Weekend in Oldenburg

The professor who is sponsoring Jay here in Bielefeld lives (at least on weekends) with her husband in the town of Oldenburg in Lower Saxony (in contrast to another Oldenburg in Holstein).  We have known this couple for almost 30 years, when they spent a year in Palo Alto in something like post-doc positions.  So we got to spend a relaxing weekend at their home in Oldenburg.

Oldenburg is essentially reclaimed swamp land; they are maybe 25 miles from the sea, but still at pretty close to sea level, so there is a lot of water all around (lakes, ditches, just soft ground).  It makes for a very different outdoor look than we have.

We wandered around the Altstadt (old part of town), in part to see the sights, in part for my friend to do a number of errands.  Here are a few things we saw:

The Schloss dates from the late 18th century, when Oldenburg was an independent state ruled by a duke.

The Schloss, of course, has a lake, and here are a pair of mandarin ducks (imported from China).  There was clearly a mating game going on, but I didn't have my camera set to video to capture it.

One of the many fancy houses built at the time of the duke.

Our most important errand -- finding Kuchen for our afternoon pickmeup.  I think we bought one of everything on display.  I liked the Apfelkuchen (bottom right front) best, but Jay was quite enamoured of the lemon thing (Zitronen-Quark-Torte) on the lower back right.  I'm not sure what the custom of regularly having rich, sweet cakes for an afternoon snack does for the Germans, but I'm not opposed to it.

And here I am having my perfume 'style' analyzed and having the perfect perfume selected for me at a shop with hundreds of options.  We came in for my friend to get some shampoo, but one thing led to another.

The main pastimes for the weekend were going for walks where I got to see the local greenbelt (from their house you could walk/run probably 30 miles in a loop around the area) and practicing my German.  Here is a view of the first.  It's a true moor, complete with peat, heather (that's the main plant you see in the picture below), and blueberry bushes (I don't know if they are traditional in moors, but they are ubiquitous here -- I suspect they could sate even my blueberry cravings).  Any plant you see below that isn't heather or a tree -- that's a blueberry bush.

There are carefully maintained paths, sometimes with stones or wood to enable you to get over the marshy ground, but the rest of the area is too boggy to walk in.  I wasn't out early enough to see the deer, but I'm told they are numerous at dawn or dusk.  We heard a cuckoo, many magpies and lots of birds I couldn't identify.  Very different from the paths I hike on normally.

The German lessons were great.  Whenever Jay wasn't around, my hosts were conscientious about speaking only German to me.  I still get exhausted trying to figure out how to say anything longer than ¨may I have some more cake?¨, but I was able to carry on reasonable conversations, with maybe one word every two or three rounds that I couldn't dredge up or talk around.  We talked about farming (when we passed some farms -- I now know several German words for manure); the plants we saw -- there Google translate was a big help, as my friends seldom knew the English word for the plant; cultural differences in eating and exercise; and Playmobil toys.  By the end of the weekend, I was definitely more fluent.

Not that I really needed to wind down (though Jay certainly did, as did my hosts, who both have jobs that overwork them), but the weekend was superbly relaxing in any case, other than when I was trying to find the German way to express myself.  Here's to more weekends with friends and Apfelkuchen.