Today was mostly packing and tidying up, but we did go for a lovely walk through the nearby botanical gardens with my mom, who delights in wandering among the plants in the changing seasons (lots of foliage right now, but not much in bloom), and then on to our destination for lunch, a very nice pizzeria on the main market square, where I had a fabulous antipasti platter, Mark some ravioli, and my mom a chicken filet in an excellent mushroom cream sauce. We felt very spoiled. Then my mom walked home and we took another loop through town, looking for favorite spots with old buildings that give us a glimpse of what Osnabrück would have looked like and finally photographed the “missing” tower of the five that remain of the defensive ramparts, the “Pernickelturm” (technically not a former city gate, but still part of the same system). And we found another tower-like structure that would have been inside the city walls as we walked along the Hase river on the former ramparts.
Then we walked back into the downtown shopping area, where we managed to find a bubbly-water maker as an early birthday present for my mother (my sister deserves credit for this idea). And for good measure, we had our farewell gelato at the one and only Fontanella, which in spite of price increases and shrinkflation (the portions ARE smaller than they used to be) still gets our prize for the best ice cream based on all the places we’ve been this year.
I had coffee with my mom while Mark rested a bit, and then did some more packing and organizing. We had a bite of “Abendbrot” (bread, an assortment of delicious cheese, and a small plate of cucumber slices, apple slices, radishes and cherry tomatoes) and then talked to my sister on the phone while my mom “unwrapped” the bubbly-water maker, which I had covered with one of her pashminas. We practiced making bubbly water a couple of times, and then we took off to walk for a bit and sit outside at a beer garden at a nearby plaza. My mom had hard cider and Mark had a dark Bavarian beer, and I had a pomegranate ice tea. My mom and I had a lovely talk about her upcoming birthday (in August) and about birthdays of the past, and although some of the memories were bittersweet (especially her 70th birthday was a hard one, right before my stepfather, Hermann, passed away), she appreciates both the past and the present, and is really happy with her life, with her travel plans, with Klaus, with the fact that her daughters have found wonderful life partners. And of course it is a mind-boggling delight to her that she has grown grandchildren and is even a great-grandmother. On the way home we looked for, and actually found, ONE MORE piece of “old Osnabrück”–a hidden piece of the inner city wall, in fairly bad shape, but still standing, that we had just read about today. Even my mom had never noticed this area, since the wall, much patched and covered partly in ivy and partly in graffiti, serves as a garden wall of a series of apartment complexes and is barely visible even from the nearby playground.
