Promenades and Playgrounds

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Hi all!

I can't believe it’s been a whole month since I arrived in Germany! It feels like a lot more and a lot less at the same time.
It’s been a balance between living here (with all the dull days, working hours and routines) and trying to explore the city, with the left-over time and money. I haven’t seen as many museums and monuments as I probably would if I had come here on holidays, but I’ve conversed with the security guard at Decathlon, became acquainted with line 8 of the U-Bahn, and am beginning to recognise the dogs from our street.

(The promenade around this empty lake is the best for people/dog watching)

I’ve been in awe of the sheer amount and diversity of the playgrounds here. I hadn’t seen public playgrounds with twigs, sand, dirt and puddles since I was a kid! And it’s not just that, the designs are creative, wild and often seem a little dangerous. From what I’ve been reading, the risk is built into the design. Their aim is to build playgrounds that "create challenging microcosms that teach children to navigate difficult situations."

I wish we had these public places for adults too. I wonder if climbing got so popular recently because it's the most playground-like activity we can do as adults :-)

(Yes, I sneaked in when no kids were around)

Meanwhile, because I always go to the Writer’s Hour in the morning, I decided to become a paying patron and join the “inner circle”, which is a platform with a lot of writing groups, forums and community events. I was doing it temporarily to try it out, but then I noticed they needed someone to manage the Kid Lit channel, and volunteered, so here I am, now sudenly a group manager in this thing.
It’s been nice, but I’m also a little concerned with my inability to simply join a thing without finding a way to get some extra responsibility. I’m beginning to realize that I’m becoming my father — a man who once volunteered to be the condominium manager of a building neither he nor anyone in the family lived in.

In the last Escrivaninha writing session I asked people to write about their name. If it had any special meaning, any story behind it, if they were named after someone else…We only had 4 minutes, and you can read here an edited version of what I wrote.

If you would like to join this month’s session. We meet on the 23rd of February. Sign up here.

To finish this missive, I wanted to leave you with a couple of things from the internet that caught my eye:

- Anyone who has met me in real life has probably heard me talk about Bunny, the talking dog I obsessively follow on Instagram. He is part of a scientific research that involves other animals, and now I found a new obsession: Billi, a talking cat!

- Found some videos that are meant to help falling asleep, made by Casper (a mattress company), but I think they are quite funny and interesting, so I listened to them while at work. My favourite is the one about shrubs.

- And finally, I love this interview where the actor Jason Mantzoukas shows his art collection.

Tschüss,

Joana

Want to read any of my last emails? They are all here.

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Joana Estrela · Rua do Rosário, 211 · Porto 4050 · Portugal