Atlanta and New Orleans November 16-22

On Monday morning November 16 I traveled to the USA to attend the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, held this year in New Orleans.

But first I arrived Monday evening in Atlanta to visit Hamida Hudda, a friend from India days, who now lives in the suburb of Decatur, in a South Asian neighborhood.

A store front in the South Asian neighborhood of Decatur, Georgia

Then on the morning of Wednesday November 18 I traveled to New Orleans by Amtrak train. I have gotten used to the excellent train service in Germany, so the remarkably slow, once-a-day 12 hour-long train trip to New Orleans was a disappointment, not helped by the train leaving Atlanta an hour and a half late. That trip marked the first time I had been even briefly in the states of Alabama and Mississippi.

But in any event I arrived in New Orleans in time for the opening reception of the ASOR annual meeting. The following Thursday morning, I attended the meeting of the editorial board of the journal Near Eastern Archaeology and then for the rest of Thursday, Friday and Saturday I attended various conference sessions and receptions, and spent a lot of time chatting with people, some of whom I had not met in years. The last time I had attended an ASOR annual meeting was 1993, except for a day I spent at the 2006 meeting.

On Saturday afternoon I went to the nearby Insectarium, a new insect museum. Curiously, at the time a group of Hindu Hari Krishna devotees were pulling a juggernaut down the street.

The juggernaut

Then on the morning of Sunday November 22 I traveled back to Germany, arriving in Frankfurt early Monday morning.

Bamberg November 1-15

After having not done much out of the ordinary the previous two weekends, due to the overcast and cool weather, on Sunday November 1 I traveled to Freising, northeast of Munich. I arrived at the main cathedral just minutes before the All-Saints Day service, which I decided to attend. Afterwards I briefly walked around the city center, before traveling on to Munich.

A path in Freising that would have been more attractive had the sun been shining.

The day started out overcast, but as I arrived in Munich the sun came through and the afternoon turned into a glorious cloudless and warm day. I walked around the Nymphenburg palace and botanical gardens.

The botanical gardens

The Nymphenburg palace

I then headed to the Munich trade fair grounds for the annual Minerals, Gems and Fossils trade show, the largest of its kind in Europe. As a special attraction, seven of the ten known Archaeopteryx fossils were on display. There was a long line of people wanting to see the fossils, slowed down by about every other person trying to take photographs of them through the display cases in less than ideal lighting.

Someone photographing one of the Archaeopteryx fossils

In addition to sight-seeing on weekends, I often attend cultural events. On Friday November 6 I went to a theater performance in Bamberg of Nur Pferden gibt man den Gnadenschuss (They Shoot Horses Don’t They in a contemporary German setting). Then on Sunday November 8 I traveled to Meiningen to attend a performance at the South Thuringian State Theater of Rossini, Guglielmo Tell, an opera that I had not heard before. Interestingly a main role was performed by a singer from China.

On Saturday November 14 I participated in a British Isles dance afternoon at the Volkshochschule and then that evening I attended a performance of the Irish step dance show Dance Masters in the nearby town of Ebermannstadt. There are no longer any trains from there back to Bamberg late in the evenings, so after the performance, I chose to walk the 13 kilometers to the nearest train station. The next day on Sunday I went to a performance by a University of Bamberg student string orchestra.

The first week of November was a holiday for the public schools in Bamberg, but not the university, for All-Saints Day. So there were no VHS sessions that week, eliminating one excuse for me not to work on my various research projects in the evenings. I wrote an introduction for my forthcoming book of translations of German articles written a hundred years ago about Palestinian culture. The University of Jordan Press is publishing the book and the page proofs will soon be ready. I also finished translating an article about Jerusalem that my colleague Klaus had written in German.

I also got my German residency permit for my stay in Germany beyond the allotted three months for tourists. Having gone through the process for my year-long stay in 2007, I knew what needed to be done, and the process was quick and easy.

