Tom's Tidings

Sabbatical Trip Retrospective: A Photo Exhibit

2010-01-06T19:54:00.000-08:00

It's been nearly two months since I returned home from my sabbatical trip, and this week I'm mounting a photo exhibit at the House of Hope Presbyterian Church in St. Paul, MN, featuring some visual highlights of my journey. The exhibit will be on display from January 10 to 31, and what follows is a sampling of some of the photos that are included. (Certain ones of these 11 x14 and 8x10 photos are now available to purchase for $50 apiece, all proceeds going to help support the Mission & Benevolence budget of the House of Hope Presbyterian Church. If interested please contact me at tomf@hohchurch.org. Thank you!)

Tom F-S at Dunnottar Castle, Scotland

Scotsment in caps & tweeds at a Scottish Country Fair in Argyllshire.

Castle Eilean Donan, on the way to the Isle of Skye in Scotland.

Falconer at Dunrobin Castle near Golspie, Scotland.

Porpoise in the Aegean Sea in Greece.

Bad Gastein, Austria, from the train.

The Zeppelin at Friedrichshafen, Germany.

Naughty little boy in Trieste, Italy.

Hoch und Deutschmeisters band leader at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna.

The assistant band conductor!

Mutt and Jeff, members of the Hoch und Deutschmeisters Band, Vienna.

Some fans of the Hoch und Deutschmeisters Band in Vienna.

Another fan of the band, in Vienna

A trail I hiked in the Vienna Woods.

View of the Bohemian countryside from the highest tower of Kasperk Castle in the Czech Repubic.

Entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, in Poland.

Bones in the ossuary at Halstatt, Austria

Prayer candles in St. Stephan's Cathedral in Vienna.

The Gosausee in the Austrian Alps.

South African woman singing at the dedication service of the Malungeni Church.

Vienna at twilight.

Malungeni Church Dedication Service

2009-11-19T14:48:00.000-08:00

The long awaited dedication of the new Presbyterian Church in Malungeni, South Africa, happened last Sunday, Nov. 15. It was quite an occasion, as the photos attest. It had been raining all weekend, and looked like it was going to be a soggy occasion, particularly difficult as the crowd was expected to be of overflow size, with many having to sit and stand outside of the church building. But prayers were answered as the rains held off on Sunday, and about 250 people of all ages attended the 4 hour worship service.

Rev. Spiwo Xapile, with his wife and daughter, in Malungeni on Nov. 15

The interior of the sanctuary of the Malungeni Presbyterian Church

The South African pastors and elders with Tom Forster-Smith, Malungeni, Nov. 15

It started off with a meal of 16 sheep slaughtered especially for the occasion. VIP guests (like me) had to eat plates of sheep's liver and other organs, like hearts and kidneys. I managed a few bites, and then, as my stomach churned, I quickly headed for outdoors, where traditional Xhosa dancers led the procession down the dirt road to the church building.

Appetizing, isn't it?!

Xhosa dancers

At the church the moderator of the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa, Rev. Makandawire from Zambia, unveiled the cornerstone with the church's name and the House of Hope's name inscribed on it.

Then we entered the sanctuary and for the next 4 hours heard numerous ministers preaching and giving greetings and making remarks, accompanied by a lot of congregational singing and dancing. There is no such thing as a "frozen chosen" Presbyterian in Malungeni, South Africa... every hymn is accompanied by lots of dancing and rhythmic moving.

Even the children hung in there for four hours, though most of them sat outside the sanctuary in the overflow seating area for the occasion. These are the next generation of Presbyterians in Malungeni, for whom we have helped to build a church. Thanks for your support for this project of international mission partnership that has been such a focus of our efforts over the past five years. As you can see, your support has been well worth the effort!

Greetings from Dubrovnik!

2009-11-06T00:53:00.000-08:00

It's pouring rain in Dubrovnik today, a day that makes me understand the conditions that Shakespeare gave his stage-setting in the play, "The Tempest," about a shipwreck on the coast of what was then called Illyria, but today is Croatia. Lucy and I have had a couple days of gorgeous weather at the beginning of our week here, however, starting Oct. 31, and the town is a treasure chest of baroque architecture, set on a stunningly beautiful stretch of the Dalmatian Coast. We've rented an apartment for the week, right in the heart of the Old Town, and are using it as our base to see the town and the surrounding area. We spent one day taking a boat trip to the Elaphiti (Deer) Islands in the Adriatic Sea not far from here,and found them pretty much closed up for the season, as is much of the area, now that it's November (and today, with sheets of rain coming down, and umbrella-destroying gusts of wind, I can see why!)

Dubrovnik: the Old Town, from the Lovrijenac Fortress.

The "Stradun," or "Main Street," of Dubrovnik's Old Town

The Old Port ("Stara Luka") of Dubrovnik

The main street of the Old Town of Dubrovnik, entirely made out of marble, at evening.

