Vienna in the time of COVID – Chapter 5

March 23, 2020 / jonathanrobb / 2 Comments

It has now officially been over a week since the isolation restrictions were put into place and I’m happy to report my wife and I are still on speaking terms, our toilet paper game is strong, and the apartment has never been cleaner (another of my wife’s useful hobbies during mandated segregation with yours truly is a deep clean of the apartment. The other day she asked if I thought it would be possible to lift the microwave so she could scrub underneath it. I said I thought it would. You have to make hay while the sun shines, right?)

We spent a large part of Saturday in separate rooms, giving each other some space while tending to our own social networks. I chatted with my Australian correspondent, Jess (second shout out, Jess!), while Alex caught up firstly with her cousin and then with her two best friends. All of these interactions took place in the digital world, of course, both because Jess refuses to travel from Australia to Austria for a quick chat and a coffee, and because this is what it means to be responsible in the time of COVID.

These chats were beneficial as it gave my wife and I a break from staring into each other’s faces for a while (you have to let them miss you sometimes) and because we could lean into our friendships without putting anyone at risk of infection.

My brother, Matthew, shared a quote with me that bears repeating: During these times we have to isolate, but we don’t have to be isolated.

Prior to the commencement of the weekend, Alex and I strapped on our shoes, made a mental note of the exact length of three feet (the Austrian Government’s recommended keep-away-from-me distance), and steeled ourselves to go shopping.

Prior to pandemic precautions, one of my wife’s favourite pastimes was our weekly grocery shop. This is not hyperbole; she genuinely loves grocery shopping. While most people who travel to far and exotic lands like to see the landmarks, the temples, and the monuments, my wife is most excited about checking out what people from neighbouring lands like to stock on their supermarket shelves. Seeing her walk up and down the aisles with a grin on her face like a kid at a carnival is a damn sweet thing.

These days, however, the act of popping to the shops has become a battle royale for sanitary products and a loaf of bread. The most pressing question that arises for me from this shopping madness is this: why toilet paper?

If you have swallowed the aggrandising of the cheap and dirty media rags *coughdailymailcoughcoughheraldsun* and genuinely believe these are the end days, and that armageddon is scheduled for the week after next, why, of all the products available to sustain life, would anyone head straight for toilet paper?

Granted, I enjoy a satisfying wipe as much as the next person, but when compared to clean water and carbohydrates, it hardly rates as a priority on the hierarchy of needs. Not to mention that toilet paper is a product that can easily be substituted. If we were to run out of our rolls of Softis, I would happily transition to kitchen roll, then onto serviettes, then to facial tissues, then, if times were getting desperate, newspaper and catalogues, old linen, new linen, old clothes, new clothes, leaves from the houseplants, and finally that packet of leftover tortillas that’s been in the pantry for awhile.

I see the panic and greediness of filling your trolley with twenty packets of toilet paper as nothing more than a lack of imagination.

The Friday before last, at the beginning of the social shutdown, we were stunned to find the supermarkets stripped of 80% of their goods. We had heard the reports from other countries, of pasta and sauce shortages in Italy and wine and condom shortages in France (it’s all about priorities), but our local supermarket had always been a place of peace and stability. It took traversing to four additional supermarkets for us to complete our usual weekly shop.

In German, they have a word for people who display the hoarder style of shopping — Hamsterkäufer — which translates to hamster buyers, and is essential a cute way of referring to selfish assholes who indulge in buying copious amounts of things they don’t need while simultaneously depriving others of goods they desperately require. The German term is useful as it’s much quicker to say.

My mother, who is a pharmacist and so currently in the thick of it, told me that the Australian pharmacy board had to release an official declaration stating that a person was only allowed to receive one month’s worth of medication at a time. The absurdity that they would have to step in and, like a parent scolding their child at the supermarket register, look the public in the eye and say “No, I said you could only have one piece of candy. Now, off you go, go put the other ones back” is sad to say the least.

But I’m happy to report that the message appears to be sinking in, or alternatively that the hamster buyers have all trapped themselves in their own homes under mountains of bags of flour and toilet paper, leaving the rest of us free to shop as normal, and that this week the shelves were almost back to their usual state, and it only took two supermarkets to round out our shop.

As Alex’s parents are playing it smart and keeping away from others as much as possible, we also did some of their shopping on their behalf (no, don’t call us heroes, come on, it’s too much. What? Paragons of the community? Now you’re just trying to make me blush). As we trundled around the aisles, working our way through their shopping list, I couldn’t help but notice that a significant percentage of their purchases included a rather large volume of red wine.

