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