We slept in until after 7–a sign that we are settling in for more quiet days in Osnabrück with my mom, something we are definitely ready for! We had a lovely breakfast with my mom and then went on a 3 mile/5 km walk with her! She impresses me every day with the excellent shape she is in—she will be 82 next month and takes long walks or goes on bike rides when the weather is good She took us through one of our favorite streets, Katharinenstrasse, along the university campus (which is a former palace and beautiful) and the park behind it, and through the Johannisstraße, a part of downtown which is now for pedestrians, bicyclists and city buses only, and much more useable than I remember it, when it was cluttered with cars. A big hotel with a shopping mall is being finished there, and it’ll be a nice extension of the shopping district when it is all done. Then we walked along a very boring multi-lane road to our actual destination, the town’s other historic cemetery, Johannisfriedhof. Just like the one we walked with my sister, it was begun in the early 19th century, when the region was under Napoleonic rule and new laws demanded that all burials had to take place outside of the city walls. So some of the oldest gravestones, some built into the walls between cemetery segments, show birthdates in the 18th century. The cemetery is no longer in use (the last burials were in 1995) but is used as city green space by many walkers and bikers. It is lovely; it includes a small Jewish cemetery, where gravestones are traditionally not moved or disturbed (elsewhere, German grave plots are now typically leased for 20 or 25 years, and then vanish, which is why these historic cemeteries are so interesting and also rare). There is also a spiral /labyrinth that is used by the Osnabrück hospice as a memorial site where families of people who died in hospice care can gather as a group (typically once every three months or so there is an event). My mom knows the spot well from her many years of volunteering for the stationary hospice, and also from going for walks here weekly for years with an older friend and former neighbor who lived in a nearby senior care facility; we had a long conversation about this woman, Erna, whom I remember fairly well, and who died at the age of 99. Imke and Hermann, my step-dad, rented part of her house (which her daughter kept for many years before she sold it) for the kids and myself when we lived in Germany, for which I’ll be forever grateful.
We returned on a different and shadier path through residential areas, and toward the end, Mark and I veered off to get some groceries while my mom went straight home. When we joined her, we all had a bite to eat and Mark and I napped for a bit, before taking another stroll to the downtown shopping district and the old town (Altstadt). We finally had ice cream at our favorite gelateria; we purchased a light bulb for my mom in an old-fashioned hardware store and we documented the dramatic change of Kai’s favorite Osnabrück haunt: the Comic Planet comic and card store, which moved from a tiny hole in the wall to an enormous former clothing store one block down the street with a huge game room for Magic and other card games. I remember going every week with 9-y-o Kai because there was always something to be had that was interesting. I talked to the guy behind the counter (still the same guy, who has been there for 20 years); they moved in 2022.
On our way home we stumbled across a new old thing: a gate into a courtyard invited us in to look at a “Steinwerk,” one of several houses in Osnabrück dating back to the Middle Ages that were distinctive in that they were built only with stones and without any timber (Fachwerk), so they were fireproof. They tropically belonged to merchants who protected their goods by storing them in these houses. This one had roots in the 1180s and a big arched doorway leading to the basement is still very clearly visible. Fun stuff!
When we got home, Imke had a yummy vegetarian dinner ready for us, and we spent the rest of the evening just hanging out, working on the blog and also on some very boring financial housekeeping. I was unusually tired (perhaps Mark’s cold passing through me?) and we were in bed by 10.