We all use what strategies we can to make it through this incarceration.

Tomorrow: Fashion.

Vienna in the time of COVID – Chapter 4

March 20, 2020 / jonathanrobb / 1 Comment

I first learnt of the spread of the coronavirus through the media, which is of course the logical place that the majority of us go to discover what is taking place in our world. Except of course when it isn’t and is instead a putrid quagmire of self-serving fear-mongers, inflating issues to pump us full of anxiety and squeeze us for our attention and money.

Which, in case you’ve been a bit preoccupied, is the current order of the day. On some of the cheaper and dirtier rags *coughdailymailcoughcoughheraldsun*, the most common headline screams “KILLER VIRUS!”. Now, I will not argue that this virus has taken many lives and therefore in a literal context fits the label killer virus, but I will argue that beating people over the head with this terminology doesn’t aid in creating an atmosphere of rational and informed awareness, but instead induces an environment of all-out panic wherein morons end up squabbling over rolls of toilet paper.

And context is vital here. For the majority of us, contracting COVID is not a death sentence. It’s more of a hibernate-in-your-bed-and-get-your-partner-to-bring-you-food sentence. For the vulnerable in our communities, those with pre-existing conditions and the elderly, it is a very real threat, which is why I’m currently shacked up with my wife instead of cuddling up to her Oma. This context allows us to treat this situation with the seriousness it deserves without succumbing to the savagery and insanity of what has been the equivalent of Mad Max set in supermarket aisles with shopping trolleys and the last of the good pasta.

The second problem with the media is that it is not always concerned with a little thing commonly referred to as “facts”. Sensationalist media has resulted in widespread xenophobia to anyone of Asian ancestry, regardless of if the person subject to the abuse has even been to China, much less Wuhan, in their lives. The media has fuelled this with a series of outlandish tales that range from the virus being bred in Chinese labs to “reports” of the source of the virus being from a Chinese bat soup. Some papers have even had the gall to state that the rapid rise of cases in Italy was due to Chinese big pharma deliberately seeding infected people into Europe. Others believe the situation gives them the right to make racist puns, such as “Chinese Virus: PANDAmonium”.

I wish I was kidding:

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As idiocy tends to breed idiocy, the eventual outcome has been a backlash at innocent Asian people and moronic moves such as parents refusing to let Asian doctors treat their children. The list goes on, but it gets more depressive as it does, so let’s call it there.

While we are drowning in this fetid sea of media, there is a life raft that I believe we can all cling onto: More media! I should be clearer: Different media!

I’m referring to the best kind of media, good media, which is of course books, movies, television, podcasts, and, technically a repetition on the theme of books, but I like them and am even a member of a club honouring them, and this is my blog not yours so I’m going to go ahead and say it anyway, audiobooks.

Using media to combat media: sometimes you have to fight fire with fire, baby.

Here is a current list of the good media that is being digested in our home to help drown out all the bad media:

Each morning after completing yoga and while enjoying a bowl of overnight oats, I watch 15 minutes of an episode of HBO’s Watchmen. I then commute to work (two strides from the couch to the dining table) and launch into my work day. If the work I’m doing can be done with half an ear, I listen to podcasts. Currently, I oscillate between No Such Thing as a Fish, 99% Invisible, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, Anthropocene Reviewed, and Comedy Bang Bang. And, as an always safe back up, relistening to The Ricky Gervais Show, which, beyond being hilariously funny, has the added benefit of having been recorded almost twenty years ago and so contains no mention of the coronavirus in case you’re in need of a palate cleanser.

Lunch sees me dropping back into another 15-20 minutes of Watchmen (in the bedroom or on the balcony to ensure the blood-curdling sounds of my mastication stays well away from the delicate ears of my wife).

After our stroll, Alex and I sit down to a tasty dinner and an episode of BBC’s Sherlock, not to be confused with CBS’s Elementary, which is also very good. It’s hard to go wrong with a genius British consulting detective. This is approximately my fourth or fifth viewing of Sherlock and it only gets better with each watch. I would recommend it to anyone, up to and including Alex’s aforementioned Oma.

While drawing after dinner, I plug my headphones back in and get an audiobook rolling. At the moment, I am listening to Stephen King’s The Shining. I am enjoying it, but realised too late that it may not have been the most appropriate choice given my current voluntary incarceration and its themes of isolation and a man’s deterioration into madness (allworkandnoplaymakesjonnyadullboy). I swear not to go mad and chase Alex with an axe. Where would I even get an axe, all the stores are closed.

