking all previous records. This has to be the best spring ever!

We’re lucky to be in Berlin and not just because of the weather. The situation here seems to be pretty much under control, at least for the time being. The hospitals are not overloaded and the health system is coping. We can leave the house with other members of our household, as long as we keep a distance from others. The most likely place to see our friends is still a computer or phone screen, but we sometimes are lucky enough to bump into someone we know (well not literally, as we have to keep a distance). 

There are plans for schools to restart, albeit gradually. Only pupils in the final years of primary and secondary school will go back to school over the next couple of weeks. We still have no idea when the other years will restart. Kitas (nurseries) probably won’t reopen until after the summer. So it’s back to homeschooling and being a teacher again from Monday.

Life in lockdown - week three

While the rest of the world was fighting COVID-19, I was at home battling against tonsillitis. Fortunately I had a powerful and effective weapon on my side - antibiotics - so I was able to extinguish the fire in my throat relatively quickly. Unfortunately I had to give my video yoga classes a miss and, as I could only communicate by whispering, phone or video calls were a no go. 

The week began with a dramatic change in the weather: Berlin saw its first and probably last snowfall of the year. The temperature plummeted, the sky went back to its usual grey tones, so for a few days nobody missed much by staying at home.

It was the last week of homeschooling before the Easter holidays and I spent most of it with my head under a towel inhaling steam. Schools in Germany are supposed to reopen on 20 April, but it seems unlikely at this stage. By the way, is it der virus or das virus? Luckily one of us knows the genders of German nouns. My son and I have found a way of making home lessons even more entertaining. We take it in turns to be the teacher. If you live in Berlin and you've heard a child laughing his head off, that was probably my son after I gave a wrong answer.

So what will we do with ourselves now that we are "on holiday"? Not to worry: we have plenty of ideas, including planning a Formula 1 quiz so that we can play with the rest of the family on Skype. We are determined to make the best out of this situation and, so far, we've done a pretty good job.