Worms

Today I had the pleasure of taking a road trip to Worms with one of my professors, Dr. Klän, a classmate, Thomas, and two guests - vicars visiting from South Africa. Highlights were St. Peter's Cathedral, the Luther monument, and the Jewish quarter on the edge of the Altstadt by the city wall.



Roughly: "Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me, Amen." (above)


L-R: John Hus (seated), Martin Luther (standing, with "die Bibel"), Philip Melanchthon (above)

Limburg & Königstein

The weekend after Thanksgiving, I got to spend some time with my sister-in-law, Michelle, and her friend, Kim. We took a nice drive through the Taunus up to a town called Limburg. Limburg is well-known for its remarkably well-preserved Altstadt with twisting, cobblestone Medieval streets and its beautiful Cathedral. An added bonus was that their Weinachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) had just opened. On the way back to Oberursel, we took in the view from the top of the tower in the castle ruins high above the village of Königstein.

Erntedankfest

Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving Day is possibly my favorite holiday. The focus is on three of my favorite things: family, friends, and food. Over the last ten years, I think I've spent two or three Thanksgivings at home in Minnesota. What I've learned is that when you travel and live away from family, the definition of "family" expands. Friends become as close as family. My friend Lee and I had a stretch of four of five Thanksgiving days spent together in three different states and one foreign country. (More than one of those involved a Thanksgiving morning trip to the Super Walmart.) This year I have to thank my friends the Ottos, Andreas and Andrea, for hosting a feast for us Americans (both of us), and a few German and South African friends of mine here at the Hochschule who have studied in the U.S. Andrea put together quite a spread of food! (And, some good German bier, of course!)

Peace to you. Thank you for your friendship.

Altkönig II

The remnants of Autumn still linger at the Hochschule. (I spent all afternoon Friday raking.) But when you get higher up into the hills overlooking Oberursel, several inches of snow remain from last week. Today, Andreas, a classmate, and I took a quick hike up to the top of Altkönig. It was brisk at lower elevations, but downright cold on top. As we got within 50-75 meters of the hilltop, we walked out of the trees into a "Winter Wunderland." I hope all is well. Peace to you.





Today's Box Score
Total Distance: approx. 15km
Elevation Gain: approx. 510 meters
Total Time: 3 hours 20 minutes
Glasses of Glühwein upon Return: 2

Falkenstein und Königstein

It was another beautiful, brisk day to hike in the Taunus forest. The temperature hovered just above freezing. The snow and ice that remained in the trees rained down around me for the six or eight kilometers I hiked west from Oberursel. The cool air and grey skies presented little traffic on the trails for a Saturday. I love the contrast between the red pine needles covering the trail and the snow . . . .


Castle Ruins at Falkenstein, a village just to the west of Oberursel; this castle was occupied from the 13th through the 18th centuries, when it was rubbled by the French . . . .


Castle ruins at Königstein, just to the west of Falkenstein; they were working on the castle ruins today, so, sadly, I wasn't allowed to wander inside . . . .


Sign of a good day . . . .


I've been saying that my best friend in Deutschland has been my dictionary, but I think, as my German gets better and I spend more time on the trails, that my Vasque Sundowners are taking a shot at the title . . . .

Peace to you.

Hünerberg (15.11.2007)

Two weeks ago, the other American, Ryan, and I were having wine with the Rector here at the Hochschule. He had pulled out a "Wanderkarte" (trail map) of the Hochtaunus forest and was showing us some of the points of interest in this area. This area has some remarkable Roman and Celtic ruins. One particular site is a Celtic ringwall on top of a hill called, Hünerberg. "Hünerberg," he said, "I forget what the word is in English . . ." "Hünerberg," I asked, "you mean like a chicken?"

Well, after consulting the dictionary, turns out a "Hüner" is not a chicken, but a giant. In my defense, the German word for "chicken" is "Huhn." The difference in pronounciation is slight. So it was not, in fact, "Chicken Mountain," but "Giant Mountain." Not that it's huge. It's not. It has something to do with a legend involving large people.

This afternoon, under a grey sky and intermittent snow flurries, I bundled up and headed out the door for Hünerberg. I plotted a circular route of about 7 kilometers. The elevation of the Hochschule is about 285 meters. The elevation of Hünerberg is 375 meters. [Altkönig (see my DD.MM blog) is 798 meters.] It was a beautiful hike; the air was brisk and brush bore the remnants of Tuesday night's snowfall.

