Pfingstmontag (Pentecost Monday)

Pentecost in Germany is a four-day weekend, with worship services not just on Sunday, but Monday, too. Today, we foreigners - Hilbert, Ryan, Rachel and I - were invited to an outdoor service at Hessen Park. Our friend, Hanno, was playing trumpet with a brass ensemble they had... assembled. Hessen Park is one of these interactive historical parks, with blacksmiths, bakers, and shops. What's unique about Hessen Park is that here they've collected and reassembled dozens of buildings from the 16th to 18th centuries. These are the typical timber-framed buildings (Fachwerkhäuser) indigenous to Germany. What always catches my eye with the old Fachwerkhäuser are the interesting textures and colors - I love the detail in the old stone and woodwork and the colors...

Frankfurt (03.04.2008)

On this partly cloudy, moderate day - with a few intermittent showers - I spent the afternoon in Frankfurt with our new Brazilian exchange student, Hilberto. Hilberto speaks no English and I speak no Portuguese, so we get by in German. Hope you enjoy the photos; in this series, you'll see Frankfurt, the Dom Sankt Bartholomäus (the cathedral), Römerplatz, and the Paulskirche.







Peace to you.

Ort der Stille

Ort der Stille. Literally, "Place of Tranquility". Tucked away in Frankfurt's downtown lies this unique little place. Adjacent to the Liebfrauenkirche sits a Franciscan convent - and between them, amid the "sensory overload" that is Frankfurt, is the small courtyard called the "Place of Tranquility". If you can get over the shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary, it is a nice place to sit and simply breathe, pray, or reflect. It's amazing, once you turn the corner from the cobblestone sidewalk - a mere block from the Hauptwache, one of the busiest train stations in Frankfurt - how the sounds of the city melt away.







(My friend, Thomas, from South Africa. If any of my friends from St. Louis are reading this, he will be studying at the Sem in 2008/09!)

Peace to you.

Frankfurt am Main

Dreikönigskirche (10.02.2008)

This morning, Thomas and I accompanied Roland to the Dreikönigskirche ("Epiphany" - literally, "three kings"), a large Protestant church on the banks of the Main River. Apparently, the guy who was the organist in this church from the 50s to the 80s was a world-renown Bach scholar . . . and this ginormous organ was a gift by the city of Frankfurt to the church. And, incredibly, this famous organist, by the end of his tenure, was almost completely blind, so he played all Bach's works from memory! Roland said the combination of the history behind the instrument and the sheer size and quality was like "being handed the keys to a Ferrari." The hymns selected for this morning were a treat - as well as the Bach pieces Roland played as a prelude and postlude. After church, Thomas and I took advantage of the gorgeous weather and walked along the Main and crossed on a footbridge to the main part of downtown Frankfurt.

Bundesliga Aktion (08.02.2008)

Friday evening, after we had taken Roland's uncle to the airport, Roland, Helmut and I met our friends Thomas, Mathias and Andreas at the Stadion for my first-ever Bundesliga Fußball match! It's funny, it was Andreas' idea (Eintracht Frankfurt is his favorite team), but he was the only German in the group, as the rest of my friends are South African. Our seats were in the sixth row on one of the corners, opposite the fenced-in area where they keep all the hooligans. I've not been to a major college football game (I don't count the Gophers in the Metrodome), but that's what I might try to compare it to. The "hooligans" had drums, crazy huge flags and sang through the whole game. We were treated to a 2-1 victory. And, after the game, the beer drinking and singing spilled outside the stadium and lasted the whole way back to the Hauptbahnhof in Frankfurt, where we changed trains back to Oberursel.