Staring into a Second Lockdown

 

Back in March, I was locked down with a 15-month-old still napping twice a day. With no daycare, we took shifts. I got the afternoon shift and took him out in the stroller to the neighbourhood park, and then into the nearby, quiet cemetery to make him sleep.

While the sick died for want of ventilators in the hallways of Milan’s hospitals, and while China introduced state surveillance that would make the heart of the Stasi go pitter patter, I watched winter turn into spring. Every day, I walked into the cemetery and saw a few more leaves on the trees, the birds' nests get a little bigger, and the days get longer and sunnier. It was so lovely that I forgot how rough other people had it. I just lacked the perspective, even as I strolled past graves everyday.

As we stare into the void of a second lockdown, it all feels the same, but different, and darker. The headlines scream about higher infection rates, the trees shed their leaves, the birds migrate south, and days get shorter, colder, and darker.

So, I was feeling a little down at the prospect of spending a winter indoors.

Until I had a call with my parents, who mentioned their weekly family Zoom call, in which my Opa said he wasn't going anywhere for Christmas because it wasn't worth the risk. He's in his 90s, and well into the risk group. When someone mentioned that it's Christmas, he pointed out that he missed four Christmases in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during the War. One Christmas isn't so bad.

That snapped me out of my self-centered, me-focused, life-is-so-hard-in-my-nice-home whine fest about a winter lockdown. I needed some perspective to remember that I don't have it that bad. In fact, most of us don't have it that bad when compared others who deal with the coronavirus, like patients, families of patients, doctors, nurses, grocery store employees, or your food delivery dude who are all a little closer to the horrors the coronavirus has created.

 

It's all about perspective. So, am I going to make this about myself? Or am I going to look around, look at the news, look at history, and see that it ain't so bad. Spring will be along soon enough, and the summer, and then we'll all be vaccinated and stuck in crowded trains, shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers, all of us wishing we were locked down again.

A toddler? Or drunk?

Completely comfortable without pants.
Photo by Kata

What is a toddler other than a younger, cuter version of a guy at a party who's had too much to drink but doesn't know it?

Start with the coordination issues. He stumbles over his own feet. Walks into door frames. Slides off chairs. Am I talking about the toddler or the drunk who doesn't know he's drunk? They both fall face first, then get up, play it cool, and keep going towards whatever they were pursuing (usually food) like nothing happened.

You certainly can't tell them they've had too much of anything. Tell a toddler he's had enough cookies and you have a temper tantrum. And our drunk who doesn't know he's drunk? You tell him he's had enough, and you get a scoff that's way too slurred to take seriously and a "I'm cool, man," as tries to nonchalantly lean on something (and miss).

They're both sloppy eaters. Food flies everywhere, in all directions, like shrapnel in a blast zone. It's not just all over their faces. It's all over their clothes and in their hair (or beard). And they don't even know it, they're laughing and spraying bits of partially eaten crackers. Then you arrive and they come running to hug you, smearing apple sauce or Shwarma sauce (or a mixture of both) all over your clothes.

Both get easily carried away. A toddler will forget about the concept of self-preservation as he chases a ball under furniture, over the tops of tables, and around open ovens.

Our drunk will get carried away on the dance floor. Arms will flail in all directions, knocking over passers-by. He might even cut open his chin in a goth bar during a futile attempt at the Worm.

What else? There are the spilt drinks, and the tears from both over the spilt drinks. There is a wild enthusiasm when his song comes on. There’s the deep focus while they’re eating tacos. 

There's the babbly talk. A drunk that doesn't know he's drunk will slur on and on at you about the thing that's on his mind until he stops suddenly, because he forgot what he was talking about. A toddler, our cute drunk without the drink, will babble on in his own language about something, anything, but the conversation will go off the rails when a train comes into view.

A toddler loves his bicycle. Even when it's just a little too big for him and he tips over every time he tries to move a foot or two.

 

Our drunk who doesn't know he's drunk also doesn't know he's in no condition to ride his bicycle. But he'll walk it just out of sight of his concerned friends, then hop on and pedal away, laughing maniacally, before falling over.

The one difference between the toddler and the guy who doesn't he's drunk is the morning of the next day. The guy who doesn't know he was drunk awakes with the painful realization in his head and gut that he was indeed drunk and party is over.

The toddler wakes up the next morning as right as rain, has his diaper changes, and resumes the party, like it never stopped.

Punk Rock Pomodoro Productivity

 

Why does hyper productivity seem like the turf of business executives, entrepreneurs, and tech bros?

