This was Judith and Michael’s last half-day with us. We had breakfast with them and went for a short walk to the edge of a nearby lake and back, enjoying all the green around us, and e many blooming plants (rhododendrons and azaleas are in full bloom right now). Then all six of us piled into two cars and went to the apartment that my mom, Imke, is going to buy (or rather, trade with the owner against her own house). The woman who is currently renting the apartment kindly agreed to let my mom show us all her future home. It’s the ground floor of a three-story town home, built in beautiful Art Deco style in 1903, in a fabulous, quiet neighborhood quite near Osnabrueck’s city center. The apartment is gorgeous, with a “Wintergarten” (enclosed veranda) and access to the small, walled garden that will be my mom’s. It’s gorgeous (and will be more so when my mom puts up her own wall decor and uncovers just some of the tile work in the veranda area that the renter does not want), and my mom was super excited to show us.
After our tour, Judith and Michael and their cat-child, Bert, took off for home (a 4+ hour drive on a good day), and we went home to measure furniture and cut out little paper versions to scale with Imke’s blueprint of the new apartment, so she can shuffle furniture around and see whether it fits. She is going from a two-story home to 1280 square feet (120 sq meters), but she is thrilled to shrink her possessions for the move. We had a late lunch, a nap, and a long (4-mile) walk around the lake that we had visited briefly this morning. It’s been cooler and overcast, but quite pleasant, and my mom loved the company and the exercise. Afterwards, we had a late German-style dinner–bread, cold cuts and various cheeses, plus tea (at my mom’s house, at any rate), and called it a day, which was nice after yesterday’s intense social schedule.