It has been nearly two weeks since the second covid-19 lockdown started in France. To be honest, it didn't change my life that much because we have been wearing masks outside home for months now and also my zumba lessons were forced to cancel already in October. But of course there have been certain changes we can do nothing about.
Everyone who can do their work from home, are highly recommended to do so - even though I have heard that in some places in France people still mostly go to their offices. Paris area being one of the most infected places, it is noticeable that more people stay at home here. Also H is working at home now, but since I cannot do télétravail, I continue going to work normally. I have noticed that there are less people in the trains but that is only a positive thing for me. Naturally the lockdown has forced me to some modifications at my work, too. The parents of the children I take care of, also work at home most of the time. Therefore, I try to spend as much time outdoors in the parks with the kids as possible. The parents will have peace to work for longer and it is also easier for me to handle the kids when the parents are not around. Of course the kids are super excited to see their mom and dad at home, so it's tricky for me to keep the kids away from them if they are still working. And these weeks I am not working with the Finnish baby I have taken care of during the last months. Her mother is not really able to go anywhere either, so they have no need for me.
I also have to have special permits whenever leaving the home. For my work, I always carry three papers with me: 1 for proving that I am needed at work and what travelling it includes, 1 for the school to pick the big brother up, and 1 for the day care to pick the little sister up. In addition, I write at least three certificates every day online and download them to my phone: both for going to work and coming home and additionally one for spending an hour in the park with the kids. (One is allowed to spend a maximum of one hour in the nearby park or within one kilometer from their homes when ticking the correct box in the permit certification.) I have never seen anyone checking the certificates but once I saw a guard going around the playground checking if everyone is wearing a mask. At the moment France requires all the people above age of 6 to wear a mask in the public places. Also the school yard behind our own garden in Gentilly is now filled with kids playing their masks on.
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| This is what I have to fill every day for each separate purpose I am outside home. |
I bet the lockdown is tougher for H than it is for me. He hardly leaves home while I still go to work normally and I also do the groceries most of the time. His band rehearsals are also cancelled ever since we were not allowed to go outside between 9 pm and 6 am - this rule came into effect two weeks before the actual lockdown. Home also offers more distraction to his work. In our small apartment he can see the bed and all of our 10+ music instruments from his working spot. Too many temptations...
So, our life is basically about work, doing necessary shopping, sometimes going for a walk or a run, and otherwise spending time at home. We cannot meet our friends, go walking around the city, visit any place or much else. Almost every place from cafes to sights is also closed, with the exception of restaurants that sell food out. We also have bought a take-away a couple of times to support the locals. As an interesting new rule, supermarkets have not been allowed to sell non-essential items since last week Tuesday. This is in order to help smaller shops to have customers, too, and survive through these hard times. We are not completely sure if this was a great idea even though we get the point. Now people are also forced to travel more if they need something. Out of interest, I checked the second floor of the supermarket where I usually do our groceries and noticed that they have put fences around many shelves there. All the Christmas decorations, toys, books and most of the clothes were not accessible for the customers on the spot. They had notes in the fences saying that all of that stuff would be available to order from their websites.
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| Everything "non-essential" in put behind the fences in the supermarkets. I wonder who decides what is essential and what not. |
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| Toys, books, clothes, most of stuff restricted to buy at the supermarket. Pens, underwear and kitchenware were still accessible. |
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| This is the non-food section in Lidl one day. I am not sure if it was empty due to the new restrictions or for some other reason. |
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| Nice walks in the centre of Paris are on a break now. |
This lockdown will last at least for four weeks, until the beginning of December, but there is a big chance that it will be extended with a couple of weeks. There are still tens of thousands of new cases reported in France every single day and lots of people are in the need of hospital care or intensive care. We keep following data in our Covid application that provides all kind of numbers to its users. We can only hope that the worst part gets over before the Christmas week so that we will be able to fly to Finland.
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| Today's info at my covid application. A few days ago the new cases data reached around 60000 in 24 hours. |
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| The occupancy rate of the covid-19 patients taking of all the usual intensive care hospital beds in France is getting really high... |
To end this blog update with something more positive, I want to share an experience I had in a restaurant before the lockdown. I met my friend in the centre near Notre Dame and we ended up having our lunches in La Bucherie, a restaurant that had a very out-going waiter. He didn't stuck in talking only about their menu but shared already at the door how he doesn't like the French language - even though he was French himself. He asked every single customer where they were from and often managed to say a word in everyone's language, also in Finnish and in Hungarian (because my friend in from Hungary). He even remembered some other customers origin when a couple came there for the second time. Later we had all kind of discussions while he had no customers to serve and at some point he went inside to put on a playlist of popular Finnish songs. I was very excited to hear all the pop hits from the past decades and really appreciated to way the waiter was very professionally an untypical customer service representative.
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| The best waiter I have ever had! |
