Reflecting 5 months in 2026
I am not good with those monthly reviews and I envy Jan-Lukas for his endurance in writing them. Nevertheless , I think it helps to reflect from time to time and this is what this post is about.
Although I won‘t commit to monthly reviews, I will grant this a new tag.
Blog
Over the last couple of weeks, I thought about this blog and how I want to use it in future. I want it to grow into my primary/single online garden - especially since I deleted all my social accounts.
Growing this garden includes migrating old texts from various platforms or backups to this blog. I did this with the Venice-Bike-Packing-Trip in January, and recently added the E5-Hiking adventure.
Next on the agenda are the texts I wrote during my time abroad in Australia, Brussels, or the UK, and our trip to Japan.
As another „bed“ in the garden, I added three new pages. /travel is about the places I (remember) visiting or living in, /wish is where I keep my public shopping baskets for someone else to click „buy“, and /bucketlist is something I didn’t have before but wanted to track now as a more generic list compared to yearly goals.
In terms of giving, I want to emphasize my participation in the „I‘ll read it“ initiative by Manuel - if you have a blog and look for new readers, sent it to me, and the „Ask Me Anything“, inspired by Kev, which gave me a fun little rabbit hole to explore after just one hour.
To give the garden a more personal touch, I registered a new domain including my first name - as many of you cool kids do. The migration is completed and both the old and the new domain point to this site. The new domain shall be a reminder to share a few more personal topics.
Running
Speaking of personal topics … I aimed at running a half marathon in less than two hours this year. The year started with a fast 10k, but then I was sick a lot during the preparation for the 21,1km. When I left home to take the train to the start of the half marathon, I didn’t feel confident to accomplish the 21km at all - but Garmin Coach said I can do it in 02:05h.
Lucky me, it went better than I imagined. 01:59:47 … 13 seconds, but … less than two hours.
I have one more 10k planned for mid July.
Cycling
The bike stayed in the garage, except for a few short trips to the supermarket. We plan to cycle around the Bodensee in September. But, less kilometers than last year.
Mobility
Seven months ago, we bought an electric car (BEV). I was happy with that decision after 2.500km, and couldn’t be happier today after 10k - with the increased petrol prices.
With the BEV, 100km cost us roughly 8€, while the same distance would cost us 13€ with our previous car.
The current price (0,45€/kWh below) will become cheaper in future, as we have the possibility to charge at home now, where we pay less than on public chargers.
0,45€/kWh * 18kWh/100km * 100km = €8,10
2,06€/l * 6,5l/100km * 100km = €13,39
Volunteering
Currently, my engagement with the Red Cross is mainly on organizational, back-office tasks, as I have to be in office more and thus have less time to join the weekly gatherings or the medical services.
I gave two First Courses and have a few more planned for the year. I enjoy „teaching“ a lot and hope that repeating the topic on a regular basis, helps me to be more prepared when I will be in an emergency.