Hünerberg is essentially a rock-crusted hill set apart from Altkönig on the southern slope off the Taunus toward Frankfurt. I approached in the shade on the east side of the hill. It was not yet 4:00, but the sun was rapidly making its way toward the horizon. The shadows in the snow and the rays of sunlight on the trees made for unique surroundings. Just that minor change in elevation - less than 100 meters - from the Hochschule left the air cool enough that the ground was still covered with a light dusting of snow. The narrow trail testified to slight traffic the previous two days. As I approached, a lone mountain biker was silhouetted on the hilltop; but by the time I got to the top, I had Hünerberg to myself. My reward for pulling myself away from my MacBook this afternoon was a spectacular 270-degree panorama of the Taunus and the village of Königstein (west of Oberursel). Through the bare trees on Altkönig, a blanket of snow was visible. To the west, Kronberg was recognizeable by the castle that dominates the village. To the southwest I could see the sprawl of Frankfurt. With the sun rapidly setting, I reluctantly turned and headed back toward the trail. (But not after taking quite a few pictures. I was so captured by the scenery that I was afraid I might tumble down the hillside for chasing the sunset through the viewfinder on my camera.)

Not wanting to take the same way back that I'd come, I cut back east toward Oberursel. Less than 3km later, after trekking through a pine forest that kept me on the lookout for gingerbread houses, I arrived at the Hohemark train station. Two stops later, I disembarked for the familiar shortcut up the trail through the woods back to the Hochschule.

Peace to you, Jake

Today's Box Score
Photos: 115
Attractive German Women Who Spoke Perfect English: 1
Chicken Sightings: 0
Giant Sightings: 0

For to the snow he says, "Fall on the earth." Job 37.6

There are various assertions as to the number of words for "snow" used by Eskimos. I've heard estimates in the dozens, even over a hundred. There's only one word for snow in German: Schnee. Later tonight, we'll toast our first snowfall with a nice, warm glass of Glühwein. Peace to you, Jake

Cell Phones & Bibles: A Reflection on a Sweet Podcast

I listened to one of Leonard Sweet’s “Napkin Scribbles” on my iPod this afternoon as I took the U-bahn to Starbucks. His podcast was called, “Cell Phones & Bibles” (from 10.14.07). As I listened, I recalled an awakening I had one afternoon in “Lutheran Mind” in Spring, 2006. (Not that I had been sleeping in class.) We had a guest lecturer, Dr. Timothy Saleska, that day. Dr. Saleska introduced his topic and then asked us to pull out our Bibles. I suddenly realized, and I wasn’t alone, that I didn’t have my Bible. Even worse, I realized that more often than not, I didn’t carry a Bible. I vowed a change.

Sweet recounts a pastoral conference he spoke at recently. He observed at the beginning of his presentation the majority of pastors fumbling around with cell phones, turning them off and putting them away – himself included. But then, a moment later, when he asked them to pull out their Bibles, there was silence. Now, he asks: what if we treated our Bibles the same way we treat our cell phones? Here’s a list he found online:

What if we carried it around in our purses or pockets?

What if we flipped through it several times a day?

What if we turned-back to go get it if we forgot it?

What if we used it to receive messages from the text?

What if we treated it like we couldn’t live without it?

What if we gave it to kids as gifts?

What if we used it when we traveled?

What if we used it in case of emergency?

“Hmmm,” he says, “wouldn’t it make you wonder?” He concluded that, “We need to be as in touch and as . . . almost a new body part . . . as our cell phones are, our Bibles need to be.”

You can find Sweet’s “Napkin Scribbles” at www.leonardsweet.com.

Peace to you, Jake

A Breach in the Sky, Oberursel

Our weather here blows in from the Northwest to the Southeast. From the stoop outside my door, if I look left, I can watch the clouds roll down from the Taunus toward Frankfurt. This afternoon, as I was walking toward the laundry, I could see the sliver disc of the sun behind the steel-grey sky, and thought it looked as though it might possibly break through. As I walked back outside from the laundry room, the wet driveway was bathed in sunlight for the first time all day, perhaps the last two days. As I reached the top of my stoop, the clouds appeared to be racing to plug the breach in the sky. I quickly grabbed my camera. Here are the results.




