Since our last post, very little has happened here. The government has been working hard to flatten the curve and we’re doing our part by staying home and out of the way. The prospect of a €600 fine for being out for any but an approved reason provides a bit more incentive. They aren’t kidding here but the death toll provides ample justification. We were excited to be able to buy facemasks last week — one each, N95.

Meanwhile, we’ve been acquiring key household items with selective purchases through Amazon — and my ambiguity about using them now is a whole other topic — and finding our rhythm with cooking and keeping ourselves occupied. We’ve found a supermarket about 10 minutes’ walk from the house where we can find about anything we want other than baking powder — evidently nobody bakes from scratch here.

Cindy has been learning about the Ottoman Empire, I’m still fighting my way through Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton, we’re both playing computer games a lot, in my case Battletech, Kerbal Space Program and Warframe, you’ll have to ask Cindy what she’s playing.

Weather was poor for the first couple of weeks and cold in this un-insulated masonry building but in the last two weeks or so it’s warmed up considerably and we’ve had a handful of just gorgeous sunny days that we can enjoy and even take off sweatshirts and hoodies.

Cindy is doing Zoom Pilates and using the building stairs to keep in shape; I’ve been doing…less. I would do almost anything to be able to just get out and walk around the city again.

The big news, though, is that last night we were treated to a little mini-concert by our neighbor. He’s evidently a pretty well known classical guitarist and teacher. He put on a Facebook livestream where he projected old silent films on the wall of the building acrosss the plaza and played music contemporaneous with the films. It was lovely.

He and another of our neighbors, a cellist for the opera, have put on little mini-concerts as well. Somebody else who we can’t see sings and plays what sounds like folk music. We’ve chanced into an awesome little neighborhood. While listening to our neighbor Anya practice sax and clarinet back when she was still in high school was delightful, this is something we never heard in our old neighborhood.

I recorded just a little sample. This website doesn’t allow me to embed it so I’ll toss it up on Google Drive and you can download and listen for just a little bit of a treat.

We’re still healthy or at least asymptomatic. They tell us they might start to loosen the rules starting May 10 depending on the breaks. I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed.

Hope you’re staying inside and healthy too.