Covid restrictions are easier with this gorgeous winter

Winter is still beautiful and the snow going strong. It is frosty, sometimes very, going up or rather down to -15c at night, its snowing from time to time and our lake is now so frozen that people walk and skate on it.

We have snow on the ground non stop for about 3-4 weeks now and I and dogs still love it. Lucy who is about 14 loves to roll in it and both her and Linus stick their noses in the deep snow searching for cat’s or wild animal’s poo I think. Thankfully frost makes it inaccessible for them. We had a sunny day yesterday and Lucy was so happy about it that despite of living in Thailand until 6 years ago decided that she’ll lie outside suntanning herself.

When I walk out of the house every morning I say loudly to myself that it is worth to live here for this. Even my noisy, Polish neighbors are worth to put up with in warm months for what I can have now. Town living of which I sometimes think, is not the same. I don’t think I could live in a big town again after many years of country living, but if I could adjust to it I would miss what we have here now. Even the loneliness of lockdown is easier to put up with in this lovely weather. “My” birds bring me lots of joy too. I feed them religiously three times a day and opened doors of outbuildings for them to hide during the night, which they do.

While having lots of me time I came up with the list of what I learnt from the lockdown and it is quite profound. I learnt that I am definitely not a loner and miss having people around and seeing their real, non digital faces. I also learnt that in order to be creative I need to quit social media and today am closing my Instagram account. I closed Twitter and Reddit last week but must admit that didn’t use them as much as Instagram. As soon as possible I want to volunteer on an animal sanctuary farm somewhere. I am getting better with my German despite of not speaking with Germans much. I like Mord mit Aussicht (ha, ha, that’s not so profound). I definitely like gardening and miss it, but because of the non diggable, frozen soil I came up with the new idea for my garden, more natural and insect friendly. Easier to keep it too and no water needed.

Snow!!!

I must eat my words. Winters here are not muddy and dreary, they are beautiful and romantic if there is snow. And we had snow for the last two or so weeks. We had rain in between but the snow keeps and during the last night fell a bit more of it.

The lake and the village is absolutely gorgeous. Birds add to it too. We have small, dark ducks on the piece of lake which is not frozen and snowed over and a big flock of swans. I think there are some geese too. I took photos of them and there are darker birds amongst swans which could not be youngsters at this time of the year, could they? I don’t know. They are very vocal in darkness and it is great to hear them at night. Add to it tinies chirping in bushes during the day and I must say everything feels better thanks to them. In UK black birds start to sing in January but we don’t have many of them here unfortunately.

So we will get some more sleet tomorrow but a few days after will be cold and snowy again which makes me very happy. I managed to catch a beautiful moon on a frosty evening too and am very happy with myself that I started to use my Nikon camera besides my smart phone and ipad. I bought it three years ago in USA and took only about 10 photos until now. Had to read it’s manual again; forgot what all the little buttons are meant to do.

Thanks to snow I had a small incident, which I can thank myself for. I walk around the house in crocks and warm socks and was taking veggie peelings to the compost heap a few days ago, which stands at the bottom of my garden. My house is located on top of a little slope which leads to the lake. I slid on the slope in my cheap, slippery shoes and somehow hit my finger nail so hard that pushed it into the finger. The pain was very real and I landed on my back, with my clothes completely wet from that side. I came home and was changing into something dry, when the garden gate bell rand. Delivery guys use this one usually and if I don’t get to the gate on time they leave and ask my neighbor to take my parcels. So I ran downstairs and then through the garden in the same, slippery crocks (I should stick upwards rolling eyes emoji here). The man who had my parcel opened the gate and started to move towards me and as I reached him I fell at his feet. I had my night gown on only and thank goodness that it kept closed! It was sort of embarrassing, but at my age I don’t get embarrassed easily anymore. I think the man with the parcel was a bit scared. My finger is still sore to type and it looks like my nail will come off because it moves freely when I touch it, which is quite gross I must say.

Weather in MV

22.01.2021

Weather in northern Germany is completely unpredictable. This winter, unlike the last, had a few very frosty days and some snow. We had a very dry November but January proved to be the opposite. It either rains or snows with a few dry days in between. Winter here is generally dark and gloomy, unlike in German mountains where one can expect cheerfulness of snow to lift the spirits, making it easier to get through winter’s short and dark days. There is nothing much to do here in winter, even in normal circumstances, and with Covid19 lockdown it is even more peaceful. I walked my dogs yesterday along the main road leading to the highway going all the way to Berlin and during our 40 minute walk, which we started about 10 am, I saw two cars. After living for a long time in the south of UK and spending my second winter here I learnt that winters in both areas are very similar. Summers though, they are very good here, much hotter and drier than in UK. August can be very hot, with temperatures often reaching above 30 degrees Celsius. Spring is lovely and full of bird song near our lake. The dryness of spring and summer brings big variety of birds near the water. I’ll write a separate entry about birds here.