Then Wednesday, 11/4, we drove to Montenegro from Dubrovnik, and followed the road around the Bay of Kotor to the town of Kotor, a truly spectacular place. The town, like Dubrovnik, was destroyed by an earthquake in 1667, and had another one in 1979, but most of the old city wall is still there, along with lots of old buildings. We returned to Dubrovnik that night, driving around the other side of the Bay of Kotor, past two little islands that formerly were monasteries, but now are uninhabited. They almost look like little boats, gliding on the smooth waters of the bay, which with its steep mountainous sides is really a fjord.

Monastery islands in the Bay of Kotor, Montenegro

View from the fortifications on the hills above Kotor, Montenegro

Yesterday, 11/5, we drove three hours each way to Bosnia-Herzegovina and visited the city of Mostar, where the famous 400 year old bridge, linking the Croat and Muslim sides of the city, has been rebuilt after being destroyed by Croat shelling in 1993 during the Bosnian war. There are still many abandoned and bullet-scarred buildings in Mostar, and the economy is obviously in pretty bad shape. Several of the Bosnian people we talked to in the shops said they just wanted to emigrate to the United States, because life was still so difficult for them in Bosnia. But we were impressed with their openness and their friendly welcome. I doubt that they get many Americans like us coming to Bosnia, unless they're connected to the military or to the U.N. relief agencies, which were quite in evidence in Mostar.

The rebuilt bridge in Mostar, spanning the Neretva River, between the Croatian Catholic and Bosniak Muslim sides of the town.

Lucy in Mostar.

Tomorrow morning, Nov. 7, we have to be up at 4:30 a.m. to meet the bus to the Dubrovnik Airport, which leaves the road above the Old Town at 5:15, for a 6:40 a.m. flight to Zagreb and then points beyond. Lucy is flying back to Minnesota, and I am headed to Venice, and then South Africa, where I will attend the dedication service of our partner church (which our House of Hope volunteers have been helping to build) in Malungeni on Sunday, Nov. 15. I'll update you next from there!

Back to Vienna after 10 days in Eastern Europe

2009-10-29T14:38:00.000-07:00

I returned yesterday to Vienna after 10 days on the road in Eastern Europe, going to Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. I visited friends in Budapest for a couple of days, and then took an overnight train to Krakow, Poland, where I spent a night in that wonderful old city.

Night-time train station scene in Bratislava, Slovakia. I stopped here around midnight on my way from Budapest to Krakow.

The next day I did a roundtrip by bus to Auschwitz, which is about 50 miles from Krakow, and it was a sobering experience to visit the former concentration and extermination camps (Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau) which are near the Polish town named Oswiecim. Though I had seen films and photos of Auschwitz, I wasn't prepared for the huge scale of the Birkenau extermination camp, a veritible death factory on a mass scale. Though the barracks and crematoria were destroyed by the Nazis prior to their abandonment of the camp as the Russians approached in January 1945, several of the barracks have been recreated, and the railroad siding where the box cars of people were unloaded is still there, along with the miles of barbed-wire fence and watchtowers. We also went into the barracks and the one remaining gas chamber at the Auschwitz - I concentration camp, which was used for part of the set in the movie "Schindler's List." How human beings could be so cruel to one another is hard to imagine, but to see the evidence of the genocide that happened there is something I never will forget.

Entrance gateway to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the extermination camp where 1.1 million Jews, Gypsies, Poles, political prisoners and other "social deviates" were mass murdered by the Nazis from 1942-1945. It was a haunting place to see.

Krakow is a beautiful and well-preserved old city. If you ever want to experience what "old world" Europe looked like, I would highly recommend going there. It has a huge main square, with quite a few of the medieval-era buildings still there, some dating from the 1400's. I found the Polish people I interacted with to be uniformly friendly and hospitable, in contrast to the somewhat more sophisticated, urbane, and (yes, let's say it) "snotty" Viennese people I've been around for the past two months. It's the contrast between Western Europe, so advanced and developed, and Eastern Europe, trying so hard to catch up, but still with a long way to go, but not as jaded and privileged as their Western neighbors.

One of the old Jewish synagogues on a foggy morning in Krakow

Two older ladies on the main square of Krakow, Poland

I then returned to Hungary, and traveled from Budapest with a friend who is a Hungarian Reformed Church pastor to Romania, where she is working on her doctorate degree at the Reformed Theological College in the Transylvanian city of Cluj, also known as Kolozsvar in Hungarian. Transylvania has changed hands many times throughout its history between Hungary and Romania. It is currently part of Romania, but has a significant Hungarian ethnic minority living there still. The land has been degraded by decades of Communist mismanagement and repression, and even now, 20 years after the end of Communism in Romania and most of Eastern Europe, the signs of economic mismanagement and environmental degradation are very apparent. The people are working hard to catch up to the West, but they still have a long way to go. Frankly, after 3 days in Romania I was never so glad to leave a place as when we crossed the border back into Hungary. I have a lot of sympathy and respoect for the good Hungarian Reformed church people I met in Transylvania who are trying to do a lot with very few resources. I'm just glad I don't have to live there with them!

The gray, pre-fab apartment buildings from the Communist era are typical of Romania and the many towns we passed through in the Transylvania region.

Here you see the see the contrast of generations in Transylvania. The younger woman was part of a Sunday afternoon wedding party in Cluj. The older woman is probably her grandma, and most likely lives in a village outside of Cluj. The generations of Romanians seems light years apart!

