Bamberg August 1-16

In the first half of August I continued to live in Bamberg. I continued to work mostly on the sites and monuments of Jerusalem project, concentrating  on accounts of western pilgrims and travelers to the city and their descriptions of the Masjid al-Aqsa compound.

Teaching at the university ended at the end of July, but exam period lasted for the following two weeks. Beginning about halfway through the semester, the university libraries have been heavily used during the day time to the point that virtually all the available desks have been in use, so I shifted my schedule to work in the libraries mostly in the evenings up to the extended closing hour of midnight.

The theology library filled to capacity. That’s my computer on the desk at the far right end of the row.

One trip I made out of the city was on August 2, when I went to Nürnberg to meet Ute Verstegen, a professor of Christian archaeology at the University of Erlangen/Nürnberg, and Sebastian, a student of hers, for lunch. I had most recently met Ute at the conference last month in Heidelberg.

Ute, Sebastian and me in Nürnberg

That day was the first really sunny day in quite some time. July had been remarkably cold, cloudy and rainy, which continued in August as well. With daily highs mostly in the 60s or at best low 70s, I had to wear a jacket around half of the days.

After meeting Ute and Sebastian, the day was too sunny to return directly to Bamberg, so I stopped off in Erlangen, half way to Bamberg, to go to the park around the university and the botanical gardens.

A flower bed in the Erlangen park

The Botanical Gardens in Erlangen

Bamberg has many attractive features, among them the fresh produce market along the main pedestrian street in the center of the old city.

Some of the fresh produce vendors in Bamberg

Bamberg also has an active city-wide recycling program. Every two weeks is yellow sack day for plastic and metal, which need to be put in yellow sacks for collection. Blue bins are for paper.

Yellow sack day in Bamberg. My apartment is the one with the green shutters in the center of the photograph.

My current stay in Germany came to an end, when on the morning of Tuesday August 16 I took a train to  Frankfurt for a flight back to Amman, Jordan. The least expensive ticket was with Baltic Air, which entailed a first leg to Riga and then a quick transfer to the flight on to Amman. That was a few hours longer than a direct flight, but significantly cheaper.