Dichisurile Ralucai: Corona times - Fifth week of isolation

There are good weeks and there are bad ones. The fifth was a bad one I had no desire to take pictures of. Life continued as I've already told you in the previous post, work, food, Ilinca, Luna, tulips.

The week started the same as all the ones before, except this week I was determined to acquire a new skill and that was to make a decent flat lay.

As the Internet tells it "A flat lay is a picture taken from a birds eye view of a collection of items laid out on a flat surface. Usually there will be one item that is the main focus of the shot known as the hero, all the other items in the flat lay are there to complement the hero piece.", first definition on google.

You all know the pictures with objects arranged to form a perfect square? Well that is an easy flat lay. A complicated one and eye appealing is hard to get if you do not have an eye for photography or Instagram. Usually we share on Instagram pictures taken by professionals, but as during the lockdown it is challenging to get all the objects to a photographer, as they are secluded artists who prefer in these difficult times to take pictures of the empty cities, we had to make do. My mistake in doing the flat lays is I want to cram as many objects from the same category as possible and usually I do not focus on just one main object. I still don't have the skill to do them, but at least I now know the technique.

I think I complained too soon about the empty city, as the warm weather came everyone was outside and we again had to either walk Luna early in the morning or late in the evening. I took the picture using the timer on my phone (I still don't know how to take a proper selfie).

I've made a list with everything I want to do, but can't. One of the things is to go shopping in Ikea Metz, France. I know, essential problems, but this is my coping mechanism. I think the thing I miss more living here is free movement. Yes we are allowed to go to Luxembourg, as we mostly depend on that country with our jobs, medics and so on, but we cannot go to Germany or France except if we have a damn good reason to do so and shopping at Ikea is not a good reason, a walk on the streets of Trier is neither. Before Corona Times we used to buy vegetables and fruits in Belgium, flour, sugar, water things like that in France and detergents or makeup or things for Ilinca in Germany. So much so when the borders closed and I had to go shopping for everything in Carrefour Arlon I was lost and had to read the label of everything.

On the fifth week of isolation Spring finally came to this area, the fruit trees bloomed, my tulips bloomed and somehow life in quarantine was not as tough as before. I don't know how this tree is called in English, but my neighbour has one and I took a zoomed picture of it to show it to my firends.

My tulips

Empty supermarket

The meme of the week, very on point, as people kinda forgot why we have to stay inside and started going out in crowded places.

Again my tulips. You have to understand that I grew up on the concrete of communist towns of Romania so having a garden was out of the question and growing things was a completely unfamiliar thing for me. So now experiencing that I can seed something and it comes out is a great feeling. We bought the tulip bulbs on sale at Aldi, 50 bulbs with under 5 euros and planted them with little hope they will actually bloom, but they did, not all 50, but we had 20 some flowers.

Since the lockdown was enforced in this area, the sun made an appearance and it has been sunny for the past five weeks now. So we have the most gorgeous sunsets.

Luna happy to spent more and more tine in the sunny garden

Actually one would think that dogs would be the happiest in this quarantine times, but Luna suffers a lot. Yes we are all home and she is walked for longer times, but no one pets her on her walks and other dog owners do not let their dogs sniff her, the postman which was very friendly, now talks with us from a distance and does not pet her like he used to, so except us and occasionally our neighbours, she interacts with less people. I don't know how she will feel once this is over and she will have to stay again alone in the house, but we will have to wait and see.

Arlon is a quiet town and although in Belgium is mostly dependent on Luxembourg. People living here are locals, but mostly expats and they do not feel the connection with the land so I feel that in Arlon more than anywhere is everyone for himself.

So we do not cheer at 8 p.m. for medics and people still forced to go to work and expose themselves. I was the only one doing it and after two weeks I felt irrelevant and stopped. I am still at my window at 8 p.m., but not clapping.

Another thing was bear hunt. "Taking a page from Michael Rosen’s 1989 children’s book , members of a number of communities across the globe are placing teddy bears and other stuffed animals in their homes’ windows to create a scavenger hunt-esque activity for kids who are stuck at home. While taking walks or drives around the neighbourhood with their parents, kids in participating communities can have some fun by keeping an eye out for any number of stuffed animals that have been put on display at other houses." Times. As mostly the anglophone countries participate in bear hunts, imagine my surprise to see a bear on a window in Arlon.