Then it began to rain . . . .

Bad Homburg

This past Thursday, Ryan (the other American exchange student) and I hopped the train to the other side of the valley to Bad Homburg and the Auslanderamt (the place where foreigners go to register). When we finished, we took a walk through the town. Bad Homburg is a little bit bigger than Oberursel and has, per capita, the highest concentration of millionaires in Germany. They still benefit, apparently, from the spas and baths frequented by the Kaiser over 100 years ago. We poked our heads into two churches, Sankt Marien (Saint Mary's), a Catholic church, and the Evangelische Erlöserkirche (Evangelical Church of the Redeemer).

Sankt Marien. I loved the way the shadows played on the wall of this side chapel. It was incredibly peaceful.


Evangelische Erlöserkirche. Regrettably, I didn't get any good shots of the outside, as it was raining. But the inside of this church was absolutely stunning. Millions of tiny tiles formed mosaic on every vertical surface and the ceiling in this Basilica-style house of worship. The light on the golden tiles was transfixing. It would likely be difficult to concentrate on the worship service here - it was almost sensory overload. Thanks, Kaiser!

das Limes

The Limit. The northernmost reaches of the Holy Roman Empire extended just a few kilometers north of us, here in the Taunus Region. This afternoon, Helmut and I decided to go for a hike along "das Limes." This wasn't very German of us, however, as our spontaneity could have been better planned. We missed the train to Bad Homburg by 2 or 3 minutes, causing a delay of more than 20 minutes at the Oberursel Bahnhof as we waited for the next train. [After about 15 minutes, we observed that Bad Homburg is perhaps only 5 kilometers west of Oberursel - so we could have walked the distance in about the same time.] From Bad Homburg, we took a bus up into the hills to a Roman fortification at Saalburg. Here, we missed the last allowed entrance into the fort by ten minutes. This possibly worked out to our advantage, as much of our hike was spent in near darkness as the daylight quickly faded. I had forgotten that last week we moved our clocks back one hour, giving us less light at the end of the day. But it was a nice, quiet walk through the woods. Das Limes is more of an earthen berm than a wall with a ditch on the "bad guy" side. We spent most of the afternoon (arguably where we belonged) on the barbarian side of the wall. We covered the approximately eight kilometers (mostly uphill) in just under two hours. Upon arrival at the bus stop on the end of our route, we observed that we had missed a bus by not more than five minutes. But again, this worked out to our advantage, as it afforded us the oportunity to enjoy a nice, cold Pilsner ("Pils," auf Deutsch) at the Gasthaus on the corner before the next bus came.

Reformationstag

This work is perched above the door to the administrative building here on campus in Oberursel, Germany.


Sole gratia, sole fide, sole scriptura.

Trage Christus in die Welt

This small Catholic church was right off the main square, or Hauptmarkt, in Trier. They had a small courtyard outside the door of the church between the church and the square. As you exited "out into the world," this sign was above the door. Translation: "Carry Christ into the world." The sign reminded me of the, "You are now entering the mission field," sign at my home church in Texas. I know it can almost sound cliche, but that sign always served as a reminder to me. I like how my friend David used to phrase it at the end of a worship service at the CRAVE in St. Louis: "The service is ended, but let your worship continue. Go in peace." Trage Christus in die Welt.

Trier

Trier has the distinction of being the oldest city in Germany, having been continuously settled for more than 2000 years. (Not to be confused with New Trier, Minnesota.)

The Trier Cathedral.

The Constantine Basilica. A spectacular Roman building from the 4th century. Currently an Evangelical Church.

This piece was situated just in front of the pulpit in the Basilica. I was fascinated by it; I must have taken more than 40 photos. It's a space dedicated to silent prayer, with stools situated around it and a place to buy candles. The text is from Matthew 28.20b: "Jesu spricht: Und siehe, ich bin bei euch alle Tage bis an der Welt Ende." [Jesus said, "And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age (ESV)."]

Porta Nigra. "The best preserved Roman structure in Germany." And Napoleon wanted to tear it down.

Bromo

I had the pleasure this weekend of reconnecting with an old friend.