My wife spends this time also enjoying a book, but in the more traditional sense, with her eyes. I would tell you what she is currently reading, but she eats her way through books so fast that it’s impossible to say. If reading books were a sport, she’d be an olympic athlete. If she is a bookworm then she is one of those monstrous sand worms from Frank Herbert’s Dune (for those of you playing at home, Dune was one of The Audiobook Club’s most recent reads. Or, to be more accurate, listens).

While holed up indoors keeping clear of COVID, the vulnerable, and Omas, I whole-heartedly prescribe a healthy course of good media while steering mostly clear of bad media. And if you must wade into that bog of eternal stench, try to stick to official sources and journalists you can trust, who make it their business to monger truth and not fear.

On Monday: Shopping.

(And because today’s post was a bit of a heavy one, here’s a picture of some ducks I took the other day, because, you know, who doesn’t like ducks. Have a great weekend, everyone.)

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Vienna in the time of COVID – Chapter 3

March 19, 2020 / jonathanrobb / 1 Comment

As my wife and I near 168 consecutive hours in each other’s company, I am learning that in these troubling times, good communication is an important skill to master.

To be fair, my wife and I have always been good communicators. Having spent the first four years of our relationship in a dual-country long-distance relationship, without good communication our status would have slipped from partners to pen-pals. During those four years, we had a standing eDate every evening after work. Our romantic location of choice was skype (occasionally mixing it up with facebook messenger or even viber when skype decided to crap itself) and we would chat every evening through our computers, doing our best to convince ourselves we were a normal couple.

But the good news is that we don’t have to pretend anymore! We share the same bed, kiss each other goodbye when we go to work (back in the days when people used to leave their homes to go to work), come home to the same apartment, and kiss each other goodnight. It is domestic, and ordinary, and we fucking love it.

With a solid foundation of keeping up the communication chain across international borders, we still communicate regularly and deeply. I keep waiting for us to run out of things to talk about, but so far, I keep thinking of things I want to tell her.

These talks have recently been taking place as we go on our after-work, let’s-remember-what-the outside-feels-like walks. Yesterday, both due to Alex’s work and the desire to be a sterling example of social distancing, we strolled in the late evening when the streets were deserted, the night quiet, and we ambled through our neighbourhood with our conversation as rich as ever.

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Also in these troubling times, I am learning that not communicating can also be a crucial piece of the mutual co-habitation puzzle. For instance, I have discovered that when my wife is on the last gripping chapter of her book, it is not a good time to tell her a hilariously funny joke, nor to then go into further detail explaining why the joke was so hilariously funny.

Being a bilingual couple brings its own set of challenges. Alex has more than mastered English, but I am still a novice when it comes to German, and so I have many questions when it comes to particulars with the German language. These questions usually come in the form of “But why?! That makes no sense! Why is it like this in this case, but completely different in this case?? I hate the German language!”

When interrogating my wife on the semantics of a language she did not invent, only speaks, and therefore holds no responsibility for its inconsistencies, I have learnt that when her eyes begin to bulge and lips thin to the point of disappearing, I should promptly and politely shut my damn mouth. This non-verbal communication informs me that she has reached the edge of her explanations and further questioning will only end poorly for me. Perhaps with a fork in my baby-soft skin.

One of my goals from having constant, relentless access to my wife is to try and improve my German skills during this time of COVID. There’s a good chance I could walk back into the normal world (once it, hopefully, resumes) with a broader vocabulary. There’s an equally good chance that Alex will walk back into the normal world with a splitting headache and a sigh of total relief. If I was a betting man, I’d wager on the latter.

The Austrian government is currently doing an excellent job of communicating. There have been press conferences wherein the Prime Minister has given clear instructions with digestible explanations for the decisions that have been reached. They have maintained a strong social media presence and have been supportive and transparent about the actions they are taking. They appear to be proactive in their measures and this speaks volumes.

New forms of communication come through via this process, and some things can say a lot with very little, such as in the photo below.

(Photo credit: Natalie Kern)

For me, being from international origins also increases the importance of communication. Despite being a twin, my brother and I never got our telepathy up and running and so we are forced to rely upon more conventional methods. Thankfully, we live in an age where technology has just about reached the level of the supernatural, so it is an easy thing for my face to appear in the homes of my family and their faces to appear in mine.

The variety of apps that allow for communication are invaluable in this time of social distancing. We can remain safe and social simply with the click of a button. I encourage everyone to lean into these forms of communicating.

