7th Blogoversary

What do you call it when a blog has an age crisis? Over here, it’s happening at age seven. Seven years have flown by!

I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry! But I do know that I was a very different person when I first started blogging.

The start of my blog pinpoints a moment in time for me and makes it possible for me to remember then and now, and to compare. I don’t always like nostalgia, but I see growth and I’m happy with that.

What do we blog about during a pandemic, then? It’s been a good moment to let the imagination loose. I read somewhere that French publishing houses are pleading for people to spend time reading, not writing, since they’re getting more manuscripts sent in than ever – it seems book-writing has become a trend for people with too much time on their hands!

As for me, I always wondered what it was about the pandemic that made people have extra time. It certainly didn’t affect me that way.

Looking back at my blogging year, many photos are local ones. Not much happened in the blog, but in my real life, I feel like there were always dozens of things going on. Another year skipped by, the summer was too short, as it always is, and I’m already looking forward to the next one.

Today, we had sunny weather and it felt like spring, though the sun set before I had a chance to go for a walk – the days are still short. Just last week, we were ice skating and sledding.

There was an old man wearing a leather jacket completely opened up despite the cold, his moustache icy and he had no mask. He was making money with his horse, taking kids on a very fast sleigh ride through the park filled with sledders. The ride made a christmassy sound, with bells jingling all the way, and he said he was doing this because he wanted to promote old traditions.

I felt bad for the horse, but decided my kids should try this, because maybe when they have kids of their own, there will be no more snowy rides on horse sleighs. It could be something exotic and quirky they tell their grandchildren, like when we try to describe life before mobile phones to young ones. For the same reason, I keep taking them to the library (and also because I love books). Who knows if libraries will exist for long. I want them to have memories of these things.

A man next to us in the queue told his friend, “This is a nice park, but they should sell Glühwein and hot chocolate here, in a kiosque. Right there would be a good spot.” He was reading my mind.

Cities will never stop evolving, not even during a pandemic. Life goes on, we adapt.

Nostalgia. Enough of it! Let’s make the most of every moment, enjoy every day.

Thank you all for visiting! Here’s to seven more years of happy blogging!

Ps. If you’re reading this through WordPress Reader, it seems to break the image galleries into a long stream of individual photos. My apologies, there was nothing I could do! I left out many photos to make the galleries smaller to accommodate this weird setup. Click over to my blog to view the post as it was intended!