Vice versa

Today: everything done in another way. Breaking the routine. Strong coffee first thing in the morning instead of tea, rolls instead of porridge, no grapefruit and the egg can wait. Still in my nightie, and yes: it is later than usual, because yesterday evening I cooked dinner for friends. We sat long on the balcony, so sweet and warm the air, and raised the first Pimm's No. 1 of this summer to the stars above. 

Too many Churches...

It might be the churches.
Too many of them - in a town that is allowed to call itself city, because they counted (very generously) more than 100 000 inhabitants.
Hildesheim is a Catholic diaspora. In Mainz, where I studied, I became aquainted with Catholicism in the form of "laissez faire" (we call it: To let five be an even number) - Hans' aunt Maria, for example, surprised me by saying laughingly: "Who often goes on a pilgrimage will seldom become sacred" (that in the matchless dialect of Mainz). And I, coming from the Evangelic Church of Bremen, indulged in the sheer sensuality of Catholicism in Bavaria: gold and jewels in abundance, Saints for every wish and woe, relics and baroque splendour and frankincense.
Hildesheim has a strange form of Catholicism, Puritan almost - stern, rigorous, austere.
But the churches are beautiful.
Take St. Godehard - the Basilica, which belongs to the biggest buildings in the Romanesque style of Northern Germany, stands on a little hill near the island where our house is.  

Godehard was Bishop of Hildesheim from 1022 to 1038 - an art-lover, church-builder and adherent of the reform of Cluny. On June 16, 1133 A.D., Bishop Bernhard laid the foundation-stone of the St.Godehard Church.
I will spare you the many 'Strokes of Fate' - and prefer showing you some pictures of this really beautiful church: the lucidity of its architecture, the structural abundance of the column capitals and the cube and scaly friezes.

The more than life-sized figure of St. Godehard is from 1450. The huge wheel chandelier over the altar was a present of Mary, the last Queen of Hanover, 1864. 

By the way: the Basilica is more idyllic than you might have thought from the first glance above: 

And the vicarage always reminds me of Jane Austen: 

As you know, I take wisdom and solace from where I can find it - so maybe the lighting of a candle and for sure all the good wishes and prayers from friends have helped:

we are very grateful that Hans, being an athletical man, recovers so well that maybe he might leave the Rehab center on coming Friday - and be finally in our flat in Berlin. 

"Our house...in the middle of our street..."

These weeks I had time to live in our house again.

Here we have lived as a tiny family: father, mother son - for 19 years. Longest time of my life in one place.

Our house was built in 1902. It lies in one of the best residential areas in Hildesheim: a little (half-) island, surrounded on one side by the river 'Innerste' and the 'Kalenberger Graben' on the other side. We have streets that are called "Great Venice" and 'Little Venice' - which says all.

The whole street was the result of an architectural contest - and shows some of the very few buildings that survived the war. 

Six years after we had bought it, the complete street was put under "protection of historical buildings and monuments" - which was not always a joy for us, because I had a lot of 'interesting discussions' with the curator of monuments - an out-and-outer for others (in his house of the 17th century he pulled inside down every wall - but at this point, dear reader, Husband would roll his eyes and say: "Have you to keep on and on?" Eh - YES ).
On the photo below the left one is our house: around the windows in the shade you might guess the yellow sandstone I was not allowed either to let paint or sandblast(!). Three floors, every room about 4m high, stucco and beautiful carved doors:  one big flat on knee-high ground-floor (175 qm where we lived, now let), 4 little flats (Hans' library-and working-flat is on the first floor, 3 others are let). The four streets of rows of houses form a square full of gardens. 

These are houses around us (to be honest: I'm not a big fan of wooden framework) :

On the other side lives the Lord Mayor of Hildesheim:

We left Hildesheim almost 8 years ago, and now I asked myself: "Why did we leave?"  
Son went to study Law at the University in Freiburg. Hans and I went first to Hamburg, then moved to Berlin - he always working at the University of Hildesheim, commuting, me working in Hamburg, and now trying to skive off to free-lancing translation and writing in Berlin. 
I think I found an answer to: Why did we leave? 
(to be continued :-)