Is This the World’s Most Aging-Friendly City?

When Hanni Borzel was in her sixties, she looked toward her years ahead with fear. Her husband had recently died and, a former librarian, she dreaded the idea of becoming lonely and “useless in old age.”

“After my retirement, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life sitting on a couch, watching TV,” says Borzel. The city where she lived in central Germany did not offer many volunteering opportunities to pensioners at the time. Meanwhile, she watched on Facebook as her friend Uwe Künkenrenken detailed his visits to a kindergarten to play music and participate in theater with children. Künkenrenken’s wife, Anni, was engaging with kids from the same kindergarten by reading to them and teaching German to refugee students.