A Tale of Two Days

Weekends are precious. For most of us they form 28% of the week but in my experience they always feel too short. Two out of seven days seems ample enough time to destress, recuperate and reenergise after the rigors of work but somehow by the time Sunday night sets in, I find myself feverishly trying to cram all the activities I was meant to do over the course of the two days into the 15 minutes before bedtime.

This cannot go on. I need to bring weekends back.

It was meant to start this week. With April 1st falling on a Monday I felt a peculiar satisfaction that this would be the start of my new orderly life. As if this were new year I made quasi-resolutions to adhere more to the traditional healthy lifestyle traits e.g. drinking more water, getting the 5-a-day, going to bed early etc. Of course, that lasted until Wednesday lunch, when after enjoying a Kinder Bueno, I fell off the healthy wagon hard.

But the weekend could and would be different. Here, without the demands of work, I had more chance to regulate myself and my time. In fact, I had 64 hours with which to do with as I pleased and my aspirations were high, my to-do list was bountiful. The weather forecast looked good, Munich was waiting and I was ready to go, go, go.

I started with a handicap though. It was my own doing but by way of celebration of the end of the working week and the about-to-be-a-success weekend, I indulged in a bit too much red wine with dinner on Friday night. I staggered into bed at a time that would make Cinderella blush and as such woke up bleary-eyed and bushy haired much later than I had expected on Saturday. My weekend had begun on the back foot.

Munich was not forgiving. As I stumbled into the glare of the Old Town in full spring mode I realised that my city had changed. There were people everywhere. Suddenly streets which had been deserted since Christmas were bustling with people, who had been out for hours already. Viktualienmarkt, which had been my own personal farmer’s market for most of the winter, was now heaving with crowds. With a hangover still depriving me of a few gross motor skills, it was inevitable that I would bump into people and walk through tourist photos in the crush. Had I only made it out a little earlier I would have been able to enjoy my weisswurst in relative peace and already be far down on my to-do list.

As it stood, I was losing in the competition for shop cash registers to Munich’s many weekenders, tourists and visiting Borussia Dortmund fans. There was no space to browse, my pleasure purchases of new running shoes and a frying pan became fraught affairs as I fought other customers for the attention of the sales’ assistants.

“Come back on a week day if you want more help,” I was told by an apologetic employee in the athletics store. “It’s just so busy at the moment!” he said before disappearing under a crowd of steel-thighed ultramarathon runners, whose need and budget for trainers were obviously much greater than mine.

I came back home disappointed at how little of my to do list had got done and moreover, how little pleasure I had that whole day. And with the sun setting, half my weekend had evaporated and its potential had not been realised. I felt fractious and tired. By the time I met Philippe for an evening drink I was already beginning to fret about the next day, calculating that if we were to stay out late this would delay Sunday’s planned mountain hike and leave me sleep-deprived. The thoughts snowballed as I started simulating the upcoming week in my mind and how cumulatively awful it would be, all the result of an unsuccessful weekend. I sat in silence at the bar and worried.

“Are you feeling ill?” asked Philippe, the disappearance of my usual chatterbox tendency more startling than if I had suddenly started to projectile vomit.

I shook my head.

“Then what’s the matter?”

I eventually explained the situation to him, stating how the weekend was not turning out how I had expected and how tomorrow’s plans were likely to be compromised as a result of today’s inefficiency.

“Well, why don’t we just take some things off the list and do something less demanding but equally as nice?” said Philippe, the eternal voice of reason.

Thus followed eight glorious uninterrupted hours of sleep, a lazy Sunday brunch and then a train ride to one of the lakes closer to Munich. Sunday afternoon unfolded with us sitting on the shores of Ammersee, reading our books whilst eating scoops of straciatella in the sun. Then we walked for an hour around the silver blue water, stepping stone-ing our way over the small streams which emptied into the lake. We talked and talked and talked. It was not the soaring heights of a hike in the Alps but it was an equally exceptional experience.

As I came back home with the sun still acceptably high in the sky I found there were still a few hours to cook, clean and even write the weekly blog. I started to run through the to do list, seeing what things I could cram into the remaining time, only to stop myself. Expecting too much from a weekend was exactly the reason why I had not enjoyed Saturday and it was only after I gave up these expectations that I really made the most of things.

That damn list can stay in the bin.