As Germany is in a sort of lockdown again, we stay at home. Start of November, the infection numbers started to soar once more, as temperatures dropped in fall and people stayed indoors infecting one another. So Mrs. Merkel urged the country into responsible behaviour once more. It is a somewhat lighter lockdown than the one in March, but I have so much more time to do nothing at all, now that the golfing season is winding down.

Mind you, I still go to work for a couple of hours on three or four days a week. As the golf courses are open. Golfers are still allowed to play in twoballs. And boy, are they keen to do so (they are also bored out their brains, with nothing else left for them to do). Also, schools and businesses are still open. It’s just, that everything else has been closed – restaurants, museums, cinemas, any recreation other than individual sports (like golf or jogging). And any travel is frowned upon, hotels may only host business travellers or folks travelling on essential causes other than leisure. We are to just stay with folks from our own household and maximum one other household. Private gatherings with more than ten people out of maximum two households are forbidden. In our case, the other household would be sweetheart’s mom. She has to be shopped for and looked after regularely. We see noone else. Apart from each other. Turns out, the line so often quoted: “I Can’t get enough of you” might be somewhat exaggerated, after all. Esp. when it is cold outside and one has to spend many days in a rather smallish flat. Bored out of our brains. Never has the place been so clean and scrubbed, my little garden in such an orderly state so early into winter. And I have knitted my fourth pair of wooly socks in this latest lockdown.

I intented to go down to Austria to take my mom home from hospital end of October, but was asked by medical staff there, to rather not to. Back then, Berlin’s infection numbers were soaring. Whereas now, only three weeks in, Austria is in a far worse state, I hear. This changed quickly. With Mrs. Merkel weighing in on closing down most private life quite early into noticing unhealthy growth of infection numbers here in Germany, this might have not happened in Austria. So they are in a much harsher lockdown now.

But even with our own version of a lockdown light, I am getting tired of staying in. Being a homebody to begin with, I can not imagine, how more active people might cope. They must be on the verge of going stir-crazy.

Can’t be helped, though. But I start to get annoyed with all the folks ignoring the rules. Not wearing their masks. Or not wearing them properly. Worse even: protesting against the restrictions in their thousands, not keeping any distance at all (as happended this week in Berlin in front of Reichstag). The results are easy to see: infection numbers stopped to grow exponentially but still don’t recede. Not even after three weeks of lockdown. So come next week, we all will hear the government tightening the loop even further.

I wish, we all could come together this one time and just stick to the rules. Be they as tiring as much as they want. Until end of next year – when hopefully most of the population will be vaccinated – this is the only way to get through this as unharmed as possible.