This is a Roma (Gypsy) man and boy who came up to our car and tried to sell us onions along the side of the road where we stopped in central Transylvania near their village.

Sigisoara, Romania, also known as Segesvar in Hungarian and Schässburg in German. This town and others like it were inhabited for centuries by German immigrants to Transylvania, who brought their Saxon German architecture to the part of Transylvania known as "Siebenburgen." They mostly all emmigrated to Germany after the war, but the traces of their history are everywhere to be seen in Transylvania. Sigisoara is one of the most picturesque towns in the region.

Finally on my way back to Vienna on Oct. 28 I stopped off for part of the afternoon in Bratislava, Slovakia, where I was hosted by last year's Havel Symposium speakers, Martin and Zora Butora. Many of you may remember the Butoras, who asked to be remembered to the House of Hope congregation. They were very hospitable to me on what was a busy day of meetings and receptions for them. Bratislava has a charming old town section of the city, which we toured on foot, and then we ended up in a cafe. The town seems more economically developed than many of the other Eastern European cities I had seen this last week.

Zora and Martin Butora in Bratislava, Slovakia, on Oct. 28

So now my time in Vienna is almost over, and I'm heading on Saturday to Dubrovnik, Croatia for a week. Lucy will meet me there, which I'm definitely looking forward to. Then on to South Africa, and the dedication of the church in Malungeni on Sunday, Nov. 15. And finally, back to St. Paul on Nov. 18. Do you think I may be ready to get home and stay put for a while? We'll have to see!

In Budapest

2009-10-18T12:48:00.000-07:00

I'm in Budapest tonight, having arrived here this afternoon from Vienna by train. I'll be staying the next couple of days with friends of mine here whom I've known since my Milwaukee days back in the early '90's when they were studying linguistics at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Hungarian is a nearly incomprehensible language to foreigners, so I am fortunate that both Gyöngyi and Marton, being accomplished linguists and translators, speak excellent English! It's fun to catch up with them after not having seen them for 9 years since I last was in Hungary.

My travels since last I wrote have taken me to Salzburg and the Salzkammergut lake district of Austria,
Salzburg, Austria

Halstatt, Austria

Cesky Krumlov and Prague in the Czech Republic,

Cesky Krumlov in southern Bohemia

Prague, Charles Bridge by night

Dresden in Germany,

The reconstructed Frauenkirche

Some young street musicians in Dresden

and to Slovakia last Thursday, 10/15, to visit an orphanage supported by a Viennese church group called "Project Centipede." We distributed boxes of toys and supplies to the 20 or so children who are staying there in a church sponsored orphanage in the village of Jelko, mostly because of domestic abuse and neglect in their homes.

Some of the boys, receiving the gifts we brought

It was interesting to see the contrast between Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, which has new malls and all kinds of economic development springing up, and Jelko, 25 miles to the east, which looks like a town time forgot, out in the middle of the Slovak farm country. It was a pretty forlorn scene, particularly as it was snowing that day, the earliest on record in 25 years (not unlike Minnesota!), and our van nearly got stuck in a muddy road that we'd taken a wrong turn down by mistake on our way there.

Lest you think that I've been doing too much church-like work on this sabbatical, which is meant to be time away from church-related endeavors, I will close this with some photos taken from the last two days I spent in Austria, seeing castles and palaces, etc.,

Burg Forchtenstein in Austria's easternmost province, Burgenland

visiting the graves of great composers,

Beethoven's grave in Vienna's Zentralfriedhof

and having a "Jause" (high tea) in a Viennese cafe (Dommayer's) where Johann Strauss got his start playing in his father's orchestra. It was a very "gemütlich" atmosphere, sipping "cafe melange" and eating a piece of raspberry torte there on a rainy Saturday afternoon!

At Dommayer's Cafe in Vienna's Hietzing neighborhood

So I leave Vienna after six weeks of being based there, having had the chance to absorb not only coffee and pastries, but a lot of the sights of Central Europe as well as some spiritual insights about life, which I look forward to sharing with you when I get back to St. Paul in the middle of November. Vienna is a mellow place with a slightly melancholy sense of timelessness and eternity about it that I thought this last photo of a man walking with his hands clasped European-style behind his back in the Schönbrunn Palace park expresses.

