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.