So I noticed a regularity, that I've been blogging about every two weeks. Since recently not much exciting things have been going on in my life (we had a wonderful but uneventful visit, I'm busy catching up on my lectures, especially Old Church Slavonic), I'm making another post appreciating my relationship. I was originally going to make it 10 but the post would have been way too long. So here we go:

1. Cars as a main mode of transportation are outdated in the 21st century
Yes, you read that right, we're both pretty convinced of that and here's why.
I'm from Germany, we get taught how to be enviorenment friendly in primary school. Turn off the tap when you brush your teeth, seperate trash, shower instead of taking baths, because it saves water and so on. It's no news to anyone that cars produce a lot of pollution. It doesn't go with my philosophy of destroying the world as little as possible, without giving up all comfort.
My boyfriend's studying transportation and traffic science and he's going to focus on railways and public tansport in his Master's, so he sort of has to be in favour of any form of public transport to not be a hypocrite. But he lives in a big city (1 Mil) and they have a huge problem with traffic (jams). Riding a car to work is selfish and causing problems for everyone including yourself. Cars take up a lot of space, compared to the number of passengers. They produce disproportionally much CO2 and noise! Not to mention that they cost a lot of money.
In an ideal world, where everyone took public transport whenever possible, it would be cheap, super effective and fast.
Don't get us wrong, we're definitely going to get a car, in case we have to buy bulky things (furniture) or need to go somewhere that doesn't have public transport. But not anytime soon and we're not planning on using it as our main means of transport.

2. Children and Education
The most basic thing: We both want three of them.
The less basic and also very important part: we both agree that giving your children a lot of freedom and letting them have their own experiences is the best way to help them become responsible, reasonable adults. We've both had very laissez-faire parents, that didn't give us curfews, let us drink (which we do, but not in excess) and smoke (which we don't), and have same- or opposite-sex friends stay over and let us stay over at our friends'. We've never had any bans just because our parents wanted it that way. As far as we can assess, we've both turned out rather well, so we're going to use that approach with our children as well.

3. Travelling
We love travelling and seeing new places. We're both not the type for beach holidays or theme parks. We like to visit places with beautiful nature or rich history and culture. Some places on the very top of our places to see, once we have money to travel somewhere else than to each other's, include: Kazan (Russia), St. Petersburg (Russia), Iceland, Nuuk (Greenland) and a whole bunch of ther places in Finland, Sweden and Ireland.

4. The Importance of Friends and Hobbies
This seems sort of obvious to me, but it doesn't seem to be like that for everyone. You can't rely on the other person in your relationship for all social interaction. You need friends. Of both sexes. And you need to meet them, go out with them and have your own hobbies, that don't have to include your partner. If you give up any of that you'll start to resent your partner and become boring (to them, but also to everyone else). It doesn't really matter what you do, sports, cooking, fishing, handiworks, video games, etc. As long as you have fun and share it with other people.

5. Rural vs Urban Enviornment
I've grown up in the country, while my boyfriend has spent all his life in his 1Mil city, but we both know: We want to live in a very urban surrounding. It doesn't have to be in the very center of a huge mega-city but it has to be central enough to have good public transport (see 1.) and a good infrastructure when it comes to shops, doctors, schools, etc. We like the country for trips, but we want to live in a decent city. It's very important for me that our children can be as independent as possible, because I hated depending on my parents for transportation.