Half Way Point of My Sabbatical

2009-10-02T13:44:00.000-07:00

I realize with the beginning of October that I'm at the half-way point of my sabbatical. It seems hard for me to absorb all the experiences I've been having, of being a foreigner in a foreign country, of trying to negotiate everything in German, the language of Austria, and feeling at times like a loner and stranger in a big city, Vienna. On the other hand, I have also had several experiences of hospitality, offered, strangely enough, by church people of the English language Protestant congregation I've attended twice now, the Vienna Community Church. In both cases the people inviting me to meet them for coffee in a cafe or to dinner in their home have been American women married to Austrian men, who live on a semi-permanent basis in Vienna and know what it's like, from personal experience, to be a foreigner in this culture. The Viennese, though often charming at one level, are not used to welcoming the stranger in their midst, and though the city has become quite multi-cultural over the past 15 years since Austria joined the E.U., the cultures tend to co-exist side by side, with little interaction between them. There are a lot of immigrants in Vienna from Middle Eastern and African countries, but rubbing shoulders together on the public transportation system or in the streets doesn't mean communicating much with each other. You see quite a few women wearing burkas or head scarves, and I would estimate the population of Vienna is now maybe 10 to 20 per cent Muslims from Turkey and other countries in the Middle East. There is an uneasy co-existence between them and the Austrian people who've lived here forever, and you see political posters plastered all over the place advocating getting tough on immigration and crime, linking the two as one phenomenon in the Austrians' minds. Whether the crime statistics actually support this linkage is hard to determine, but there is an assumption in many Austrians' minds that the immigrants are responsible for a sizable increase in the crime rate in Vienna over the past 15 years.

Muslim immigrant women in Zell am See, Austria

Anyway, it's an interesting social phenomenon to observe. I've gotten quite well acquainted with the subway and tram system. It's wonderfully well engineered, and you can get anywhere in the city quickly and cheaply using the public transportation. It makes the Twin Cities light rail and buses look pretty paltry in comparison. Taxes are high here, but there are a lot of social services provided which make the quality of life better for all. This is part of the reason why there are so many immigrants... they are here for economic opportunity and an improvement in their quality of life. Perhaps with their kids making up a sizable per centage of the school age population, the next generations of Austrians and immigrants will get to know each other and learn to appreciate and accept ethnic and cultural diversity as the norm and not a problem to be groused about!

New faces of Austria.

I've had a busy week hosting my mother who came to spend 8 days with me here. We rented a car and drove south, to Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, and then back up into the Austrian Alps. We had excellent weather most everywhere we went, and I got to hike on the glacier leading up to the highest mountain in the Austrian Alps, the Grossglockner. You can see some of the pictures below.

T F-S by the Grossglockner, Austria's highest mountain at 12,000 ft.

You can see a crevasse here that is characteristic of the glacier's rapid melting, due to global warming. There were markers showing how far it's retreated over the past 40 years.

On the Road Again

2009-09-24T23:07:00.000-07:00

I've had a busy week of travel this past week, first to western Austria and southern Germany, where I revisited the town of Lindau, the place I had lived with a German family during my high school years. For me it was an emotional visit, since both of my "German parents" have died since last I was there. Their children have all moved away to other parts of Germany now, but I was able to find the cemetery where Herr & Frau Hümmer are buried, and had a chance to decorate their graves. I also revisited their old house, which is owned by somebody else now, and after chatting with the owner walked my old path to the downtown part of Lindau, which is on an island in Lake Constance (the Bodensee, in German) that is connected to the shore by a causeway. It's a gorgeous place, with the Alps visible in the distance across the lake.

The house I had lived in with the Hümmer's family, in Lindau, Germany.

Then I had the chance of a lifetime to go on a flight of the Zeppelin! I have been a Zeppelin nut for quite a few years now, collecting memorabilia and books about the "Graf Zeppelin" and "Hindenburg," the giant zeppelins of the 1920's and '30's. The Zeppelin company is still in business in Friedrichshafen, Germany, a town just 15 miles up the lakeshore from Lindau, and they have been flying a new version of the Zeppelin which is thankfully powered by helium now, and not hydrogen. I had wanted for a long time to take a spin on the new Zeppelin, and so had made a reservation for a one hour flight that would take me over Lake Constance and the island town of Lindau. It was a 7 hour train trip from Vienna, where I've been staying, to the Lake Constance region, and so I made a weekend trip out of it. Wouldn't you know it, the day I was there to fly on the Zeppelin, it rained, and my flight was canceled, due to the bad weather. What luck I have! But then the weather improved and they were able to reschedule me on a flight the next day. So I had just enough time to do the flight and rush back to Bregenz, Austria where I caught the train back to Vienna with 5 minutes to spare. That was last Monday, 9/21.

I kind of look like the mooring mast for the Zeppelin in this shot, but the guy I asked to take it of me was nice to do it!

The strangest sensation of riding in the Zeppelin was to take off and land. It just lifts off, kind of like a flying saucer, and hovers back down when you land. The propellers drone loudly while the stern sways with the breeze, since only the nose of the Zeppelin is attached to a mooring mast or literally held down by one man who hangs on to the mooring line.

"Up Up and Away," into the wild blue yonder in the Zeppelin.

On Tuesday, 9/22, my mother arrived in Vienna for a week's visit. She and I are now in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, and are headed today to Opatija, Croatia, at the top of the Dalmatian Coast on the Adriatic. We have rented a car from Vienna, and stopped on the way yesterday at Hochosterwitz Castle in southern Austria, and at Lake Bled in the Julian Alps of Slovenia. Both places were dramatically beautiful, and the weather cooperated for us. Our plan from Croatia is to drive back north via Trieste, Italy and then over the Austrian Alps via the Gross Glockner high alpine road. I'll catch up with you again once we get back to Vienna.

This is Lake Bled, in Slovenia. This little pilgrimage church sits on an island in the middle of the lake, and it's one of the most beautiful places I think I have ever seen!

