We slept a little less well (we were both up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night) but made up for it by sleeping past our usual time until almost 8 am. We took on the tough, tough job of walking the half-block to get fresh rolls for our breakfast, and I set the table for everyone, so we could start the day right.
Then all five of us took off, in spite of a dicey forecast with some possible rain, to visit Fürstenau, the small town of about 6,000 where Judith and I grew up after my mom and dad moved there in 1971. It’s a bit off the beaten track and not convenient for bus travel, so we all liked the idea to pay a visit while Judith and Michael were here with their big Renault that fits all five of us. But the trip was a bit of a disappointment, because so much of the town looked worse than I had remembered even from four years ago. The main street is slowly dying as the bigger shops move to the outskirts of town, where many new big box stores have sprung up; several older buildings had been torn down, and there was generally an even more pronounced sleepiness than a few years ago. We visited my father’s and grandmother’s graves, but my mother was quite put out because a gardening firm is supposed to take care of the gravesite and it was clearly not maintained. We drove by the old house where we grew up, and that also did not look like it was in good repair.
But on the upside, we also went for a walk in a nearby state park, the Maiburg, where we used to hike as a family quite a bit on weekends decades ago, and that was lovely, in spite of a couple of squalls. The woods were so dense that few rain drops actually reached us, and the lush green and the forest wildflowers were just a joy.
We then drove back home through another sleepy town that at least had an attractive gyro and burger place where we had a late lunch. On our return, Mark and I took a short nap (we really seem to need these still!) and went for another very familiar walk to a nearby rural area very near the center of Osnabrück, the Westerberg. That was fun (more beautiful flowers, “tame” ones this time), although we discovered that a café and restaurant that we remembered fondly from some fancy holiday meals and occasional coffee with Imke and my stepdad Hermann at the edge of a lovely wooded area had been fenced off and looked dilapidated, with most windows broken out and graffiti everywhere. I am not generally surprised by change or in “everything decays” despair, but it was a little much after the impressions gathered in Fürstenau. My mom knew all about this property, however, and said that new apartments would go up in the area; given that more residences are badly needed in town, that will be good, and she seemed far more accepting of this inevitable phase in the transformation of the area.
Judith and Michael later also went on a walk, but we all gathered to watch the final minutes of the quarterfinals game in the European Soccer Cup in which Germany lost to Spain 1:2, and to graze for food among the various things in the fridge (we were still too full from lunch to want a lot). The conversation meandered from soccer (and commentator bias–the Spanish team played very well, but the Germans had apparently “not deserved” their loss and were “punished,” but for what, exactly, and by whom?) to childhood pets and family friends, and about 10 pm we all decided we were too tired to keep going and went to bed!