We both slept well, but woke early, around 5:30 am, when it was already full daylight and the birds started arguing outside our window. We stayed in bed reading the news, but got up at 6:30 and walked to the corner bakery for the customary fresh-baked rolls for our breakfast. Imke joined us just after I’d finished setting the table, and we enjoyed our very first German breakfast, with rolls and homemade jam and a lovely selection of cheeses. Then, Mark and I set out to walk to the city center, which is about a mile from my mom’s, since it is a lovely walk through parks and residential neighborhoods. We took care of several planned errands (getting cash, getting our phones and the ipad set up for the internet and for phones and texting) and strolled over the weekly farmer’s market, which has probably been held on Saturdays ever since the Middle Ages in the shadow of the cathedral (except it probably didn’t have kiwis from New Zealand and cheap cell phone accessories then). We also bought some bus tickets and a handful of other necessary items, and had a very simple lunch in an outdoor cafe right by a playground, so we had fun watching parents with their toddlers and some very well-behaved dogs.
We walked back to my mother’s house about 1 pm, and then had the customary coffee and cake “break” just around 3 pm. By this time, Kai had finally woken up and was having breakfast! His jetlag is clearly a lot worse than ours. Mark did feel like taking a nap after our snack, but I stayed upright–sat in the garden with Imke and started planning a bit more of our trips that we will take from here to visit friends and a few new sites that we haven’t visited before. We had dinner at home–European asparagus is in season, which, served with potatoes and German prosciutto, is quite a delicacy, so I was really looking forward to this meal–and then went for a walk with Imke that included the nearby branch of Osnabrueck’s university, where there are a few newer, architecturally interesting buildings that she wanted to show us. We didn’t get home until 8:45 or so, and we’re still not quite used to the much longer days, so I took us by surprise that it was still broad daylight then. It’s been a good first day!