Well, the jetlag conquest protocol did not quite work, because I could not go to sleep Friday night and was wide awake for “US daytime” until 3 am in the morning. But we slept in, and that made up for some of it, although it also meant that I skipped the morning run and we went for a walk after a late breakfast instead. The weather was glorious, with a bright blue summer sky and little puffy white clouds, and we wandered through some of the green spaces near here that we love so much (heard and saw some fun birds, including various Meisen, aka Eurasian Blue Tits and Great Tits, lots of European Robins, and an enormous Eurasian magpie). From there, we made our way to the market square by St. Mary’s church (in spite of the name, it has been a Lutheran church since 1543). It was gorgeous out, there was the usual Saturday market by the cathedral, and people were setting for Pride Day (here: Christopher Street Day), so the city center was just teeming with people and very colorful. I also checked out a couple of exhibits at the Remarque house right on the square.
ASIDE: Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front, is by far Osnabrück’s most famous writer, and the exhibit made me realize that several of his other, now mosty forgotten, novels, might be worth a try. One, The Spark of Life, is set in a concentration camp, and was written in memory of his sister Elfriede, who was executed by the Nazis in 1943 for “treason.” During her trial, the judge said, “your brother unfortunately got away, but you won’t.” (Remarque had left for Switzerland in 1931, before the Nazis started burning his books, and had moved to the US by 1939, although he split his time between the two countries until his death in 1970.)
Around 11, we met up with Imke for a bit of shopping, people watching, and a light lunch at a street cafe that sold various types of Russian dumplings. Then Imke went back home, and we celebrated our Osnabrück visit in style at our favorite gelato place, Fontanella, from where we could also watch the impressively long parade (including several city trucks made into floats, a city bus, and many, many young people with flags for caps, costumes of all kinds, and lots of energy). We joined the march for a little while, but veered off to go back to the market square, where it was going to end, and picked up significant piles of swag for my kids, who will be so proud of Osnabrück for its various queer support organizations and the fact that the Lincoln-sized city truly showed its colors, including rainbow flags flying on the town hall.
Around 3 pm we headed home, rested for a bit, and I had coffee with my mom in the garden, trying to straighten out some family tree things that I have become curious about. Thankfully, my mom’s dad, my Großvati Helmut Hedicke, was both a meticulous family historian and quite a good writer, and we have a number of documents that I just need to read through to get some of my questions answered. Later, Mark and I went to the nearby strip mall (supermarket, drug store, bakery, etc.) for a couple 0f items, and I set the dinner table for the three of us (“Abendbrot” = German bread, rolls, cheese and cold cuts, is one of our favorite meals and, at my mom’s, a fairly elaborate affair). We went for one more short walk around the block just before the sun went down around 9:30 pm, because it was so nice outside. Again, it’s been a pretty quiet day but just what we needed to get into the pace of things here.