The UK, Sunday July 13, 2008

I spent the past week in the UK. During my previous brief trips to the UK, I had experienced mostly lovely sunny weather, but my luck ran out on this trip with there being overcast rain and drizzle most of the time.

On Sunday I flew into Birmingham and went to Leicester, where I met Shobha Gosa, a colleague from the Henry Martyn Institute in India, where I had worked between 2000 and 2006. She is enrolled in a Masters degree program at Oxford University. She is currently in Leicester, a city with a large immigrant population, especially Muslims and Hindus from South Asia. Shobha is on an intership at the St. Philips Centre in Leicester, an interfaith relations centre directed by Andrew Wingate, a big-wig in British interfaith relations (The state of interfaith relations in Leicester got written up in the 31 August 2006 issue of the Economist, while Prince Charles visited the Centre four days after my earlier visit in February on my way to the Islamicjerusalem conference in Dundee, Scotland). Upon my arrival in Leicester, Shobha and Andrew took me to a Muslim Women's barbeque in a park on the city outskirts. A torrential downpour did not seriously dampen the good cheer of the people there. After the barbeque, I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening chatting with Shobha at the St. Philip's Centre. I returned to Birmingham late that night after my earlier train was cancelled because a conductor was not available. That my first unfortunate experience with the British train service, which in general is a notch below the German train service.

Monday I spent sight-seeing in Birmingham, while Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I was at Oxford University attending a conference on the Decapolis cities (the Greco-Roman cities of northern Jordan and Israel), sponsored by the ARAM Society. It was a good networking occasion, with a number of long-time friends and colleagues in attendence.

At Oxford I also met David Singh, another colleague from the Henry Martyn Institute, who is currently at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. He had been the HMI associate director for academics and acting director during my first two years there, before he left in 2002 to complete his PhD in Islamic studies in the UK. That brought to an end this round of visits to people connected with the Henry Martyn Institute. The next round will come when I travel to India in late September-early October. The main topic of conversation with Shobha and David were developments at the Henry Martyn Institute. The board recently appointed a new director, who will start in January.

On Friday I visited Coventry and then Stratford upon Avon. The Coventry cathedral, destroyed by the German Blitz in November 1940, was interesting, but I spent more time in Coventry's principle 21st-century monument in the city center: the multi-storey, huge IKEA retail outlet (that was the first time I had been in an IKEA store). Stratford wasn't much, made even less appealing by the pouring rain. On Saturday I took a flight to Munich from the notorious Heathrow Terminal 5, which however went smoothly, and on Sunday I returned to Bamberg.

Bamberg, Sunday July 6, 2008

I spent the past week in Bamberg in northern Bavaria. From Monday to Friday I took an intensive German course at the Treffpunkt language institute. I was in an advanced group with four other students for three hours of class each morning. I had considered enrolling in such a German course during my year in Bamberg in 2007, but I decided then that I was in Bamberg to work on my sites and monuments of Jerusalem project rather than to study German. The Treffpunkt program is excellent, but you have to pay for it at about $25 an hour ($50 per hour for private tutouring). I had not had a systematic review of such German grammatical points as the first and second subjunctive since High School.

My fellow students, the instructor and me at the Treffpunkt certificate function

I stayed for the week in a room in a private apartment, arranged through Treffpunkt. I mostly spent the afternoons in the university library, where my password for internet access is still valid, and in the evenings I mostly reconnected with people at the University. I was able to attend a public lecture on Monday about a Russian traveler to India in the 15th century and a public lecture on Thursday about the Tablighi-Jama'at Muslim prosletizing organization, while Wednesday was the semester party for the Faculty of Catholic Theology, with which I was formally affiliated in 2007.

Then on Friday afternoon and all-day Saturday was the annual conference of the Ernst Herzfeld society for Islamic Art, sponsored this year by the University of Bamberg Oriental Studies department, which has an Islamic Art and Archaeology program. In 2007 I had taught three courses under their auspices. At the conference I gave a presentation about an overlooked Ottoman period inscription in Jerusalem's Haram al-Sharif. I had considered giving the talk in German, but I chickened out and gave it in English. I had attended last year's conference in Vienna.

After traveling in the second week of July to Oxford University for a conference, I will be back in Bamberg for the second half of July.