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.