How’s everyone feeling?  Dave and I officially haven’t seen or been near anyone else for 17 days and counting, since David arrived home Friday morning the 13th (he was in the US since March 1 for work).  We both started teleworking that Friday and haven’t been into work since the 12th, similar to many of you. If you are an essential worker, I really do applaud you, it is not easy to go out every day and help keep us all afloat.  Thank you!

Today I’m sharing updates on Stuttgart’s Coronavirus restrictions and what we’ve specifically been up to during this Pandemic.

Stuttgart Grocery Stores

Dave and I have cooked at home for every single meal.  We only leave to grocery shop (mostly Dave has been doing the shopping), or to take a walk through nature.  The Stuttgart grocery stores have implemented tape to wait in line 1.5m apart, and our Edeka has removed the hand-held carts.  We always bring our own large canvas bag and put the foods directly into our bag, so we don’t have to touch the community carts.  Highly recommend bringing your own bag and using that only, so you limit things you touch.

Stuttgart Restrictions Out of the House

Stuttgart has banned gatherings of more than 2 persons outside, unless you are with your family unit.  All non essential businesses have been closed, such as hairdressers, and restaurants are only allowed to provide carry-out.  We swung by Marienplatz on the way home the other day and I captured these images below.

Parks and Playgrounds

The Spielplätze or playgrounds have also been closed.  We have a park right near our house that we will walk to get out of the house and alone in nature, and we have seen police on horseback roaming the park to ensure everyone is complying.

First, there were signs on all of the playgrounds and benches indicating they are closed because of Coronavirus as a protective measure:

And then as an extra preventative measure, tape went up around all of the playgrounds and anything people could touch, that could enable the virus to stay on the surface for multiple days.  We noticed the tape went up on our walk Friday, March 27th.

How We’ve Been Doing

Overall David and I have been doing pretty well.  I am happy that we passed the 14 day mark healthy (we are now on day 17 and still feeling healthy!).  To be honest we thought there was a decent chance David could have contracted it since he had to fly through two US airports, Munich and the Stuttgart airport on March 12th and 13th, and being around such large volumes of people at the time is scary.

I woke up yesterday to a real funk.  It was a beautiful, gorgeous spring Saturday in Stuttgart but we couldn’t really do anything or go anywhere of course.  I am happy for our health, but I could not get out of my sulky mood all morning.  Dave was really sweet and somehow he knows just how to make me happier.  I have some ideas below the work section that might help you as well.

Balcony champagne and aperativos in the sun: he somehow knows just how to brighten my mood when I’m in a funk.

Working From Home

We both are incredibly lucky that we have the ‘typical 9-to-5’ and are able to work from home during this time.  I know so many people are impacted much worse than we are.  Since neither of us have a designated office we have mostly been using our dining table.  You may know I really enjoy nice, long, candlelight dinners with music playing in the background and filled with good conversation… so having the table cluttered with our work laptops, notebooks, and cords galore has been a change.

David has shifted to East Coast hours since that’s where his new team all are, while I am obviously working EU hours.  So that means most week days I will be working from around 08:00 – 17:00 while David will head to the grocery store if needed in the morning, and then work until 22:00 or 23:00 most nights.  It serves for long feeling work days and less interaction with each other than usual but honestly I am so glad we are both together.

David is on phone calls a LOT now and sometimes he’ll take them in the living room so I don’t bother him too much 😉 he has AirPods so it’s so hard to tell when he is on a call or not – just feels like a lot of silence to me!

On Being Home so Much

• I’ve found myself rearranging our plants on a daily basis, probably because I am staring at them so much being home all day and night, and I can see the sun pattern all day.  Some of them like my Monsterra is actually getting too much sun.
• We have never run our dishwasher so often!!!

Cooking

We have been cooking every single meal, which isn’t a huge change to what we are normally up to (at least during the week), but it’s been fun cooking together nonetheless.   I’ve found that cooking really helps take your mind off of the stress of the rest of the world, and gives you a concrete task to focus on.  Plus, the results are quick and delicious!

We’ve also been baking a bit more, so fun!  Check out my instagram stories if you’re interested to see what I’ve been cooking, I started saving meals to my highlights and I will also write a new blogpost this week with some of our all-time favorite recipes and our go-to meals!

We also made for the first time homemade pizza, it was such a fun and easy activity and I think it’d be fun to do with kids too.  While we were making the dough, I searched iTunes for “Classic Italian songs” and it made for such a fun afternoon and evening!  While we waited for the dough to rise, we slow danced to the sweet Italian music.  It was pretty much the best.

We had so much fun with the pizza and classic Italian music that we’ve started to match our music to our cuisine each day!  That means Edith Pilaf sings while we make and enjoy crêpes, and we will play Jamaican later when we make Jamaican jerk shrimp bowls later tonight!  Try it out at your house too, it can brighten up your mood!

Nature Walks for Our Mental Health

If you are feeling in a funk, take a walk through nature with your family.  This has been essential to us during the week.  We try to get out each day during the lunch hour and maybe a second time in the evening if possible.  We don’t interact with anyone, and it helps our souls so much.

Nature walks have been especially nice during this Spring season, because we get to watch nature bloom in front of our eyes.  We walk past the same trees, bushes, and branches almost every day and get to notice the daily differences in the blooms.  It’s been very sweet.

Nature walks are really grounding, and I think a lot of people have started to re-realize this, one of the silver linings of this world-wide virus.

A spring re-awakening, if you will.

I’ve never been so incredibly grateful to have our house be very much engrained in the city center, but also with our backyard being a phenomenal park.  The perfect mix of city and nature!

Reading

As I mentioned earlier, David works through the evening and into the night since he’s working east coast hours in the US.  So I have spent evenings reading at home again.  I love historical fiction books, my two favorites being Paris: The Novel by Edward Rutherford, and A Paris Apartment by Michelle Gable.  Y’all gave me some great recommendations on my facebook post, thank you for that!  If you have any more book recommendations, leave them below!

Lastly, I hope you and your family members are staying safe at home.  What has helped you get through this Pandemic?

xx