Where are the productivity hacks for the pixel-pushing designers? The emailing-phone-calling-project-managing-busy-body? The full-time mom trying to get a side gig off the ground? Or the regular dude just trying to get things done before Happy Hour?

These are the people who need productivity hacks the most. They have bosses, deadlines, distractions, and better things to do. It’s time to bring productivity to the people. It’s time for Punkrock Pomodoro.

Read the full post on Medium.com

 

Notes on Moving to Berlin

 

In any other time, moving from Dusseldorf to Berlin probably feels like something that resembles normal. Of course, it was for from normal, so here's a smattering of the abnormal things I noticed on the long road from the Dorf to Berlin.

Bringing Up the Toddler

 

These aren't normal times, and no I'm not talking about this Covid crisis, I'm talking about our Toddler Times. Moving across the country with a toddler is tough, so tough that Berlin felt like it was on the moon at times, not the other end of Germany.

Let's start with the stuff. Back in Toronto, I'd invite a few of the same friends to help me move (I moved five times in four years), and while I grumbled about how much stuff I had, they loved a Marshall Move because there was so little to move, and they still got free beer. I was a minimalist and didn't know it.

 

Then we had a baby and our stuff expanded exponentially. There are loads of baby clothes, blankets, towels, and wipes. There's a changing table, a bed, a bassinet, a wardrobe, and boxes, small tables and chairs, and bags of toys. There are toiletries, creams, lotions, powders, diapers, and other baby things whose purpose befuddles me. 

 

Plus, we moved into that last flat in the Dorf with the intention of staying a while and bought some decent, non-disposable furniture that we wanted to bring with us to faraway Berlin.

 

 

Outsource the tough stuff

 

It's funny how easily I pissed away my time before I had a kid. Call of Duty, fixing my bike brakes on my own, watching Sons of Anarchy, waiting in line at bars, and the list goes on. As a parent, I'm painfully aware of how little time I have, both hours in a day (because that's potentially sleep I'm missing out on) and hours in my life (because the more tired I get, the more I'm of aware of my own mortality).

 

For our move, we hired fixers, a German start-up called Smoovr that hired a moving company for us, estimated the needed truck space, dealt with the city parking permits, and so on. It lifted a small burden off our shoulders, but it helped, because this was the stuff that would start out a small and then metastasize into major, German-language problems.

 

A caveat. I'm not saying you should outsource everything but, until we invent time travel, you can't get the time you waste back. It isn't like money, you can't earn more time.

 

 

Berlin housing is nuts

 

Everything you heard about Berlin housing is true. It's crazy. Not Toronto crazy, but it's getting there. Prices are rising year on year on a dwindling amount of homes. Even during a pandemic, people were lining up to view flats, crowding into small-ish apartments, and ignoring the social distancing rules.

 

The shortage also brings out the predators. The City of Berlin implemented a rent freeze, which might not be legal, depending on what Germany's highest court decides. While everyone waits for the final judgement, landlords must charge lower rents. But, they advertise the non-frozen rent. Then, when you visit a flat, they flash you a pen-scribbled calculation of the reduced rent and recommend the difference gets set aside, because when the law is struck down, they say, you must repay that amount retroactively.

 

In one case, a landlord offered us two contracts, one for the apartment and another for use of the cellar and bike racks in the courtyard, so he could charge the standard full price for the apartment from the two reduced rental contracts. Sneaky stuff. When I asked what happens if the law is struck down and I'd be facing two full rent payments, he said I could trust him to keep it reduced. Of course, he wouldn't put that in writing. I tried to negotiate, he didn't budge. 

 

This wasn't even a nice flat. It was a ground floor unit on a busy Neukolln street, across from a bar, within site of a playground where two drunks started a sloppy, but very real, fist fight while kids played on like nothing out of the normal was going on.

 

I turned down the apartment, but he didn't seem to care: there were plenty of desperate home hunters who would probably sign both contracts and regret it later.

 

Nothing goes to plan

 

I've written before about how enjoying Berlin requires going in without a plan. But! You need a plan to move. Yet! You also need the flexibility to change that plan or at least allow events and circumstances that are beyond your control to do what they're going to do.

 

The elevator is out of service when the movers arrive? Lend a hand and carry the stuff up the stairs, so they're not working all night. There's no storage room in the basement? Use what you've got (and accept a generous offer from your father-in-law to put storage shelves in a closet).

 

Berlin, and the world in general, but especially Berlin, is indifferent to your wishes, whims, and plans. When your plans work out, be grateful. When they don't, look for another way, because the universe won't budge. This is something I'm still working on (replace universe with toddler, and you'll understand) but it's useful to remember.

