Bamberg June 1-30

For my currrent three-month stay in Bamberg I have rented an apartment in the city center, a five minute walk away from the university campus. My apartment is on the ground floor of a historic building in a heritage preservation zone, so the landlord cannot significantly alter the building fabric, such as the too-low door lintel in one room, built for people of smaller stature than today.

My apartment

What the landowners think of the restrictions that heritage preservation places on them can be seen on an inscription placed on a neighboring building. It reads: “God protect me from dust and dirt, from fire, war and monument protection”.

The inscription

On the building across the street is a plaque with an elephant sculpture, one of a number of such sculptures in the city.

The elephant sculpture

During the summer semester at the University of Bamberg I am teaching a seminar one-day a week on the history and archaeology of Jerusalem from the Roman through Ottoman periods. One student is taking the course for credit, while three others audit.

But the main reason for my being in Bamberg is to continue work on the sites and monuments of Jerusalem project that I have been involved in for some years now. I am focusing my attention on the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, with the hope of getting a volume done about that portion of the city by around the end of the year. I have been taking advantage of the extensive rare book holdings of the Bamberg State library to look at some old books about Jerusalem that I would not find easily anywhere else. I also needed to spend some time finishing up my catalogue entries for the Metropolitan Museum upcoming exhibition about Byzantine art and responding to the queries of the copy editor.

In June I mostly stayed put in Bamberg, but on Saturday June 13 I visited two friends who were students of mine in Hyderabad. Armin is the pastor in the small village of Rohr in southern Thüringen, a two-hour train ride from Bamberg. Terini, from the state of Mizoram in India, has been living there since their marriage in October 2008. Viktor is their six-month old son.

Terini, Armin and Viktor

At the end of my visit, they dropped me off at the English Gardens in the nearby city of Meiningen, where I attended an open-air performance of Wagner’s opera Rienzi; the weather was ideal. I had not heard Rienzi before. On May 13 I had attended the live broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera’s performance of Wagner’s opera Die Walküre, shown at a movie theater in Bamberg.

The performance of Wagner’s Rienzi

But the big event of the month in heavily Catholic Bamberg was Fronleichnam, Corpus Christi Day, on Thursday, June 23, marked by a big procession. (I was corrected when I once called it an ‘Umzug’ ‘parade’, rather than a ‘Prozession’. In the procession a number of statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary are carried from the cathedral through the streets of the old city and back. The procession takes a couple of hours and because it happens during a warm time of year, it is the largest popular church event of the year in Bamberg, although Protestants do not take part.

A statue in the procession

Another statue in the procession

I find it amusing to watch the tables being carried behind the statues to rest them on at stopping points.

A statue with a table being carried behind

Bamberg May 1-31

After my stay in Krakow, I took an overnight train to Vienna and then an intercity express train on to Bamberg, arriving in the early afternoon of Sunday May 1. I returned to Bamberg for the summer semester at the University of Bamberg until mid-August to continue work on the sites and monuments of Jerusalem project. That project has brought me to Bamberg for repeated earlier stays.

Bamberg is a city of some 70,000 population with a well preserved old city that is on the UNESCO list of world heritage sites and pulls way above its weight in terms of culture and cultural events. The big event in May was the bi-annual World Heritage Run on Sunday May 8, with over ten thousand participants with separate runs over varying distances through the historic old city for children up to a half-marathon for adults.

The race for the youngest children

The race for older elementary school children

The adult runners getting refreshed

(The theology library where I spend a lot of my time is in the background)

The runners crossing a bridge in the old city

There are also numerous musical events all the time, such as one evening of performances by church choirs, as well as frequent street musicians.

 A church choir performance

Ann outdoor band performance

 There are also frequent events for various charitable causes, such as a ‘People in Need’ fundraising event on May 22, at which some nursery school children performed.

