Is this the new normal?

Welcome to Summer 2020: home of the new normal. I'm surprised that there are people who -- I think anyway -- are able to act like nothing is any different and life continues as normal. What a crazy trip. I feel like life is on hold. We can kind of do a lot of the things that we're used to doing and that we want to do, but every now and then there is some big reminder that things are more than a little weird right now.

Helga starts farm camp on Monday. Ah the classic list outlining for parents what their kid needs to bring on the first day of camp. Sunscreen, rain boots, 2 face masks that fully cover the mouth and nose, a hat, a water bottle, antibacterial wipes, rain clothes, and plenty of disinfecting hand sanitizer.

We are hoping to go on a holiday to Italy next month. I found one hotel that looked promising. They even outlined their new special procedures: you don't have to wear a mask when you're at your table eating, but of course when you get up to go to the buffet you do. And you don't serve yourself. There is now a glass partition between you and the food and you ask the staff -- who wear full face protection -- to serve you what you would like. And the pool is open! Using a "special anti-viral form of chlorine" (???).

We bought (well, ordered) a cargo bike recently. It is an Urban Arrow Family and it is mad wack. But to try it out and fill out the forms choosing all of the accessories which you need and which bring the total price to greater than what we paid for our first car, we had to wait in a line outside as only one group / family / whatever in the store at a time and of course you have to be wearing a mask the whole time.

But once it arrives it is going to be sweet!

Österreich und Corona

This past weekend the Pemulis family left Munich for the first time in 5 months. We drove deep into the alpine mountains of Salzburger Land in Austria where we had rented a cottage for a 4-night getaway. The cottage sat at approximately 1400 metres above sea level in a small town surrounding an alpine lake called the Zauchensee.

The trip got started as I made my first use of public transportation since March to head to the north of the city and pick up our rental car. As somehow seems to be rather common (and which you wouldn't expect in Europe -- let alone Munich) I was led to a Ford station wagon. It was pretty sweet with all the standard cool stuff you expect nowadays like rear camera, radar alerts, integrated navigation system, etc., but often ending up with a Ford when renting a car in Germany feels a little weird.

I successfully manoeuvred the shiny black estate car toward the south side of Munich and before heading home I had a quick stop to make at the local baby store where we had on the previous day purchased a very expensive child seat. The man (I should say boy actually) installed the seat in our car and I was ready to head home to start packing up the car. First, however, I experienced a very authentic Munich Moment when leaving the parking lot of Kinnings Baby: besides my rented Ford, there were 5 other cars in the parking lot. 3 Audis -- all station wagon A6s, and 2 Porsches -- a Panamera and a Cayenne. So clearly this was one of the "common" baby stores...

Over the next 6 or 7 hours (approximately) we packed up the car to get ready to go. Somehow this takes longer every single time we go anywhere. But finally, after a lot of stress and struggling, and tears and sweat, we were all loaded up and off we went! One nice breakthrough of this car trip (both out and back) is that Heinrich was happy in the car! He didn't cry at all and he slept a little in both directions. This is a huge development as with every single other car trip (including as recently as February when we were in Spain) he would scream at the top of his lungs for the duration of the ride. This was, as you might imagine, less than ideal. Spoiler Alert: while he learned to be happy in the car, he is further than ever from learning how to sleep.

We arrived at the cottage quite late in the day and of course we had an original plan of grocery shopping in the nearby town after arriving but upon arrival the grocery store was already closed. Since there was no food in the cottage, Helga and I headed down the hill to town to get a pizza (or 4) from the local pizzeria. Interesting that while in Germany there are strict regulations about mask-wearing, in Austria no one was wearing masks in the grocery store (which I went to the next morning) or in the restaurant. While of course here in Germany you don't wear a mask if you're sitting at your table (you have to eat after all), all of the employees are doing so at all times. Here it was as if Corona didn't exist. It was almost strange in its semblance of normality. Anyways, we paid for the pizza and headed the 10 km back up the hill to our cottage for a traditional Austrian dinner: take-out pizza.

I will spare the details of the night as it was the same as at home and repeated each of the four nights that we were there: Heinrich not really sleeping at all and screaming and yelling as loud as he could for a good portion of the night. Fun times. In other unfortunate news Helga had caught a cold (it did take 3 weeks of being at Kindergarten for it to happen though) and so she wasn't sleeping that great either -- but nowhere even close to in the same universe as the disaster that her younger brother represents during the nights.

One of the highlights of the area where we were staying was the high quality hiking and trail running. We went for a couple of family hikes

and both Joelle and I got to each do a couple of epic trail runs covering quite a few hundred metres of elevation gain.

On Sunday we took the chair lift up a few hundred metres to explore the mountain a little more. Another funny thing about the regulations here is this: as I mentioned previously there are no requirements for masks in stores or restaurants. However, for the open air chair lift, with only our family members on board, masks were required for everyone aged 6 and above. Weird.

But the trip and wearing the required masks was worth it because up high on the mountain it was really nice, we had some nice lunch (beer for mom and dad and ice cream for Helga), and there was a big Spielplatz.

All in all it was a nice short vacation and great to get out of the city for the first time in a very long time. We look forward to our next excursion to the mountains... coming soon!