 

In those times, I think of something someone said about Hungarians: "A Hungarian is someone who enters a revolving door behind you and comes out ahead of you." So, when things don't go as planned, I try to tap into my inner Hungarian and see how I can use the situation to get ahead.

 

Life Lessons from the Dorf

We've left Dusseldorf. The flat has been vacated, we're registered at the Burgeramt, and a new chapter of our lives in Berlin is beginning. But, after living in the Dorf for almost five years, it would be hard, even for me, not to have learned a few life lessons there.

 

 

Stay out of the bike lane

 

When I was in Dresden, my local friend kept on telling me to stay out of the bike lane. What bike lane? All I saw was the sidewalk and another sidewalk right beside it with the bricks laid differently. Then a bike shot past us on the other sidewalk. Oh.

 

It's so easy to poke fun at the German love for bureaucracy, rules, and regulations, along with the joy some Germans have for lecturing others to abide by those rules. But, one of the upsides of this strange respect for the rules is that things run very well here. There are line-ups at the government office, but everyone waits their turn. Bridges get built. Cars roll off the assembly line. Civic life and business chug on

 

In fact, things go smoother when you go a bit beyond their rules. When I was applying for my permanent residence, I brought two copies of all my required papers to the government office. The official's expression brightened when she saw my filing cabinet worth of documents, and I got my permanent residence without a hitch.

 

 

You don't have to love Dusseldorf to appreciate it

 

Before we arrived in Dusseldorf, we both lived in Budapest and Kata lived in Berlin, both are exciting, bustling capital cities. Our first impression of the Dorf was a small, dull rich person's village. Of course, first impressions are usually biased, not entirely correct, and never fair. Dusseldorf is a rich town, but it wasn't dull. It's an art city, with some fantastic galleries. Its Altstadt is a big, sloppy party place that a younger, more wild Marshall would've appreciated. It sits on the east side of the Rhine, which makes for some lovely sunsets. It's international, filled with people from all over the world and restaurants serving every type of cuisine to feed them. We didn't love the Dorf, but we liked living there.

None of that exciting stuff really matters

 

Sometimes we craved a solid outdoor drinking spot, like what we loved in Budapest. Sometimes we wanted a great weekend program, like what we had in Berlin. It's easy to look around at any new city, and think: Well, it doesn't have these things...

 

Yet, day to day life in the Dorf is fantastic. You could ride your bike anywhere in the city in a half hour. The transit was mostly reliable. Our son had a great Kita, or daycare, in a park right on a pond. There was always a park nearby. There were forests and hill nearby for hiking. You could walk along the Rhine on a warm summer evening and drink a cold beer. The city was so safe that the city's "bad" neighbourhood looked like a good neighbourhood in Toronto. "Exciting" can be overrated.

 

Never live in the Altstadt

 

Just don't do it. Drink there. Shop there. Don't live there.

 

Don't let the big things become small

 

The first time I saw the Cologne Dom, I gasped in awe. I never got tired of seeing it. When I saw it lit up at night, I snapped photos like a tourist, while a Cologne friend walked by without looking at it. It was something he had grown up with, something he had gotten used to.

 

When I started working at my firm's Cologne office, I would get off at the main station, which is right beside the Dom, and pause to take it in. I felt so fortunate to be able to work near this architectural wonder, and I think my positive disposition about commuting to Cologne came from never taking that exposure to a world wonder for granted.

The Cologne Dom, one dark and foggy night.

Most people appreciate the effort

 

The only people who will laugh at you for trying your piss poor beginner German are the assholes. And who cares what they think? Most people who endured my German were usually happy to see a foreigner make an honest effort and would answer slowly or switch to English if the topic was important. Many Germans understand their language isn't easy for foreigners to learn – something many native English speakers often forget about their own language.

Friends: Quality matters more than quantity

 

Expats in a faraway city are often drawn to each other. There's nothing wrong with this, but some of those friendships are defined by their time and place, so you drift apart when someone moves back home. It happens. Some expats float from one country to another without making meaningful friendships that last. We've managed to maintain some of our friendships from Budapest and Berlin. In our time in the Dorf, many people have come and gone, but we've been lucky to make some quality friends. We don't have many, but the friendships we've formed are strong and meaningful, and that's probably what made Dusseldorf so livable for us.

 

 

Travel in the Time of Covid

A rare sight: No one taking in thr East Side Gallery

When I checked into my Berlin pension, the desk person told me I was the only one staying in there that night. Travel restrictions were still in place, so you could only book a hotel room if you were on business, which meant budget lodgings, like my pension, in the heart of Berlin's touristy shopping district wasn't a a big draw.

