We took the day to just enjoy being back in my mom’s town, Osnabrück, where (reminder) the kids and I also lived for a year in 2009-2010 (I did not grow up here, but it was “the big city” to the small town 40 minutes away where I went to elementary and high school). So after a modest breakfast (nice after the hotel all-you-can-eat breakfast excesses of the last few days) we set out for a nice long walk across a large nearby park that still has some farmland in the middle of the city (Westerberg) and through the wooded area behind it to a large lake (the Rubbenbruchsee, a former sand pit / sandstone quarry that filled with groundwater and has been a favorite area for walks for decades). It is about 5 km / 3 miles all around and a good stretch to walk there and back again, so we got over 6 miles in (but who’s counting? Our Apple Watches are, and apparently our friend Uschi, who reads this blog most days!).
We stopped by a what used to be a café/restaurant and hotel at the edge of the forest that we had found in ruins when we were here last year, and now it’s razed. Maybe next year we’ll figure out what they will build there. walked by my mom’s former house and even ran into a former neighbor, Kati’s German childhood friend, Lisa. She knew that Kati and Rhaine had Jupiter, but Apollo was news to her! We only talked to her for a few minutes, but it was fun. Then we headed home, although just before we got there, we stopped for a coffee break at a favorite little bakery along the way. The weather was perfect (warm but not hot) and the only remotely “Friday the 13th” element was that my new sandals gave me blisters.
We got home around 12:30 and took care of some of our emails and such (much news to keep up with at home and internationally, because of protests and Trump’s calling in the National Guard in CA, and Israel’s strike on Iran in the early morning hours this morning–we DO pay attention, but that’s not for this blog!). Then Imke served us a lovely late lunch–pasta with a meat-and-veggies sauce–and we did the thing we haven’t done: we lay down for a mid-afternoon nap. Around 3 pm, we got ourselves up–much rested–and went shopping. We needed a few groceries and some travel necessities, and as always, had fun rummaging around in the German Aldi sales bins. But as it was a hot afternoon (the hottest to date, 86F/30C!), we didn’t stay out long and instead ventured out again toward evening. The old Osnabrück downtown and the more modern outdoor pedestrian mall are always fun in weather like this, because people are sitting at all the outdoor restaurants. We sat down at OUR favorite of them all, a gelato place called Fontanella that has been there for years and years and is a family favorite. Mark had a “banana cup” and I had a “nut cup” and they look like this:
… and taste just as wonderful as they look. We walked around a bit more, and then went home and hung out with my mom for a while, with just a bite of bread and cheese for a snack/dinner since we just had all that gelato! It was lovely and also a very nostalgic experience, because I love my mom’s assortment of “onion pattern” blue-and-white china.
It finally got cool enough around 8 pm to sit outside for a bit, and we sat under the apple tree in the little back yard, chatted, and watched the occasional bird stop by–we had a European robin look in on us, just checking whether we had a worm for him, but we couldn’t take a picture fast enough. This morning I saw a titmouse in the ivy that grows on the garden wall, and there are always great swarms of swifts (smallish swallows) far overhead that make a shrill whirring sound, almost as if they were giant hummingbirds. It is so lovely here.
