We slept just a bit longer this morning, until 7:30, and took a bit more time for breakfast (yogurt and fruit, soft-boiled eggs, bread and cheese), and then we went on today’s adventure together: we took the bus and subway to Ohlsdorf Cemetery, one of the largest park cemeteries in all of Europe (391 hectares/966 acres, and over 280,000 grave sites with many more people actually buried there, since there are many family graves, and also unmarked and anonymous graves). When it was established as the cemetery for Hamburg, it was on the outskirts of town, but Hamburg has grown around it, so it is now not just a cemetery but also a fabulous, enormous park with many mature trees, enormous rhododendron groves, ponds, and a gazillion (NOT a Wikipedia number) paths, benches, nooks and crannies.
It was a perfect day to go see it, because it was quite warm and sunny all day and there are lots of lovely shady, cool alleys to walk while looking for interesting graves that are, for the most part, a mix of old and new grave stones, with many different styles of writing and art. Of course, we liked the ones with dramatic late-19th century figures of weeping angels and widows and so on, and the enormous family “temples” of wealthy merchants and aristocrats. There was a rather passionate couple embracing and another one that reached out to each other across the length of the coffin, but other, less ostentatious sites were often quite beautiful as well. Most graves are well-kept and tidy (not a surprise with 230 gardeners working on upkeep) although others have been left to vanish among the rhododendron bushes and are covered completely with moss. We saw some wildlife–a squirrel, a heron, a cormorant, some turtles sunning themselves on the edge of a pond–although the kingfisher Andrea was hoping to spot did not show up. We spent almost three hours traversing the cemetery, ending at a “columbarium,” where urns could be stored in shelves alongside memorabilia and flowers on shelves. Since Germans are not allowed to take the ashes of loved ones home to keep or scatter on their own property, this is one of the ways in which people who do not want a gravesite can be memorialized. By the time we left, it was almost 2 pm, and we took the subway for a couple of stops to find a little “snack booth” (Imbissbude) to have French fries and sausage and to separate into two parties: Mark, Andrea and Peter went home (to take naps and do some of the work that is piling up for them, individually), and I went to meet Peter Hühn, the professor emeritus who supervised my M.A. back in 1990, and with whom I stayed in touch for all these years.
We met at a cafe directly along the Alster, the river that goes through Hamburg, near Hudtwalkerstrasse, and had coffee and cake while we chatted about our academic pursuits, including his lectures for continuing education students, which switched to Zoom last year, and my various interests in art history / literary history / the Black transatlantic experience, and also about hiking and bird watching, both of which he’s passionate about without being pedantic or overbearing. So the conversation flowed pretty freely and, as each and every time, we had much to say to each other–also about Covid, of course, since that is an impossible topic to stay away from. We sat there over our coffee for about 2 hours, and then I made my way back to Andrea and Peter’s, which turned into a bit of an obstacle course. The subway stopped for good at a station four stops away from where I needed to get off because of an emergency (sadly, that is usually code for someone throwing themselves on the tracks), and I had to take a bus that got me within half a mile of their apartment. I’d been texting with Mark so he actually came to meet me at the bus stop, just for a little walk after the nap he had gotten (no fair!), and we walked back together.
Andrea and Peter went grocery shopping while we did some of our computer work, and then I fixed a salad to go with our bread and cold cuts. Over dinner, Peter told us all about the computer game he plays regularly (Destiny) and after dinner, we all tried hard to cool off, Mark and I on the balcony, happy that the high of 84 degrees had given way to a partly cloudy 73. The general weather rule about Germany, I decided, is that it never actually rains as much as they say it will, and that the “shitty weather” (Schietwetter) that Hamburg actually takes quite a bit of pride in simply refused to show up when Mark is here. But the weather forecast for tomorrow shows lots of rain, and maybe it will be accurate for once!