Our village lake in summer.
Still empty stork nest in a nearby village
Stork looking for tasty snacks dug up by a tractor
Young deer
The height of summer in the village
Wide open spaces and high skies in spring

House renovations

Upstairs bathroom

I love making unloved houses good again. My current house is the fourth one I am doing up by myself. I don’t do everything literally myself, only the lighter work, but I redesign it, usually sympathetically, especially if the house is old. I also recycle and use old pieces whenever possible and work on my own in the garden. I have decided not to go for extensive changes here because I would need planning permission to add or change windows or walls, which is a long process and might be expensive. The house was the old German farmhouse in its previous life and still has far too small windows, so it is fairly dark inside. The previous owner added four velux windows in the roof. Three in the room which was split into two bedrooms and one where the bathroom was meant to be. They didn’t start the bathroom job, except for the sewer pipe connection. This small room was full of old TV aerials, building rubble, wooden planks and goodness knows what else. The previous owners left behind things which they didn’t use and which were worthless anyway. Old, broken electrical appliances, well worn giant skating shoes, broken fishing rods and tangled fishing lines, old garden tools (those I love), old bricks and pavement stones, torn up canvasses and river sand. Five broken bicycles, ancient and heavy wooden wheelbarrow, old zinc bath (I love this one too), big pile of coal I gave away, piles of partially rotten and half eaten by wood borer chopped up wood, unending electrical and telephone wires snaking around the whole house to nowhere, foot balls without air, rat poison which almost killed my dogs etc. etc.

Here is my bathroom created from nothing really. This photo is already a huge improvement to what was here originally. I removed all the rubbish and took it to recycle centre in my trusty little trailer, where I had to sort it out into various containers. The photo was taken after the builder started the work on the floor and water piping, but the sloping ceiling is as it was left originally, just tidied up. There were bats or mice in this mineral wool; we’ve found their droppings and the whole area smelled of animals.

I was talked into dry wall construction, which I don’t like and avoid if possible, but the wall is single brick (the attic was originally used as storage, so the original builders saved money on building thin walls upstairs), so it made sense to insulate it well. I wanted it to look a bit special without spending a fortune so bought a small bath tub, but installed a standing faucet for it. The shower is open and has sheet of glass on one side only. Settled on the normal, old fashioned central heating unit. I find that those bathroom towel drying ones get air at the top part too often and it’s a pain to let the air out again, and again.

I like the end result a lot. I used the old sewing machine table I was given by friends to place the sink on and just scraped and painted it here and there. I bought two mirrors in a second hand shop for 5 Euro and painted the frame of the bigger one. It was ugly, almost orange pine before. The area behind the shower houses my tumble drier. I didn’t want to delegate it to one of outbuildings and being upstairs it is close to bedrooms, so dry washing is folded and put in cupboards which are close to the bathroom. The toilet bowl was meant to stand alongside the back wall, but by the time the builder build the thick wall it was too close to the wall and too late to change the sewer connection, so we fitted the toilet bowl under the angle and it actually looks better than planned originally. The beam in the middle of the floor holds the ceiling of the ground floor and I didn’t want to touch it. It would probably open Pandora’s Box of additional repairs and renovations. To have enough of the underfloor space for the bathtub’s piping we split the floor into two different levels and it looks as if it was meant to be. White walls make the room bigger and lighter. I like darker colours on walls, but they need big windows to let lots of light. All in all not too bad and not too expensive.

Mecklenburg Vorpommern

I live in Mecklenburg Vorpommern, which is located in the north east corner of Germany. The state has thousands of lakes and the Baltic Sea access in the north. It is sparsely populated and very peaceful. My house is located in the southern part of it, and is surrounded mostly with farmland and little clamps of woods. Winters here are not very beautiful and there is not much to do in winter but ride bicycle. We are surrounded by very good bicycle paths crisscrossing for hundreds of kilometers. One can ride comfortably to the sea or big cities like Berlin from here. It is much better to do this during spring or summer of course. These seasons are amazingly beautiful here. The two summers I spent here were mostly sunny and warm. August was almost too hot, but lakes, which are everywhere, make heat more bearable. They are clean and there are no crowds to fight for space on small, sandy beaches. I attach the photo of the lake in a small village of Krugsdorf which has a camp site, a golf club and is therefore more busy than villages around it. My friend took this photo in August on Sunday. No people except us two and our dogs. “My” lake outside my house has a resident otter that my friend filmed early in the morning last autumn. I was told that they settle in clean waters only, which is comforting to know.

I like to pop in to Ueckermünde, the pretty, old port turned into a tourist destination. It has a very rich history, a pretty beach, a little port packed in summer with boats and many historical sites.

The castle photo above was taken in Penkun, a little town with my “local” grocery shop. The castle, like many historical properties around here is in the process of being renovated. Penkun itself is tiny and very pretty. It has the lake of course with a camp site and basic shops, an old church, a small square, doctor’s surgery and a big school. I often think that once I’ll get very old and wobbly I’ll move there.

