Level Ground, 44, 45 & 46. Not the Old Normal, Please.

Even though contagion is going up again in our township, the open-air market today was crowded today. That means that all the cafés and bars in town are also crowded. I think we might rise in status from medium-low to high this week. Hopefully, we won't be put in lockdown next week.

There have been quite a few binge-drinking get-togethers all over the country, including in our small towns, here. And people have been travelling this weekend, especially since Monday was a regional holiday. It seems that with the state of alarm gone, everyone thinks that the pandemic is over. 

Last year, everyone was mentioning how refreshing it was to be able to walk around their cities and countryside without hordes of people diminishing the beauty. We've already forgotten about that. Our regional president of Galicia is hoping that, with the general lower count of contagion, and more vaccinations, that tourists will come back, again. Yet, before this pandemic struck, we were complaining about excessive tourism. Neighbors of the central area of Barcelona, Madrid, and other cities, were being priced out of their homes by tourist apartments. Many were complaining about drunk revellers from other countries not respecting anything except the alcohol. But, we seem to have forgotten about all that, in the hopes of getting our hotels fully booked again.

We simply neglected, in the year we've had, to look to set up other industries, and take some steam away from tourism. We've also neglected to change our mindset. After all the talk about discovering the little things that make life good, realizing that our fast lifestyles weren't all that great, we want to return to the same routine. Those that have little money can only go on special vacations every few years, so those are the ones that appreciate what travel brings them much more. But those who were accustomed to spending a weekend in Madrid, or Paris, or Lisbon, and then a week away at Christmas, Easter, or summer, were getting into a highly unsustainable routine. We can't keep up travelling all the time because not only do we stop truly appreciating the new things we see, but the fossil fuels we use up are accelerating the destruction of our planet. We discovered it during the short time last spring, when everything stopped, and pollution went down.

We can't keep up the way we were before. That wasn't normal. 

Life continues.