Back in Germany, Sunday June 29, 2008

I am now back in Bamberg in northern Bavaria, having arrived just in time for the Germany-Spain Football final. I had spent 2007 here as visiting professor at the University of Bamberg, working on the sites and monuments of Jerusalem encyclopedia project. I will be here for most of July.

I arrived in Frankfurt on Wednesday morning and spent the next few days as a tourist and visiting friends from my days at the Henry Martyn Institute in Hyderabad. On Wednesday I went to the city of Fulda and saw its attractive baroque period old city core.


Then on Thursday I went to Marburg, where I met two friends from HMI. Andreas Günther had been around at HMI during the 2005-2006 academic year and he took some of my Islamic studies courses. Since June he has been serving as pastor for a church congregation in the city of Giessen. His friend Mareike Hilbrig had been around at HMI for a few months in late 2005 and early 2006. She is a private piano teacher in Marburg and she is studying to be a conductor for choirs.

Andreas Günther and Me

Andreas Günther and Mareike Hilbrig

Then on Friday I visited Armin Rosswaag, another former student of mine at HMI. Since September Armin has been serving as pastor in Rohr, a small village in southern Thüringen, in a church that goes back to the early ninth century. Armin had been around at HMI in the fall of 2003. He is now engaged to Terini, another former HMI student of mine from the northeast Indian state of Mizoram. Terini, Andreas Günther, Mareike Hilbrig and I had been particularly good friends during my final months at HMI in early 2006.

Armin Rosswaag

On Saturday I went to Eisenach, where I visited the Wartburg castle, among other sites, before returning to Rohr to spend a second night with Armin. Sunday I saw the sites of the city of Meiningen, near Rohr, while on my way to Bamberg. During 2007 most every weekend I had gone sightseeing somewhere, but there are still a lot of places in Germany that I have not yet been to.