Just outside, along the shopping strip in Charlottenburg, shoppers ignored the 1.5 meter of social distancing to line up in front of their favourite brand name stores, which still had to maintain a capacity limit inside. Some shoppers wore masks, but a freakish amount of people didn't bother with masks. For someone who had been locked down for two months, this was disconcerting.

That Saturday was the first day that Berlin loosened its quarantine laws. It was also a warm, sunny spring day. A powerful combination for people cooped up for two months in their flats. So people gathered outside in the parks and patios to walk, drink, flirt, and simply walk around.

Yet, the country was still locked down, even as restrictions were lifing in Berlin. This meant the city belonged to the Berliners. They sat along the Spree and sipped beer in the sun. They shopped, or at least they lined up to shop. The crowded onto patios to eat burgers and kebab. The tourist spots, on the other hand, were deserted.

On my way to an apartment viewing, I walked along the East Side Gallery. Usually there are hoards of people snapping selfies in front of the murals on the old sections of the Berlin Wall. I had the gallery to myself. The Berliners had no time for something they see every day.

Later I came back to my lodgings. The desk clerk had already left for the night, leaving me alone in the dim pension (unlike a hotel, there's no 24/7 staff on-site). 

In the morning, I ate breakfast in the grand old dining room alone - the old hardwood floor creaking loudly underfoot as I refilled my coffee. Through the tall windows, the city was already coming to life. Chairs and tables scrapped pavement as they were being laid out in the cafe below, currywurst stands were opening, and traffic was humming along.

Inside, the pandemic seemed like it still was going on. Outside it seemed like it was over.

Work-Life Balance Comes Home

When the toddler borrows my notebook

I was in a meeting recently, when someone mentioned creating marketing content for potential customers because they're so bored right now. 

Bored, I thought, who are these people with time to be bored? 

Despite being sent home to work remotely, my tasks haven't changed. I was already a remote worker before the lockdown began, so the prospect of staying home and working in isolation didn't seem so hard, until the Kita (that's the German daycare) closed.

Every day of this lockdown might seem like the same, but it's far from boring. The challenges of career and childcare smash into each other constantly. My wife and I must teleconference for work with a toddler climbing up and screaming "HEEEEYYY!" at our screens.

Focus time for writing or conceptual thinking only comes in blocks of an hour or so, when the toddler goes down for a nap. How about composing emails or reviewing word docs? We now do those things with the background noise of a toddler banging a wooden spoon against a toy pot.

I think I speak for many parents balancing a remote job and being their own daycare when I say I am not bored. But you know who is bored? That screaming, laughing, crying, wooden-spoon-wielding maniac. 

Every day he wakes up and we groggily wake up. It's a new day and he's ready to drink his warm milk, watch his cartoons, and ransack his toy shelves (which were carefully tidied the night before). He's so bored that he rarely plays with his toys, he just spreads them out on the floor, appraises them like a indifferent king, and then raids the kitchen cupboards for frying pans, plastic containers, and cheese graters (we take those away from him).

Pre-lockdown, he went to the Kita every day to sing songs, play with other kids, and climb the indoor jungle gym. His current playmates are two tired, sore giants, who won't do anything until they drink their hot black coffee juice, and they spend way too much time looking at their screens for work. I feel for the little guy.

In these strange times with another "Once in a Lifetime" recession looming, it's good to have a job and feel useful, especially when so many others have already been furloughed.

But there are times when I'm banging out copy on the laptop and the bored toddler pulls on my leg with a ball in his hand. He speaks in cute gibberish, but doesn't understand my "I have to work" gibberish. It's moments like that where I wish I was just a little more bored.

All that whole work-life balance handwringing was once an abstraction, something you mentally trained yourself to deal with, like not looking at your work email on the weekend or not talking about work at the dinner table. But the lockdown has made it a real, visceral thing. We have to choose between focusing on the toddler or the job, all day, every work day. 

Like the saying goes: If you trying doing two things at the same time, you won't do either one very well. If I play ball with him while writing the copy, I might hit my son in the face with the ball, which will make him cry, which will make my wife scowl at me. 

It often feels like I'm grinding every day out. Prepare a meal or two, change diapers, be a good colleague, be a good father, be a good husband, take the toddler for a walk, make sure the toddler doesn't find a way to maim or kill himself, shop for groceries, try not to get the covid while shopping for groceries, avoid drinking too much, write the occasional, self-indulgent blog post, get the toddler to sleep, and collapse. And I'm only the father, the mother is doing far more without the whiny blogging.

As Henry Rollins put it on his Cool Quarantine radio show: "These times aren't bad, they're just tough." I'm working from home, while spending a lot of time with my family. I'm watching my son go through an amazing time in his development. Sure, it's tough, but it definitely ain't bad.

