Week one... starting to find our feet

Alles gut hier! Week one... We've been finding our feet and trying to cut ourselves some slack for not knowing everything about everything just yet. It's a new sensation to start so much from scratch at the same time. I'm pretty pooped from it and so Anna is doing an amazing job holding things together with a new job on top of moving to another country!

It was good to finish quarantine after the five day period with our negative COVID tests. They have a great system of home PCR testing where you video yourself doing each step of the test, which was kind of fun...?!?! Dropped the sample off at the local shop by 9am, results around 9pm - very handy indeed. This also meant that Anna could go into work and find her new office and meet some colleagues in person. Anna's commute involves a splendid walk along the Danube!

Whilst bringing the bikes felt like quite a hassle, I'm so glad we did it. I tried out a potential cycle route to Anna's work on Friday and then we both rode it on Saturday. It was too busy to really enjoy it, but I think it'll be better during the week. Anyway, it was good to be on the bike and feel a bit of freedom and the promise of adventure. Maybe next weekend we'll cycle away from the city - there are quite a few very wiggly looking roads not far from where we are staying and so I think we may not have trouble keeping our "hill legs" after all.

Overall we're doing well. It would be pretty overwhelming if we thought about it too much and so for much of the time we have done our best not to! 😁 Saturday morning at the end of week one, sitting on our sunny balcony with good coffee and the crossword book was blissful! This was after visiting the local market, which was fantastic, as were the bakery products. And very unexpectedly you can buy expensive posh Cumbrian muesli at our local market... undoubtedly the most surprising event so far.

Right, this is getting very lengthy, so I'll wrap up. Other micro-news:

• Anna has a big swanky office with a great view, but it is quite hard to find

• Flour here is weird, but I have made two loaves and the second was better than the first, so a good trajectory

• Anna is managing the information "fire hose" of a new job admirably and meeting lots of people, but sometimes finding them hard to recognise due to only seeing half of their face

• I have now twice asked for things in German, which I am quite proud of (because I find that sort of thing really difficult/scary)

• We have a bank account and there is some money in it, which will be very helpful!