Yesterday, my sister-in-law sent out a welfare text to every member of my immediate family, checking in and seeing if anyone was low on supplies (my wife did mention we had run out of a certain Australian treat I enjoy, but apparently Austria is outside of Holly’s delivery route). I had a morning chat with my brother through his google Home while he prepared dinner, I messaged simultaneous with my parents and my cousin and his fiancée throughout my work day (please don’t tell my boss I did this, I don’t think she reads this blog), I have an early morning skype planned with my sister for tomorrow, and will be on the phone with a friend back in Australia come Saturday (Jess, you’re back in the blog!).

Even from our tiny apartment in Vienna, I am able to communicate with the whole world, and by doing so, defeat the distance in social distancing. I recommend you do the same.

Now I’m off to ask my wife about the correct German case to use when referencing someone in the informal collective sense. Wish me luck!

Tomorrow: Media.

Vienna in the time of COVID – Chapter 2

March 18, 2020April 27, 2020 / jonathanrobb / 1 Comment

We are three days deep into the working week and I am happy to report that morale in this Vienna office remains good. There has been no passive-aggression between myself and my new co-worker, nor for that matter any non-passive aggression (my wife has on more than one occasion when discussing someone who has rubbed her the wrong way stated that she would like to “stab them with a fork”, so this is no idle concern. Why this particular piece of cutlery, I don’t know. I’m too afraid to ask). Perhaps the secret to our co-habitational bliss is the deep river of communication and understanding that my wife and I share. Perhaps it is my retreating to the balcony when eating my lunch today to avoid irritating her with the sounds of my mechanical digestion. We may never know.

I do believe that during this period of government-enforced agoraphobia, one of the devices that should be used to avoid being stabbed by your spouse with a piece of cutlery is the enjoyment of extra-curricular activities. When your office, your living room, your dining area, and your kitchen are all the same 6 metre x 4 metre space, it’s important to introduce some variety to keep the magic alive.

As mentioned in yesterday’s chapter, Alex and I now begin each day with a yoga session. The assortment of aches and pains in my muscles and joints lets me know this is working well and, by the time we are freed to resume normal life, I am confident that I will have the flexibility of a prima ballerina. For now, I would be satisfied with being able to tap the ground with my fingertips during stretches where the instructor is effortlessly resting her entire palm on the mat, but we must walk before we can run.

Alex has taken on a collection of rather useful hobbies. One is that each evening she prepares our breakfast for the next morning, two bowls of overnight oats, which, as the name suggests, are oats that are prepared one night in advance. But these are not your grandma’s oats, no, hers are an assortment of flavours that ensure the day is started with a grinning face and a full belly (I don’t know your grandma, maybe these are her oats, who am I to comment of the quality of your grandmother’s breakfast preparation).

Alex starts with some dried oats and then adds puffed spelt, chia seeds, a handful of fresh and frozen fruit, natural vanilla yogurt, and a dash of milk. After being given the necessary twelve hours to reach its full potential, this combination equals a bowl that is not only tasty, but healthy and aiding in digestion. And, going by the sounds heard through the shared wall of our office and toilet, I’d say it’s working.

I have taken a different approach to my free-time activities and, much like children all over Austria penned indoors, I went straight for the pencils and paper. Drawing is a discipline that feels akin to meditation. Through focus, I am able to empty my head and let go of whatever unwanted thoughts are plaguing my brain. The repetition of the pencil strokes occupies the stimulant-driven portion of my consciousness while the rest is free to sit back and take a load off.

(click to see a larger version)

This activity also provides my wife with, much like parents all over Austria penned indoors with their children when they dig into the art supplies, a moment of peace and quiet to read a book.

Books are vital when living in the time of COVID. Of course, I would argue that books are always vital, but they become doubly so when used as compensation for social interaction. And I don’t want to brag, but I’ve been using books to replace social interaction since I was a teenager.

Mostly I do my reading while simultaneously drawing. No, sadly, I am not some ambidextrous prodigy, rather I use the medium of audiobooks to get the narrative into my head. I could go on at length about the merits of audiobooks, like a rabid missionary desperate to snag his next convert, but I will try and restrain myself and say only that the act of listening to an audiobook has the ability to transform any domestic task, be it the washing up, vacuuming the house, or going for a run, into an experience wherein your mind enjoys the exploration of characters and story while your hands slave away at the dirty work.

My brother and I love audiobooks to the extent that we have created a club around this topic, and have even gone one step further in that Damian also created an emblem for our club, as pictured below.

Audiobook Club 2

Granted, our club presently only has two members, but that doesn’t get in the way of our overwhelming pride in it.

So far, this combination of routine and hobbies has kept Alex and I on the right side of sane during the COVID purgatory, and has ensured that my baby-soft skin remains fork free.

Tomorrow: Communication.