Bamberg October Part 2

After the first weekend of October, fall arrived with colder and cloudier weather. On Saturday October 10 I joined a nature hike sponsored by the VHS to the nearby Staffelberg hill and environs in the area known as the Frankish Alps. Unfortunately it was so rainy and foggy that nothing of the view from Staffelberg was to be seen.

The cross on the top of Staffelberg, with the less than dramatic view

On Sunday afternoon I went to the Day of the Open Door tour at the Bamberg sewage treatment plant.

A performance by the Bamberg garbage collectors

On the next Saturday October 17 I joined another VHS nature hike to Ebelsbach and Zeil, stopping at the ruined castle of Schmachtenberg along the way. Unfortunately the weather once again was cloudy and rainy. Curiously one small village that we hiked through had planted a ginko tree as their village monument. On the hill overlooking Zeil is a pilgrimage church with the inevitable processional way of the stations of the cross.

The ginko tree monument

The ruins of Schmachtenberg Zeil and its pilgrimage church on the top of the hill

That Sunday and the following weekend the weather was once again cloudy and cold, so I stayed in Bamberg and got some work done.

By the end of October the fall trees were in full color, but there was rarely any sunshine.

Bamberg October Part 1

Midnight on September 30/October 1 marked the official end to the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the university and with it the end of the term as dean of my colleague Klaus Bieberstein. The remaining religion programs are now part of the Faculty of Humanities (Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften).

The winter semester at the University started in the middle of October. In the German schedule the winter semester extends to the middle of February and the summer semester is from mid April to mid July. But the Germans will switch to the American schedule, starting in a couple of years. This semester is the first with American-style BA and MA degree programs.

In order to have official status at the university, I am teaching a seminar in the Oriental Studies Department on the history and archaeology of Syria/Palestine from the 6th to the 9th centuries. I have four students, including one from Thailand.

I continue to spend my days making slow progress on the sites and monuments of Jerusalem project and preparing for my class periods. I also translated an article about Jerusalem that Klaus had recently written.

In the evenings I do a number of interesting things. I signed up for a variety of evening courses at the local Volkshochschule (VHS – community college). On Mondays I join a Greek folk dance group. On Tuesdays I am taking a French conversation course; I can read French reasonably well, but cannot speak French at all. And on Wednesdays I join an Irish set dance group. On some other evenings I attend concerts or public lectures.

On most weekends I continued to travel somewhere. On Saturday October 3, however, I stayed in Bamberg, strolling around a large flea market, although I was not tempted to get anything.

The flea market with a bust of Nefertiti for sale

Sunday October 4, the day of the German national elections, I went to Munich for the last day of Oktoberfest. It has some similarities to an American state fair. I went into a couple of the large beer halls and walked around the carnival rides, but I was not so interested.

One of the beer halls with a band performing

The carnival rides

So I soon traveled on to Garmish-Partenkirchen, near the border with Austria, from where I took a cog train and cable car lift up to the top of Zugspitze, at 2962 meters the highest mountain peak in Germany. The cog train goes much of the way up to the near the peak through a steep tunnel cut into the heart of the mountain.

The summit of Zugspitze The view from the summit

Bamberg September 4-30 Part 4

On Sunday September 20 I went to Gössweinstein, in the heavily forested region known as the Frankish Switzerland to see the impressive cathedral and the castle.

The cathedral seen from the castle The castle from a distance

One interesting site in the town was a small chapel that the locals had built in fulfillment of a vow in April 1945. They vowed to build the chapel if the town would be spared from destruction as the American army advanced during the final days of World War II, which proved to be the case.

The chapel built to fulfill the vow

I then walked a few kilometers to Tüchersfeld in time for the afternoon nature hike for the Day of the Open Geotope in the Bayerisch-Böhmischer Geopark. After the hike I went to the Fränkische-Schweiz Museum situated in the middle of a very interesting rock formation.

The rock formations in Tüchersfeld

On Saturday September 26 I went to Bad Steben and joined an afternoon nature hike there. Bad Steben, as its name indicates, is a spa and most of the hikers were visitors to the spa. There were a number of abandoned mines in the area; Alexander von Humboldt had worked as a mines inspector here at the beginning of his career in the late 18th century.

