2020: The Year in Review

 What is there to say about 2020, other than that it has certainly been an odd one?

The most important thing is that my family has come through the year happy and healthy. I know that does not hold true for everyone.

We started out our year with out annual winter trip to the US. We had a lovely cabin at Myrtle Beach State Park, S.C., and were joined by my brother for several days. We plan to repeat this – some time!

We arrived home on February 1, which was officially Norbert's first day of no work. The decision had been made to close his firm, and that we would live off our savings for several years until he became eligible for retirement pay.

And shortly after that the world started turning upside down. A Karneval gathering in our Kreis (county) turned into the first COVID hotspot in Germany. Our local schools closed that month and stayed closed for weeks.

So we moved into the routine of wearing masks on those increasingly rare occasions that we left the house, staying home most of the time and getting used to the fact of a major shutdown.. And listening to our American friends all saying, “oh, you poor things”, while being confident it would never happen there.

This means that most of our year has been, shall we say, not newsworthy. Amazingly I got quite a bit of cycling work done over the summer and fall, which I quite enjoyed. My team, new to the top ranks, had a few large successes, so it was fun. And Norbert and I did get away for five days the end of September – noticing that Netherlands was starting to close down various states due to COVID. But we were lucky and enjoyed our few days away.

Our family grew this summer when Lucas and Michele adopted a dog – Anton is a lively Magyar Viszla, who is still going through puberty :-). He has won all our hearts, well, except for Amy.

Eventually we again had Lockdown Light and just in time for the holidays, the hard lockdown. We will still celebrate the same as ever, just then two of us with Lucas and Michele. We are grateful that Lucas has contined to work the whole year, staying healthy and getting his full income. Again, that has not held true for everyone.

There are few activities to report on this year, but there have been a multitude of experiences and new ways of looking at things – which I will write about later.