Vienna in the time of COVID – Chapter 1

March 17, 2020 / jonathanrobb / 6 Comments

To say that life is a little left of normal at the moment is perhaps putting it too lightly.

I am writing this from my apartment in Vienna that I share with my wife, an apartment that we haven’t left yet today despite having worked a full work day. This is already out of the ordinary, what with both of us having full-time jobs that come with desks and offices and normally a forty-minute commute to get to those desks and offices.

The primary school directly opposite our apartment has been silent all day, which is all but unheard of during the school semester. Even outside of school hours, the walkway between our balcony and the classrooms is normally populated with pedestrians drifting back and forth in their daily duties. It is currently empty and has remained mostly so since the sun came up this morning.

All of these not normal things are technically good. They are signs that the people of Vienna have received the message and taken it to heart. We are all taking what measures we can to try and protect the vulnerable in our community and the healthcare system as a whole. We are all social distancing. We are all living in the time of COVID.

As a measure against these strange times, against the potential boredom of remaining mostly within the same four walls, against the threat of cabin fever, as a method to record this novel event, and to just give my wife a break from my ceaseless sparkling company, I have decided to jump-start my blog and write about what this period in human history felt like to live through.

So, let’s recap where we are. I’m an Australian living in Vienna with my Austrian wife. Presently, we have been mostly indoors looking only at each other for the past five days. Alex, said wife, has only rolled her eyes twice in that time and is still laughing at my jokes, so I’d say we’re staying strong in the face of contamination-avoidance measures.

Here are some things we’ve learned about each other so far into our not-quite-quarantine:

When breaking up the work day, we like to have lunch at different times. Alex is more of a twelve o’clock girl, whereas I like to split my day right down the middle and eat at one. This detail was particularly highlighted to me when I sat on the couch, happily munching away on a toasted sandwich with my wife attempting to work at our dining table less than a metre away, only to discover less than twenty seconds into my meal that Alex had vacated her workspace in what I later learned was an effort to flee from the “disgusting masticating sounds.”

Our dining table/work space is also situated very near to the wall that is shared by our toilet, so we have been deepening the intimacy of our relationship by becoming very familiar with each other’s bowel and bladder habits. I’m thankful to the COVID precautions for allowing me to get to know my wife on an even more visceral level.

We have been turning these restrictions to our advantage in more ways than discovering the mysteries of each other’s digestive system, however. During the forty minutes at either end of our day that is normally dedicated to our commute, Alex via her car and me via an underground train-carriage, we have been turning this time towards the pursuit of perfecting our bodies. We start the day with a yoga session in an attempt to undo the damage inflicted on our spines from working at a dining table that was not designed for eight hours of working at a laptop, and finish the day with a run or a walk in order to breath in some fresh air, enjoy some sunshine, and stave of the creeping insanity that comes from never leaving your house.

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During these walks/runs, the streets are noticeably more vacant that usual, but not deserted. People with the same goals as us emerge from their home offices, squinting against the natural light, and often moving in pairs. The main difference in these walks is the way that everyone is maintaining a bubble of air between themselves and everyone else. When two sets of couples approach one another on a footpath, one couple will drift to the opposite side of the road. Dog-walkers will leave the path and walk on the grass to make space for joggers. Everyone is moving in their own private invisible sphere.

Thankfully, this is not done with menace or the glares of those eyeing off the potentially contaminated, but rather with polite nods and smiles of thanks that everyone is doing their part to distance themselves socially. Austrians are not overtly physically affectionate as a rule, so I feel this has not been too great a burden on them.

The eerie moments come when the closed-down stores are seen, empty and dark in the middle of the day. Or the abandoned playgrounds, sectioned off with plastic tape.

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We have been told that maintaining a routine is important during times like this to help to normalise things a little. Alex and I have kept to rather similar sleeping hours and eating habits, but have decided to introduce a few new activities to again reap whatever benefits can be wrought when the majority of the world is told to stick to a rainy-day programme. These new activities keep our minds sharp and aid us in challenging ourselves. One such challenge given to me by my wife this evening was the exciting task of removing the accumulated hair from the shower drain. As I plucked the wet clumps from the metal opening, the snakes of hair resisting slightly before slithering out like putrefied souvenirs of all the showers we have ever taken, I was grateful to my wife for this mentally-stimulating gift. It’s all about making the best of it.

I will leave you all with that delicious image, but plan to return with more tales of Vienna in the time of COVID. Hopefully you’ll join me and, even in this period of social distancing, we can come together through this weird and surreal shared experience.

Tomorrow: Extra-curricular activities.