A Week of Culture in Vienna and Surroundings

2009-09-17T13:39:00.000-07:00

I've had a busy couple of days this week pursuing lots of cultural, musical and historical endeavors. Went to see Mozart's "Die Zauberflöte" on Monday night at the Vienna State Opera. It was an incredible performance, and the setting in the gilded halls of the Opera House make it even that much more impressive.

This is a view from my seat on the third level of loges.

Curtain call of the "Zauberflöteæ cast. Pagageno is the guy in green.

I also visited the museum of my favorite composer of operettas, Franz Lehar, where I had a private guided tour of his villa and got to see the original manuscripts of his many operettas, including "The Merry Widow." This was like spending a morning in heaven for me!

Portrait of Franz Lehar, with his conductor's baton.

Then yesterday I went to the small town of Mikulov, in the Czech Republic, about a two hour train trip away from Vienna. Mikulov has wonderful baroque era architecture, as well as a haunting history of having been a pre-War cultural center of Judaism in Moravia for centuries, without any Jews being left living there when the war was over. I visited the one remaining former synagogue.

Miulov, from the top of a medieval era tower.

Interior of the Upper Synagogue in Mikulov, CZ

At one time there were 12 synagogues in the town, with a Jewish population of 3,500. I also wandered around the Jewish cemetery and hiked north out of the town into the rolling hills of Moravia, the Czech Republic's easternmost state.

Gravestones in the Jewish Cemetery in Mikulov

Today it was rainy, so I spent part of the afternoon at the Austrian Military History Museum, here in Vienna, seeing lots of fascinating things, like the car in which Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated in June 1914, the event that touched off World War I. To be in the presence of so much history, all in one place, is truly amazing.

The actual car in which Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated. in 1914.

This doesn't even begin to tell you about all the other stuff I've been doing. I have enjoyed getting to know some of the people of the Vienna Community Church congregation, and some of them are inviting me to dinner in their homes and to meet them for coffee in Viennese cafes. I also spent an evening with a guy from the congregation at a Viennese "heuriger" wine garden in Heiligenstadt, in a house where Beethoven once lived. So I am literally "drinking in" Viennese culture. It's a tough assignment, but somebody's got to do it!

An Update from Vienna

2009-09-08T04:17:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm settling into my sabbatical routine here in Vienna. I get up each morning, fix myself breakfast, and go to the internet cafe to check messages. I've attended two operettas so far, seeing Lehar's "Land of Smiles" in Bad Ischl on Aug. 29 and Johann Strauss's "Zigeunerbaron" in Baden on Sept. 6. Both were excellent performances. I also have been walking around Vienna, taking lots of pictures and I hiked in the Vienna Woods yesterday.

I'm going to hear the Vienna Choir Boys this Sunday at the mass they sing for in the Hofburg Kapelle in the center of the city, and then also at a Friday afternoon concert at the Musikverein. Also will attend the Staatsoper's performance of "Die Zauberflöte" on Sept. 14. So I'm immersed in music here in the city of music!

I also attended church this past Sunday at the Vienna Community Church, an ecumenical congregation of English-speakers from all over the world who are living or visiting here in Vienna. It's a congregation that "nests" in the Evangelische Kirche of Vienna, in the Inner City, and I found it very friendly and a great place to meet people when you're a stranger and a foreigner in this somewhat forbidding and overwhelming city. The worship service at the "VCC" made me appreciate our worship services at House of Hope all the more, but I would say that the Vienna Community Church is a very friendly and welcoming congregation that could teach us a thing or two about making visitors feel genuinely at home.

After a stenuous hike in the Vienna Woods yesterday, I wound up taking the bus back down the hill and having dinner in a "Heuriger," a restaurant in the Grinzing district of Vienna where they serve the "new wine," (a heady vintage), and where they have roving musicians playing wonderfully schmalzy Viennese music. I loved it! They even played my request of Emmerich Kalman's operetta melodies. I was in Seventh Heaven! Of course the new wine helped!

2009-08-26T22:10:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the additional photos from Greece I promised you.

We wandered into the middle of a baptism service going on in the Greek Orthodox church on the square where our apartment was in Nafplio. It was a wonderful experience, to see all that goes into the baptism of a small child. After baptizing him by dunking him in the font, the priest then cut a lock of his hair, which perhaps was his first hair cut, I don't know. They didn't seem to mind people taking pictures, even flash pictures, like you see I did. Everyone was doing it!

A little blurry, but you can catch the sense of wonder this little boy was showing. That's his dad holding him, and the priest is getting ready to cut his hair.

We spent a hot noontime up on the top of the Acropolis hill in Athens on the 24th. The ruins of the Parthenon and Temple of Diana are truly spectacular. And the views over the white buildings of Athens extend toward the horizon in every direction. Of course we had to take some tourist shots!

I climbed the Aereopagus hill between the Agora and the Acropolis in Athens, and stood where the Apostle Paul stood to deliver his address to the skeptical Athenians about "an unknown God." It didn't go over very well with them 2000 years ago, and I can't say the Athenians seemed like a very religious lot today, but I took this picture of my foot on the spot (or near the spot?), and you can see why during Biblical time washing someone's feet was such a big deal... Yuck! It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it!