The performance of the nursery school children

 There are also around one or two lectures each week at the University that I attend in lecture series about medieval studies, archaeology and oriental studies. I also joined again the Irish Set-Dancing group on Wednesday evenings; I participate whenever I am in Bamberg.

Sunday May 15 was museum day and I went to the Natural History museum on the university campus; the renovation of the main historic exhibit hall had been recently completed.

The Natural History Museum

 In April I had done a lot of travel, so in May I mostly stayed in Bamberg. One trip I did make was a day-trip on Saturday May 28 sponsored by the Volkshochschule (community college) to a historic monastery at Plankstetten, about an hour’s travel away. As part of the tour, we rode a tow-boat along a short stretch of a 19th-century canal. That canal has been replaced by the modern Main-Donau canal, which runs through the city of Bamberg.

The tow boat

The modern canal in Bamberg

At the Plankstetten monastery, we got a tour of the main church and underground burial crypt painted with Byzantine-style icons by a wise-cracking 90 year old monk.

The wise-cracking monk

Auschwitz April 27

On Wednesday April 27, I went on a day-trip guided bus tour to Auschwitz. It is a bit over an hour’s travel from Krakow. We spent a somewhat rushed couple of hours at the central Auschwitz concentration camp, which was not enough to see everything. During the peak months, the site is overrun with tourists, so tours have to be tightly managed to keep everyone moving.

The entrance to the inner compound with the Arbeit Macht Frei sign

The electrified fence around the inner compound

We then went to the nearby Birkenau extermination camp for another hour. The Birkenau camp is much larger in size, so the tourist groups there can be spread out more. Also it seems that many tour groups do not come to Birkenau, but just go to the central Auschwitz site, which is a pity. I found the Birkenau site more impressive.

A barracks building at Birkenau

A building with latrines at Birkenau

A railroad car at the unloading siding at Birkenau

One of the gas chambers at Birkenau

Krakow April 25-30

On Monday April 25 I ended my stay in Warsaw and took a train to Krakow, where I spent six days sightseeing. I stayed in a hotel near the train station in the city center. My first walking around was cut short by a torrential downpour, but most other days were sunny and warm. My days in Krakow were the run-up to the beatification of John Paul II on Sunday May 1; he was archbishop of Krakow before becoming pope.
 

The displays in the central square for the beatification of John Paul II

On my second day Tuesday April 26 I went to the Oskar Schindler factory, of Schindler's List fame, which has been turned into an excellent museum about Krakow during the Second World War.

The Oskar Schindler factory

On my way back, I bumped into Elzbieta Dubis, an archaeological colleague, with whom I had last crossed paths some years ago in Jordan. I vaguely knew she was from Poland, but I had made no effort to track her down. She recognized me immediately as I walked by; I would not have recognized her. It turns out she is a native of Krakow and has been working as an archaeologist in the city for years.

Along the way, I noticed lots of people have put locks on one of the bridges as mementos

The locks on the bridge

On my third day, Wednesday April 27, I went on a day-trip to Auschwitz. Back in Krakow that evening, I met Elzbieta for dinner, after which we walked around the Jewish quarter.

On my fourth day, Thursday April 28, I went to the botanical gardens.

The botanical gardens

A glamour wedding shoot at the botanical gardens

That evening I went to the Krakow Opera House for a modern-choreographed ballet performance of Cinderella, set to music by Rossini. The delightfully humorous performance was targeted at children, who made up over half of the audience.

On my fifth day, Friday April 29, I went to the historic Wawel Castle.

The archaeological remains in the Wawel Castle courtyard

I toured the ‘Lost Wawel’ archaeological museum, which had an interesting way of placing the display cases above the archaeological remains.

The displays in the Lost Wawel museum

Afterwards I walked around the Jewish ghetto area.

A surviving portion of the ghetto wall

That evening I had dinner with Elzbieta again.

On my sixth day, Saturday April 30, Elzbieta showed me around the Jagiellonian University campus. She has conducted extensive excavations in the area.

