Life under corona lockdown

We are a French Canadian couple living in Europe for the past 4 years. Since last year, we’ve been living in Germany.

Our small town, Nufringen, is about 30 minutes away from the major city of Stuttgart. During the lockdown, all of us here have been in quarantine since mid-March.

When the Coronavirus crisis began, we noticed an increase in number of people walking and biking in the trails surrounding us. The trains continued to run but mostly with little passengers.

There are no more traffic jams on the highway, and there is no shortage of food as essential services remained open by maintaining social distancing.

Now that small shops are opening, people are out wearing masks. People are waiting for hairdressers to open soon, and it is believed that the schools might not return to normal before one year.

When it comes to us, it has been a month of isolation at home doing about the same daily routine.

We get up and do a work-out through the use of an online fitness programme. We also take long walks with our dogs.

I spend the day studying House Decoration, painting abstract, reading, while my husband, Jean-Pascal, improves his skills on Photoshop, does some reading as well and goes to work 3 days a week.

Our lives have been put on hold, I had to postpone a trip back home, we had to cancel many trips in Europe, and friends who were supposed to visit us had to cancel as well.

The last month has allowed us to communicate more with our friends in Canada through video conferences and despite all this, we feel like we have been better connected with our friends and family.

It has also given us a taste of what pre-retirement may look like and one thing is sure we won’t be lacking creative projects to keep us busy and challenged.

Overall, we feel privileged during this crisis as we are safe and healthy, we have a roof, we have a government salary and we realize that we are luckier than many other people.

However, one thing we also miss is travelling and we can’t wait for this to be over with and soon return to India.