Finally we enjoyed part of a day on the Greek isle of Hydra, where the only public transportation is by means of mule or donkey! We decided just to walk! The poor little things looked hot and tired and we didn't want to add to their misery. What a gorgeous and scenic island Hydra is. I highly recommend it to anyone going to Greece and having a day to spare while in the Athens area. It soothes the nerves after being majorly frazzled by the frantic pace of Greek traffic.

Reflections on a Week in Greece

2009-08-26T21:29:00.000-07:00

We have now arrived in Venice, after an all day trip yesterday by car, plane, bus and train. Greece was gorgeous, there's no two ways about it. The sun shone every day. We never had a drop of rain, and it was hot, but a dry hot.

Nafplio, the town where we stayed, is a wonderful spot that I would highly recommend if you're ever thinking about spending a week or so in Greece. It is about 100 miles southwest of Athens, past Corinth, and situated close to several ancient ruin sites, including Epidauros, Mycenae, Tiryns, and ancient Corinth. But the town itself is well worth a visit, and has a charming old town section with houses dating from the era during th 1500's and 1600's when Venice controlled it, wresting it away from the Ottoman Turks. There is a spectacular fortress perched high on a cliff over the town and harbor, with views all over the Argos region of Greece.

We followed a pretty ambitious agenda for seeing Greece from Nafplio: the first full day after Lucy arrived from Scotland we just did the things I described in my last posting entry on this blog. Then the following day we set out for the ruins of Epidauros and Mycenae. Epidauros, about 15 miles up in the dry hills north of Nafplio, is the site of an incredibly well-preserved Greek ampitheathre, the best one in all of Greece.

Here's Lucy, sitting on one of the 55 rows of seats, which altogether could seat 14,000 spectators! The acoustics are just about perfect. You can hear a coin drop at the bottom when you're sitting at the top.

For some reason the blog doesn't seem to want to let me post any more photos in it, so I will have to do so in a subsequent entry. But to continue: We saw Epidauros and Mycenae one day, then drove 11 hours round-trip from Nafplio to Delphi the next day, then a similar length day in the beating sun to Athens te next day, where we took a three hour walking tour of the Acropolis, then the following day we did an all day boat trip to the Greek isles of Hydra and Spetses. They all were gorgeous and interesting to see, but as you can imagine, it was pretty tiring to do it in such a concentrated dose, and Chris, then Anna and now I have come down with colds. But if it were you, and you had just a week to see as much of Greece as you could, would you have done it differently??

We had been hoping to get a lot of good Greek food this week, but were a bit disappointed in that. Most of what we had was just mass-produced stuff for the tourists, since this is the height of Greek vacation season. The restaurants were jammed in Nafplio every evening we were there, with large family groups on vacation. Everyone was enjoying themselves it seemed, from Grandma & Grandpa to the little kids who were running wild in the streets and squares of Nafplio even at 12 Midnight as their parents sipped ouzo or drank coffee and smoked (and smoked and smoked!) in the sidewalk cafes, that stay open till the wee small hours of the morning. It was an intergenerational happening that just kept on rolling, almost till dawn!

Finally Anna, who was feeling sick off and on throughout the Greek week said that she just wanted to go home and have really good Greek food at Dinos Gyros on Snelling in Falcon Heights. O.K., so many of you know what it's like to be on a vacation trip with kids who get burnt out of sightseeing, etc.! But she's perked back up now that we've arrived in Venice and had some good Italian food! And what a unique and amazing city Venice is, even in August when it's muggy and sultry and swarming with American tourists! More on that later.

From Gloomy Scotland to Sunny Greece

2009-08-21T03:28:00.000-07:00

Written earlier this week:

It's Monday evening, August 17, and I've put in another day of power-sightseeing here in northeastern Scotland. I've been staying these past two nights at a farmhouse B & B just across the road from the fabulous Dunnottar castle ruin, perched high on a headland over the North Sea about 15 miles south of Aberdeen. Having seen photos of Dunnottar on calendars of Scotland for years, I found upon arrival here that it is everything I had hoped it would be, and more, a gloomy ruin complete with bats and the mournful sound of gulls swooping overhead while waves crash below on the rocks. Staying here at the entrance to the castle means that I've been able to see it not just during opening hours like other tourists, but after hours and before hours as well. I'll show you some of the bazillion photos I've taken here.

O.K. ... What do you think of the Scottish cap?? Guess I'm just trying to fit into the Scottish scene! My kids would think I'm a real nerd, but what the heck? When in Scotland, do as the Scots!

Dunnottar Castle by evening light. This is how I first saw it when I arrived at my B & B that is located just across the road from Dunnottar, about two miles south of Stonehaven on the east coast of Scotland.

Dunnottar has a history dating back to the 800's A.D., when they believe St. Ninian arrived on this Scottish headland and brought Christianity to the Picts who were Scotland's native residents at the time. Then successive castles were built on the site, with the height of it's history being in the 17th century, with a particular Presbyterian connection. Presbyterians were called Covenanters (also Whigs) in Scotland at the time, and when for religious reasons they refused to acknowledge the English king as head of the church as well as head of state in 1685, 200 of them were marched in shackles to Dunnottar from Edinburgh, about 30 of them dying on the way. Those who survi and imprisoned in the dungeon there, now referred to as "the Whigs' Vault."

