Mom and Dad come to town

When I was studying abroad in Chile my junior year in college and my parents came to visit, it was one of the more surreal experiences I've ever had. Imagine my real parents meeting my host family, speaking some odd combinations of English and Spanish, and me trying to explain to my host mom why they didn't want to eat more and stay longer...

Last week my parents came to Hannover. It was only a little weird. Having them here was a good way to convince myself that we are not living in some parallel German universe while our normal selves go on with our normal lives back in St Paul. There was no emotional host mom to deal with, and the only one trying to feed them a lot was me.

Having them here also reminded me of some things I had started to take for granted now that we are settled in here. For instance, I now know that when there is a line down the middle of the sidewalk, the outside lane is for bikes. If you walk in it, you will at least have a bell dinged at you and possibly will be run over. I consider it normal that people ride bikes everywhere here to get around. I don't get out of breath any more when I climb the 5 flights up to our apartment. I don't say hi to strangers when walking past them, even if it's a beautiful morning and there's no one else around. Brian and I had to get used to all of these things several months ago, and now my parents were experiencing them too.

We saw what there is to see in Hannover, and then realized that you don't need 5 days to do that. We walked all around town and saw the historic buildings, or the ruins of them that are left since World War 2. We stopped at cafes. We walked a lot. My dad golfed while Mom and I shopped. And we took a day trip to Celle, a pretty town about 30 minutes away with a lot of half-timbered houses and a castle. On Sunday we rented a couple of bikes and pedaled around the Maschsee lake and ponds nearby, stopping for a picnic on the way. The weather was fantastic - sunny and springy and dry. Hannover put on a good show for Tom and Nancy. And they seemed to like it. They seemed to like seeing where we live and work and grocery shop. They met some of our friends and heard stories about the St Patrick's Day party. Several cigars were smoked on our balcony. A few bottles of wine disappeared.

I did a couple of challenging things too. I called a taxi in German, twice. I called to make a dinner reservation. I learned how to rent bikes by the hour. After a few days it didn't feel weird at all to have my parents in Hannover. Maybe at the same time in a parallel universe, they were visiting us at our house in St. Paul.

Here are a few photos:

Hannover old town

Celle

Celle

At the Rathaus