This was basically a travel day and not much else! We were awakened early in the morning by some thunder and a big downpour, which sounded lovely on the angled windows in Judith’s room, which served as our guest room in their apartment. But we went back to sleep for a bit and the sun was shining by the time we all got up around 7. We chatted a bit and showed pictures from past trips before Michael had to leave again for work. Judith fixed breakfast for the three of us, and then we went for a morning walk, about four miles, back through the village of Wankendorf and to the nearby lake and little piece of woods. The weather was quite lovely—brisk but sunny—but we were glad we were walking under trees because we had another sudden downpour. It lasted only about 10 minutes, though, and we managed to stay dry.
The walk was a nice way to get a little exercise in before the trip back to Osnabrück to my mom’s, talk some more with Judith before saying good bye, and getting a better sense of the sleepy little village where they live. We wrapped up our packing after we got back (a minimal job), and Judith called a taxibus, which is part of the public transportation network and comes theoretically on a schedule, but only if you call ahead of time. An interesting way to resolve the public-transportation needs for small towns. Our driver was terrible, though—he had a tendency to speed between the little towns on very curvy roads (Mark watched the speedometer and claimed he got up to 120 km/h, so about 85), and not slow down in the curves or when there was counter traffic. We also picked up a teen as an additional passenger who clearly knew the driver and chatted with him rather casually about blowing up a cigarette vending machine with hairspray to get the cash out! I was very glad when we were in Neumünster, where we were able to catch a slightly earlier train than we had planned on and were back at Andrea and Peter’s before 2 pm!
Andrea had made us a lovely minestrone, with a salad and fresh bread, and for dessert, we had one last round of ice cream with the costly amarena cherries that we bought a few days ago. I shuffled our remaining clothes and things into our second suitcase (Andrea, bless her, had done our laundry while we were gone!) and then we were ready to go back to my mom’s. She walked us to the bus stop and we said goodbye–it was so good to be able to spend all this time with her and Peter. Traveling with the two of them is the best–we are very compatible in our tastes and travel patterns (although Andrea, as the only night owl, heroically adjusted to everyone else’s desire to get going early and crash in the evenings). We’ll do it again next summer!
Since it was Sunday, when everyone tries to get home on the cheap regional trains, we knew to expect crowds and needed to go with the flow a bit. We were lucky in various ways, catching a train we didn’t expect to make in Hamburg Harburg, and even though we had to wait a little for our connecting train from Bremen to Osnabrück, we did get seats, and had our headphones to kill the ruckus from the tracks in the spot we found. The Germans were very grumpy about delays and missed connections (they all remember how punctual German trains used to be, but the system is creaking under enormous use after years of downscaling and not enough train and track repair), but we were prepared for worse, felt lucky about getting to Osnabrück by 9 pm, and were pretty chirpy about the whole Sunday experience.
Once we had arrived, we unpacked yet again (for ALMOST the last time–we’ll be here for another week) and I chatted with my mom a bit, and then we called it a night.