They were crowded into this dim room which had dank, ankle deep water in it, and they were not let out for six weeks, having to pay the guards for any food or drinkable water they could get. You can imagine the sanitation and health issues posed by this situation. 25 of them managed to escape through the window at the end of the vault and scale down the cliff to the North Sea below. 2 died falling in the process, and 15 were quickly recaptured nearby and then tortured. After 6 weeks the remaining survivors (about 140 who hadn't recanted and accepted the king's ecclesiastical authority were shipped on a sailing ship to the New World. 70 of them died on the voyage, and the remaining 70 or so started new lives in New England. Being there at Dunnottar and seeing it all kind of gives you a new appreciation as a Presyterian of our central tennet that "God alone is Lord of the conscience," and that our polity has no tolerance of authoritarianism or the mixture of state authority over the Church.

Dunnottar ruins on its headland over the North Sea.

My last view of Dunnottar, as night fell on August 17. I walked down the trail from the road, and communed with the bats that were swooping around the ruins. It was really spooky, and as perhaps you can see, as I hiked back up the hill opposite the castle's entrance there was a strange pale white light coming from one of the windows of the castle. Now possibly it was one light that was left on in the castle, but it didn't look like a normal light to me. More ethereal, and strange... they say a sad woman clad in green plaid shows up every so often in what used to be the laundry room of the castle. I didn't happen to see her, but this eerie light sent me scurrying for the relative safety of my B & B across the road!

Later this week:

What a contrast there is from the gloom of a Scottish August to the sunny cheer of Greece in summer! Now I'm not trying to say that Scotland was a downer. It wasn't. But the concept of summer in Scotland is occasional peeks of sun between daily showers and temperatures in the 50's and 60's. One must always keep an umbrella handy and plan on dealing with constantly changing weather.

In contrast, here in Greece, where I arrived two days ago now on August 19, the sun is constantly shining and there is literally not a cloud in the sky anywhere. The temperatures are in the 90's during the middle of the day, so that you quickly realize why the culture here in summer is slow moving and siesta oriented. The stores and restaurants open about 11 a.m. here in the gorgeous Peloponnesian town of Nafplio where I am staying for a week with my family (Lucy, Chris and Anna) who've all rendez-voused with me on arrival in Athens. People don't really eat breakfast. They just congregate in cafes, starting about noon, and while away the hot afternoon visiting there with friends. Then lunch kind of happens around 3-5 p.m., and after 5 or 6 things begin to pick up a bit, and in reality the place starts to buzz around 9 p.m., when it has finally cooled off a bit, and the streets are pulsing with people and the techno-beat of music from the cafes till about 12 Midnight or 1 a.m.

Nafplio is a gorgeous town that sits at the head of a gulf coming in to the Pelopponesus Peninsula from the Aegean Sea. It has a crusaders fort on an islet in the mouth of its harbor, and then a huge citadel fortress perched on top of a small cliff-like mountain immediately behind the old town. The streets are all paved with marble, and it's mostly pedestrian traffic in the old town section, where we are staying in a second floor apartment with balconies, which you can rent by the week.

This morning Lucy, Chris, Anna and I climbed the 999 steps up the cliff to the citadel fortress, which has a commanding view over the town and harbor and off across the gulf toward Argos and the surrounding mountains.

Anna, Lucy and Chris, about three quarters of the way up to the fortress, with Nafplio in the background and the Venetian castle on an islet in the harbor, to the right.

Chris, Tom and Anna, standing on one of the 999 steps!

It was truly a cardiac challenge to do all 999, and then a test of the knees to descend the same way back to town. But I made it, and we ended up in a sidewalk cafe to recoup, sipping frappe coffees. It's a hard assignment, but someone's got to do it, right??

We hope to visit some of the ancient Greek sites not far from here this week: the Acropolis in Athens, the ampitheater in Epidauros, ancient Mycenae in the hills above Nafplio, and maybe even Delphi, where the oracle was consulted by the ancients. I'll update you on all that once it happens. Of course, with this slow pace of life in Greece, we may not get everything on the agenda done, and sitting in a cafe during the hot hours of the day can be an attractive alternative to actually accomplishing things!

Greetings from Scotland

2009-08-15T23:46:00.000-07:00

We've been here in Scotland for five days now, first in Glasgow, where we stayed the first night with Lindsay Biddle and John Mann, a Presbyterian clergy couple who are colleagues of ours from the Presbytery of the Twin Cities. John showed us his church, in Glasgow's rough and tumble Pollok neighborhood, where they're doing several very creative community outreach programs for kids and adults. Lindsay is between interim assignments right now, and writing a novel about church life in Scotland!

The Highlands are a gorgeous, magical place, with the light always changing as the weather changes constantly. Whoever said there is a boring weather day in Scotland?? One moment rain, the next moment sun, and in a few minutes, rain again!