The participants in the nature hike

The house of Alexander von Humboldt in Bad Steben

On Sunday September 27 I went to Bayreuth. There are a lot of historic buildings in the city center, but also one amusing modern building as well.

A modern building in Bayreuth

On this trip to Bayreuth I went to the spectacular Hermitage palace and gardens, in large part built by Wilhelmina, the sister of Frederick the Great. The water installations were of particular interest. One of the large public fountains sprayed the water over the heads of the visitors, while inside the palace was a room with a water jet that could keep a candelabra suspended in the air.

The main building at the Hermitage palace and gardens

The fountain spraying water overhead

The water jet keeping a candelabra suspended

Bamberg September 4-30 Part 3

The weather in September was delightful and a bit warmer and sunnier than average. Each weekend I went somewhere, usually getting a day-long train/bus ticket for travel throughout Bavaria. On Saturday September 12 I went to Kreuzberg (Cross Mountain), a hill that is a pilgrimage site for Catholics. A processional way of the Stations of the Cross lines the path up to the hill top. It is remarkable how many processional Stations of the Cross there are in solidly Catholic Bavaria.

The crosses at the top of Kreuzberg

One of the stations of the cross at Kreuzberg

I then walked to the nearby town of Bischofsheim, past a ski-jumping ramp. I had never seen the view from the top of a ski-jumping ramp before.

The ski-jumping ramp

I also noticed a public water fountain that its sign claimed had been used for baptisms by Saint Kilian in 686 A.D. Saint Kilian was an Irish monk who converted much of the area to Christianity at the end of the 7th century.

The fountain of Saint Kilian

Sunday September 13 was the Day of Open Monuments throughout Germany and I took part in two tours in Bamberg in the course of the day.

The participants in one of the Day of Open Monuments tours in Bamberg

On the next Saturday September 19 the volunteer societies of Bamberg set up booths in the Max Platz main town square.

The volunteer booths

The politician Karl-Theodor von und zu Guttenberg, the minister for economics and technology, was working the crowd there at the time, two weeks before the national elections in which he was reelected by the highest majority of any candidate.

Karl-Theodore von und zu Guttenberg

Nearby a political rally was underway, although it looked like most of the people there were enjoying the day more than paying attention to the politicians.

The crowd at the rally

After walking around the volunteer booths, I took a train to Ludwigstadt and the castle of Lauenstein at the extreme north edge of Bavaria along the border with Türingen, in former East Germany.

The castle of Lauenstein

After visiting the castle I walked a few kilometers to the nearby train station of Propstzella in Türingen. I noticed a sharp change in the posters for the upcoming German national elections once I crossed the border into former East Germany, when posters for the NDP, the neo-Nazi party, started cropping up all over the place.

Bamberg September 4-30 Part 2

I am back in Bamberg through the end of February 2010 to work further on the never-ending sites and monuments of Jerusalem encyclopedia with my German colleagues Klaus Bieberstein, who is the Old Testament professor at the University of Bamberg, and Hanswulf Bloedhorn in Tübingen.

September was a vacation month for the university, so things were quiet. I spent a lot of time in the university libraries. In addition to working on the sites and monuments of Jerusalem, one small thing I did was to translate an article in German about Palestinian clothing and ornament published in 1901.

Unfortunately I was unable to get an office at the university, as I had hoped I might. Recently the historic building that houses the university’s institute of “monumentology” (i.e. architectural conservation or Denkmalkunde – no German dictionary I checked offered a translation) was found to be structurally unsound (!) and had to be evacuated, so university office space is at a premium for the duration of the renovations.

As I have been doing for the past couple of years, I continue to work on improving my German, especially oral comprehension, by watching German-language video podcasts, available through iTunes.

At the end of August my Arabic for Archaeologists booklet was published by ACOR. I had worked on the booklet when I was a fellow at ACOR last year.

The cover of the Arabic for Archaeologists booklet