Spring Cleaning

It is the most glorious weather. 15 degrees (sixteen some days!) sunny, blue skies. The park’s grass is green and gold and purple and white, all the bulbs arriving early after a mild winter and what seems like an early spring. Strawberries are in the supermarkets, half a kilo for 99c. Strawberries always mean good things in this part of the world. Although I am always cautious to celebrate good weather in March, because after March comes April and as we all know, April, April macht was er will (April, does what it wants). And last year it snowed in April. So, you know, low hopes can’t be dashed.

Yesterday we went into town, along with the rest of Weiden, to do as the Germans do and flood the cafes’ outdoor seating (and ice cream shops – the queues were enormous). The sun was warm, too warm for jackets, yet all the Germans sat comfortably in their big winter coats and scarves, as if they knew something about the weather we didn’t, that snow was going to fall any second. I was daring and slipped my jacket off, exposing my clavicle. Exposed clavicles and ankles in months that are not May-September, warrants stares, and I received a few from swaddled fellow patrons. It was the only thing stopping me taking my cardigan off and going the whole hog with bare arms.

Strawberries = strawberry, banana and oat bread.

The weather is perfect for the change that is in the air in our household. It’s official. Our days as citizens of Bavaria are officially numbered. We’re out of here in three weeks, bound for the Baltic Sea, for SG’s hometown and my own version of a ‘hometown’ in Germany; Kiel. There’s a lot to do, like spring clean our ridiculous cellar, in which someone could be comfortably living right now without our knowing, so full is it of clothes, defunct appliances, unnecessary appliances, linen, a mattress. We need to sell a few things, pack up the rest, get a moving company quote (and compare it with the other possibility Drive an Enormous Truck Across the Country, which we’ve done before) paint the walls. There’s an apartment to be found in Kiel, and the general paperwork that comes with relocating states.

So things down here are, finally, and rather quickly wrapping up and winding up, pushing us closer and closer towards what’s next. In the past, we’ve always gone into new ‘chapters’, for lack of a less cliched word, with a known time frame. Not this time. We’re bound for the north not knowing how long we’ll be there for, only knowing it’s for as long as we’d like – and that’s actually as comforting as it is exciting.

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