Eilean Donan Castle is one of the most beautiful ones we have seen so far. It is on the road to Skye, not far from the Kyle of Lochalsh bridge from the mainland. We stopped there around 7 p.m., and tough the castle was closed for the day, we could wander around and get the views. We also backtracked up a little road up the hillside behind the castle and got the panorama view you see above.Tom, at Eilean Donan castle, Aug. 12

This is for Margie Crone, Lowell Thornber, and the Seekers Group. Look, here I am at my "thin spot" by the River Teith, near Doune Castle. I found the exact spot I had been at in 2006, with the very same log sticking out of the river that looks like the head and neck of the Loch Ness monster, with baby monster underneath her. Some things never change much in this fast paced world of ours. I love it!
Lucy, at Doune Castle, near Stirling. This is one of my favorite spots in Scotland, and I wanted to show Lucy what a special place it is. We had a great time wandering around, climbing the spiral staircases, and going up to the rooftop for the views of the surrounding bucolic countryside.

I've run out of time to do more postings for today's blog, but will do some more, of the Isle of Skye and other Scottish places we've been when I get to where there is a wireless connection for my computer to access the Internet.

2009-08-10T14:28:00.000-07:00

Whoops! This one was supposed to go last, but somehow it ended up first. It's of Lucy and me in Stockholm. I'm still working on getting the hang of photoblog layout! The photo below I took for Larry and Deb Broberg. Did they know they have relatives doing a tobacco shop business in downtown Stockholm?? How many of the rest of you House of Hopers have Swedish roots?

We are in Stockholm today. What a gorgeous city this is! Never having been here before I didn't quite know what to expect. It is magnificently laid out on a series of islands and with a meandering waterfront. One of the places we visited today was the museum housing the Vasa, a Swedish warship that sank on it's maiden voyage in Stockholm harbor on Aug. 10, 1628, exactly 371 years ago today. It was raised almost entirely intact from the bottom of the harbor in 1961 and today is housed in a wonderful museum built very creatively around the hull of the ship.We also were at the royal palace at 12:15 p.m. to see the changing of the guard, which included much equestrian pageantry with male and female soldiers dressed in vintage World War I outfits. One of them stomped on my big toe (I was wearing sandals!) as I had my foot right up on the line they had cordoned off for crowd control. A jack boot on bare toenail is not a good feeling, but I don't seem to be much worse for wear, and managed to walk probably 3 to 5 miles around this gorgeous city after that.
The harbor of Stockholm is full of sailing ships of all kinds and sizes. There are cruise boats that come and go as well, and one three master that is moored to one of the islands in the harbor is actually being used as a youth hostel! We saw twenty-somethings pulling their rolling luggage in that direction. Stockholm has a very happening youth-culture scene and very trendy (and expensive !) stores.
The city also has tons of inspiring church architecture, dating from the 1600's on up. We walked around a lot of churches yesterday and today.
This one is for Jan Snell! These are the cloyingly cute little creatures that greeted us on our bed when we checked into our room at the Best Western Hotell Kung Carl on Birger Jarlsgatan in downtown Stockholm yesterday. The notes say that you can't take them home with you when you check out (sorry Jan!) but that you can make a contribution at the check-out desk on their behalf, which will be used for animal and nature conservancy organizations in Sweden. Kind of a catchy idea. (Or did I say "kitschy??")

We're off to Scotland tomorrow, and the weather is supposed to be quite different from the wonderfully balmy mid-summer days we've been enjoying in Sweden. Looks like they're dishing up a week of drizzly gray skies and rainy 50's and 60's in Scotland for the upcoming week. But I've traveled enough to know that you can never take weather forecasts too seriously (at least I want to believe that's so!) More once we get there.

I've Arrived in Europe

2009-08-06T08:10:00.000-07:00

Approaching Stockholm's Arlanda International Airport
Uppsala from the air, with cathedral at bottom
TF-S eating delicious airport food at Newark
Shot of downtown Minneapolis I took as we departed MSP
Uppsala Cathedral
Woman praying in the Uppsala Cathedral
Eat your heart out Aaron! One of four or five organs in the Uppsala Cathedral.
Lucy lighting a candle in the Uppsala Cathedral.
Lucy, bearer of light; Uppsala Cathedral
This is the brand new organ installed in the Uppsala Cathedral this year.
Our plane, at Stockholm's Arlanda Intl. airport

Lucy and I arrived in Sweden this morning, after flying Continental from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Newark on Aug. 5, and then flying all night long from Newark on Continental to Stockholm, Sweden. We arrived at Stockholm's Arlanda International Airport on a lovely summer morning after a nearly sleepless 7 hours 15 minute flight that took us up over Maine and New Brunswick, then out over the North Atlantic, south of Greenland and Iceland, and after dawn came, over the Shetland Islands and Norway. Once we got through Swedish customs, we took the Airport Express train to the charming university town of Uppsala, where we are staying a couple days for a wedding of a former Macalester student of Lucy's. We visited the Uppsala Cathedral this afternoon, which is said to be the largest in Scandinavia. It has more organs even than House of Hope! Aaron, eat your heart out!(see above)