Moving into the house

15.01.2021

My house was built in 1857. It is a big farm house which was at some point split into 2 units, so I live in the semi detached property. It is still fairly spacious – 180 sq meters or almost 2000 sq feet. I have half an acre of land and three outbuildings. I bought it 18 months ago when I moved to Germany. I found it on the internet site of the local estate agents and it was the second house I saw. As I wrote previously, it’s proximity to the lake sold it to me. I imagined rowing on the lake and my dogs swimming in it. I didn’t do much rowing yet, but my dogs are keen swimmers and use it a lot, especially in hot weather. I also saw B&B potential in it, unfortunately Covid19 pandemic stretched my plans in time, but I will get there eventually. There are a few houses in the village that offer holiday rentals already, but when I saw the house initially I didn’t know that.

When I moved in and saw everything clearly, I was terrified. There was a huge mold problem, which I didn’t see before and the amount of improvements the house needed was enormous. I was scared of the smell of dampness, so slept in the downstairs bathroom on a borrowed camp bed, as far from mold and other unsavoury growths on walls as possible for about a month. After having the very expensive damp treatment I moved upstairs, to the only one done up room under eaves. The previous owners left me two beds and other dusty unmentionables which made my skin crawl, so I still slept on my camp bed, together with Linus. He is only a small terrier mix but the single camp bed was a tough call for the two of us. Still, I soldiered on. I threw away mattresses and tons of smelly rubbish in a hired skip which I paid a small fortune for, because I didn’t realise that in Germany I had to split whatever I discarded, in line with the local recycling guidelines. As it was done for me by the owner of the skip, hence the price.

To top it off, I didn’t know anyone who could help me with renovations. I normally do lighter jobs around the house myself, but this was a very big project for only one person. I finally found a builder who was available from November. I moved here in August, so there was a long wait in front of me. I then drove around the area, organising every day basics or just revisiting the area and liked it more and more. It was still summer/ early autumn and it was amazing to witness the perfect beauty around me. Even those evil rape/canola plants fields with bright yellow flowers going on and on for kilometers looked amazing. After a month or so I bought myself a new mattress for the self made bed frame left by the ex-owner, and my life started to make sense. I would wake up every morning with the sun flowing through three velux windows in the sloped ceiling and thanked the universe, higher power or luck for being here. Despite of my early misgivings and worries, I landed where I should be, I thought.

Here Comes The Sun

14.01.2021

It was a beautiful morning today. Frosty and sunny. So nice to see the sun again. I think we didn’t have it for two weeks or more. I love the sun, but rain and fog too, all in small doses and rotating nicely so I don’t get bored. My heating is working again and I don’t need to bath in a few liters of lukewarm water anymore. Last night I called an engineer who specialises in oil heating boilers to help. He told me that it happens fairly often – after topping up of oil the air gets into piping leading from oil tanks to boilers and the system then stops working. The “unairing” took about 15 minutes and after he left I was so happy! The house is warm, I don’t have to burn wood in my three wood burners and the water is hot.

“A multitude of small delights constitutes happiness” – Charles Baudelaire. Agree. I made a note to myself to be grateful for modern conveniences, which I take for granted. I also need to work on the house more, instead of checking my social media accounts. My German is awful so there is this too; I need to watch Pastewka type of series instead of Criminal Minds and Mary Taylor Moore show.

Frozen Lake

13.01.2021

It happened for the very first time since I moved to Germany 18 months ago – our lake is frozen. I took a few photos of it because in today’s times it is a rarity. Because of the cold I feed birds, enormous amounts of them. About hundred of sparrows and some tinies who overwinter here. These seasonal visitors are much braver to our local ones. Is it because they are from Scandinavia and there are less hunters there than around here? Or maybe they are from heavily forested areas where they don’t see many people, so don’t worry about them too much? Each time I look up at cranes or swans flying above my head they quickly change their route to be away from me, the potential bird murderer. I don’t even want to think about their experiences which made them so cautious. The same story with sparrows. As soon as I come closer to the window in the kitchen they are gone. They are also very aware and scared about any changes in the garden. As soon as I move something bigger they sit in the hedge, observing for a long time, to make sure it is safe to come back to bird feeders. Today was the day of big stuff moving. I had to move the old entrance door which was taken out to replace it with the new about a month ago. I had the oil delivered for my boiler for central heating and the old door was standing in the front of pipe entry, which directs diesel from a big track to my cellar. I really dislike this outdated awful system. It stinks, is very expensive and not eco friendly. I am hoping to change it in summer if my finances will allow it. I will get an air or ground heat pump or a wood pellet boiler. All today’s commotion is my problem, I forgot to top up the oil so am without central heating or hot water for a week now and discovered this morning that the boiler is stuck because there is air in the burner, the result of not being topped up on time. I have three wood burners and lots of wood left over by the previous owner, which are enough to heat the downstairs of my house, but would love to have a proper hot bath or shower.

Back to sparrows. They looked today suspiciously at the empty space where the old door was and it took them about 45 minutes to come back to their sunflower seeds and crushed peanuts.

Need to explain the title of this post. I live very close to the small lake; it almost sits at the bottom of my garden and that is why I bought the old, unloved house. For the lake and lake life. I have a kayak for two my friend bought me, which I used only once because it is very heavy to handle by one person. I also love taking photos of the lake. It usually is very peaceful, except in summer. Summer of 2020 was especially busy because of pandemic. Germans were suddenly not holidaying abroad and many villages and lakes like ours had plentitude of visitors.