Elzbieta Dubis showing on a scale model of the old city of Krakow where she has excavated

I also took a tour of the historic Collegium Maius building at Jagiellonian University, led by a wise-cracking tour guide, and that afternoon I took a tour bus to the Wieliczka salt mines on the outskirts of the city. Back in Krakow that evening, I hung out until my train left at 10:00 pm to take me on to Bamberg. During my days in Krakow, I also put in a few hours working on my catalogue entries for the Metropolitan Museum exhibition.

Warsaw April 20-24

After my two public lectures, I stayed on in Warsaw for a few more days to do some site-seeing, since this was my first trip to Poland. On Wednesday, April 20 I went to the Wilanowski (Villa Nova) Palace to the south of the city in the morning.

The Wilanowski Palace

In the afternoon I walked around the University area in the north and rode around on public transportation to some areas outside the city center. I was very impressed by the public transportation in Warsaw, with its buses, trams and subway. I almost never had to wait more than ten minutes for a bus.

The next day Thursday April 21, I walked around the Lazienkowski Park in the city center with its various palaces and pavilions. The trees were in full bloom, making the extensive public parks of the city especially attractive.

A tree in the Lazienkowski Park

The Egyptian Pavilion in the Lazienkowski Park

A statue of Chopin in the Lazienkowski Park

In the evening I went to the National Opera for a performance of Puccini’s Turandot. At first I was hesitant to attend, since I had just seen Turandot in Riga a few days earlier, but the staging of this performance could not have been more different. The performance was given a sparse modernist touch that was so bizarre as to be off-putting. For example, when Chalaf strikes the gong at the end of Act I, there was no gong on the empty stage for him to strike, and Turandot’s posing of her three riddles was staged as a private interview with no witnesses! I greatly preferred the performance in Riga with its normal staging.

The next day, Friday April 22, was Good Friday, so many public places were closed for the Easter weekend. I made travel arrangements in the morning and walked around the city center some more, especially the area to the north of the University and royal castle and the area of the Jewish ghetto. The course of the ghetto wall from the Second World War is marked by inscribed bricks in a few stretches, although it is difficult to follow the complete circuit of the wall.

The course of the ghetto wall

Also monuments and plaques commemorating the Warsaw Uprising are all over the place in the city center.

A plaque commemorating the Warsaw Uprising

On Saturday April 23, I went to the Botanical Gardens in the morning, although here it was too early in the spring for the gardens to be in their prime. During the day, I repeatedly noticed people carrying baskets of food or other items to be blessed at church services, a special Polish Easter custom.

Sunday April 24 was Easter, but I did not do anything special beyond walking around some more. Most everywhere was closed for the Easter weekend, so on Saturday and Sunday I mostly stayed in my hotel room and got started on the revisions to Gustaf Dalman’s second volume about Palestinian customs.

The weather during my stay in Warsaw was remarkably warm and sunny with clear blue skies, until the last couple of days. In general I had a delightful time. I had had ideas of Poland being significantly less economically well-off than western Europe, but at least in central Warsaw that was not in evidence.

Warsaw April 16-19

After my three day stay in Riga, in the morning of Saturday April 16 I went to the airport for my 11:30 flight to Warsaw, which arrived at 12:15. Tomasz Walisewski and his wife Ewa met me. Tomasz had arranged for me to come to give some lectures about archaeology at the University of Warsaw. They had been at ACOR in Amman in the fall of 2010.

That first afternoon, they drove me around the city, before dropping me off at a university-run hotel.  The hotel was fine, except the building did not have internet available. Finding an internet place was to prove a challenge during my stay in Warsaw. That evening I walked around the city center.

The next day Sunday April 17 I walked around some more. I went to a sequence of shopping malls with the mission of finding a new pair of shoes. The glitzy Zlote Tarasy mall near the train station and the Arkadia mall to the north, and the others, were indistinguishable from shopping malls anywhere else in the world.

On Monday April 18 Tomasz took me to the historic royal castle where Anna, an archaeology student gave us a great tour. Tomasz and I then walked around, before going to the university.