I was constantly reminded how deficient I've been in keeping up with many of my friends, but also, how good it is to see them again. We spent the weekend reminiscing and catching up. I hadn't seen Bromo since February of 2000, at Fort Benning, Georgia. He's been living in Germany since 2001. This was the first time I've met his wife, Michaela (they were married in September, 2006).

I've kept up with Bromo through the regular updates in the "Don Letters" - compiled by St. John's University Alumni Chaplain, Father Don Talafous. I've been in Germany for nearly two months, but just last week looked him up. We had discussed getting together this weekend, before he heads back to Minnesota for Thanksgiving. Friday afternoon he called me up and asked if I could come down this weekend - this evening, perhaps? "I can be out the door in an hour," I said.

der Fuchstanz

The Fox Dance. I was sitting in my room after classes this afternoon, when "cabin fever" got the best of me. I threw a couple Nalgene bottles, some chocolate, and my rain jacket into my backpack and headed out the door. Just up the street from the Hochschule, the street ends and the Taunus forest begins. I walked down the hill, hopped the U-bahn to a trailhead a couple stops up, and walked into the woods. I decided to try a slight variation on the route I had taken two weeks ago. Before I entered the woods, I saw a display that read "7 C" (not quite 45 degrees Farenheit). It was a bit brisk, but not bad; refreshing, really. Being mid-afternoon on a Wednesday, I had the trails mostly to myself. The trees were beautiful. I love the contrast of Autumn colors against dark green pines. And, I don't mind the overcast Autumn skies at all. As I gained elevation, the temperature slowly dropped.

Now, I had heard about the Fuchstanz, but the name didn't register when I saw it on the signpost. Two hours and about 7-8 km later, the forest opened on a crossroads between several trails and revealed a spot two other Americans, independently, had told me about. Though neither could tell me exactly how to get there, they each had told me about their affinity for hiking in the woods above Oberursel and about this restaurant that can only be reached by trail. (Apparently, the proprieters are allowed to take autos back there for logistical reasons, but the rest of us must go "zum Fuß.") The place is called "Fuchstanz," or "Fox Dance," auf Englisch. It's really two restaurants situated across the trail from eachother. One called, "Fuchstanz," and one called, "zum Fuchstanz." I chose the shorter moniker.

Sure enough, inside were several stuffed fox and fox pelts. Inside I also found my first cup of Glühwein this Autumn. Glühwein is a great cold weather drink. I think it's also called "hot mulled wine," in English. Red wine based, with fruit juice and spices, served hot. It really hits the spot on a cold day. The restaurant was empty except for the proprieters, two old German men, and an old (presumably) German dog. After my cup of Glühwein, I headed back out into the brisk air. I was ready to head back down hill, with a warm belly and a smile. It was significantly colder on top of the hill. [There's an elevation gain of 250-300 meters (close to 900 feet).] The air was cold enough to make your chin numb and your pee steam. (Sorry for that imagery, but the guys from northern climates know what I'm talking about.) With that, enjoy the photos! Good stuff.

Paris and Back in 26 Hours

Saturday morning my alarm went of at 3:30 am. Breakfast at 4:00. Then nine of us - six South Africans, two Americans and one German - piled into a rented van and drove seven hours to Paris to watch South Africa versus England in the Rugby World Cup championship match. After a quick walking tour of the city - the Notre Dame Cathedral, a walk through the Louvre (we didn't go inside), the Arc d'Triumph - we finished at the Eifel Tower and hung out in the public viewing area. In a small enclave in front of the large screen, about 50 or so South African fans reveled ina sea of 20,000 drunken Englishmen. But, if I learned anything about rugby football, its fans are fun-loving and, for the most part, civil. Not civil in the sense that includes sober, though. I've never seen so much beer consumed or wasted (sprayed in the air and doused on each other). But, after the match, every English fan we encountered greeted us with "congratulations, well played." I can't imagine American football fans treating rivals with such civility. Following the match, we retuned to the van. Apparenly it went smoothely; I slept the whole way. We arrived home 26 hours after we departed. Paris was beautiful. Interesting. But, dirtier than I expected, and many of the cathedrals we visited were sadly run down. At any rate, Paris is still a beautiful city. One might spend a year there and still not experience everything properly.