The Isolation Begins

Yesterday morning I set out to the local drug store to buy some family necessities. When I got there, I went straight to the toilet paper shelves and managed to score a few rolls. Other shoppers were there, wearing latex gloves and masks, grabbing whatever tissue-y products they could. Minutes later, the shelves were empty, despite the two-per-customer limit.

I waited for a mob to finish asking/accosting a worker stocking shelves about when there will be more toilet paper, and asked her where a certain face wash for Kata was located. She seemed so relieved to answer a non-toilet-paper-related question. 

After grabbing a few less in-demand items (nuts, toothpaste, baby food), I joined the queue, where we all maintained a two-meter distance from each other and avoided eye contact. I paid by card and got out of there as quickly as I could.

In just a few days after I posted my previous post, things jumped a few notches in Germany. Our city-administered day care was closed. Our employers sent us to home office. Playgrounds were cordoned off. Border controls went up. Masks are everywhere. The package delivery guys don't ask for signatures anymore. They ring the front doorbell, wait to be buzzed in, slide the package through the door, and practically run back to their truck.

While some things have changed, some small things haven't. I had to wait for a haircut at my local barber, which is still open for business. People still sit on the patio and sip coffee at the cozy kiosk down the street. There are plenty of joggers, dog walkers, and stroller pushers in our nearby park.

Small things seem even larger in importance than ever before. We're collectively stressing about beating the panic buyers to the toilet paper shelf or wondering if we're going to get this virus by standing too close to a stranger a stoplight. Getting a hair cut or reading a book on a park bench on a sunny day might keep us sane in the coming days, weeks, and months.

But those small things might be more dangerous than we realize. In Italy, everyone was sent home from work and school and, because it was Italy, instead of staying at home, they went to the cafes and clubs and stayed out late to enjoy the warm weather. The rate of infection rose, hospitals were overwhelmed, and the government shut down everything and sent the police into the streets to keep people home.

Many of the small things in this crisis are only dangerous when they're abused. Large groups still gather in public, people cough in stores without covering their dirty germ holes, and they're throwing grill parties in the park. 

In Germany, in particular my state of North-Rhine-Westphalia, which is hardest hit by the coronavirus, we'll see in the coming days if this partial shutdown will have an effect on the infection rate. If not, we'll have to forget about enjoying the small things for a while.

The coronavirus comes to Germany

The coronavirus’ spread been a slow burn in my corner of Germany. The first cases were found in Heinsberg, about 60km from the Dorf and a 45-minute drive from Aachen, where my office is located.

New cases pop up in my state of North-Rhine-Westphalia daily, but no town is under lockdown, like in Italy. No mass digital surveillance system – that we know of – is watching our vital signs, like China. And there’s no sick health minister coughing and spreading the virus at news conferences, like Iran.

Life goes on in Germany… just a little differently. I catch a train twice a week to work in the Cologne office and no walk through the train station is complete without seeing a few commuters wearing surgical masks. People go to work. They hit the gym. They go out for beers. Most schools and daycares are still open. For now.

But beneath the business-as-usual attitude, there’s an underlying, repressed panic that’s difficult to hide. Walk into the drug store to buy hand sanitizer and you’ll see an empty shelf. Pasta and canned goods are popular. A local Ramen joint that used have people lined up around the corner is nearly deserted. Kata saw a woman carting away a dozen jumbo packs of diapers, which must be for a do-it-yourself mask that I haven’t heard about yet.

But those COVID-19 push notifications tell us about every new case. And if you only pay attention to the numbers, it might make sense to hoard on canned beans, masks, and shotgun shells. If you paused and thought a bit, you’d realize a better tactic is washing your damn hands and covering your mouth when you cough or sneeze.

To the German government's credit, they’ve been open and honest about new cases and their response to it. Trust in the health authorities here seems high. People are worried, but they’re not hysterical or ignorant of the facts.

With the coronavirus, it seems like we don’t care about it until it’s too late, or we expect governments to fix the problem. But mostly, it’s up to us.

Ten years ago, I was riding a subway in Toronto. A woman was coughing and hacking a few seats behind me. She sounded like she was going to die. As I left the car, I looked back and saw her coughing again, without covering her mouth. That night, I woke up coughing the same cough that woman shared with the entire train. A day later, I visited the doctor, who told me I had pneumonia.

The coronavirus will be around for a while, so we should get used to taking responsibility for ourselves. That doesn’t mean stocking up our doomsday bunkers. It means doing things we should've done more in the past: washing our hands, covering our mouths when we cough, and not being hoarders.