The area around the royal palace and the university is especially attractive. It is an extended pedestrian area flanked by lovely buildings, so well rebuilt since the destruction of the Second World War that it is now a UNESCO world heritage site.

The Royal Castle

At the University I gave the first of my two public lectures at the Institute of Archaeology about The Christians in Palestine after the Muslim Conquest. Afterwards I had dinner with the head of the Near Eastern Archaeology program at the Institute, Jolanta Mlynarczyk, who has been working at the Byzantine site of Susita in Israel, Tomasz and other guests.

In Poland I several times had the drink known as Kvas, made from bread, which I had first come across in Latvia. The menu of the restaurant we went to translated Kvas as ‘bread acid’.

 The restaurant menu offering Bread Acid

The next day, Tuesday April 19, I went to the university, where a university archaeology student showed me around the campus.

The University of Warsaw campus

 Then Anna, the student from yesterday, took me to the National Museum, where Jolanta’s husband, who works in the Museum, showed me around the galleries devoted to the Polish excavations of the medieval Christian site of Faras in Sudan. Then I gave my second public lecture at the National Museum about The Archaeology of Early Christianity, The Jordanian Contribution. As a friendly gesture, the people in attendance signed a copy of my lecture announcement. I find Polish handwriting difficult to read, so I am unable to decipher many of the names. 

The names of the people who attended my public lecture

Riga April 13-15

I took a 1:30 am flight from Amman to Riga, Latvia. It turns out that Air Baltic recently started flights twice a week between Riga and Amman, at a price substantially lower than any other flights to Europe. I was on my way to Warsaw, and having never been in the Baltic region before, I decided to spend three days in Riga, before my onward flight. 
 
The flight was less than half full, so I was able to get some sleep stretched over three seats, before the flight arrived in Riga at 6:00 am.

I took a cheap minivan bus to the city center, a travel option that I have not seen mentioned on any Riga tourism website; curiously I was the only man among the several dozens of women passengers who got on and off the bus on their way to their early morning work.


I checked into a nice hotel in the center of the historic district and then walked around the city center. I went to an interesting Central Market for produce housed in a row of huge halls, originally built as hangers for zeppelins.

One of the market halls

Also in the city center there is an amusement park sacrilegiously close to the main Orthodox cathedral of the city.

The amusement park and cathedral

That evening I went to the Latvian National Opera for a performance of Lady of the Camellias, a new ballet by Tiit Harm, set to music by Franz Liszt.

The next day, April 14, I did further sight-seeing in Riga and went to the rather small National Museum of Art. The city center has a historic core with lovely buildings and there are a few blocks of Art Nouveau style buildings to the north.

Some Art Nouveau buildings

One building that served as the former US embassy has a plaque commemorating future president John Kennedy’s stay there on a student summer trip in 1939.

The former US embassy with the JFK plaque to the center right

But outside of the city center the architecture turns run-down pretty fast. One particularly grim neighborhood is the former Jewish part of town, whose population was killed off quickly at the start of the Second World War.

Riga’s holocaust memorial

That second evening I attended a performance at the Latvian National Opera of the ballet A Mid Summer Nights Dream by Felix Mendelssohn.

The next day April 15 I spent part of the day doing more sight-seeing in Riga, but while there were still plenty of other things to see, I was not in the mood for such museums as the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia (World War Two and the Soviet Period). I instead  spent the bulk of the day doing some final revisions to Gustaf Dalman’s Palestinian Customs volume. It was mostly sunny during my stay, but spring was just starting, and overnight lows were still dropping to around freezing.

One puzzle in the city was the obscure markers for the men’s and women’s public restrooms.

The markers for the men’s and women’s restrooms

That evening I attended a performance at the Latvian National Opera of the opera Turandot by Puccini. So I got my fill of high culture, with three consecutive evening performances of top notch quality.

The Latvian National Opera building