Sabbatical Trip Retrospective: A Photo Exhibit

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

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!

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

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!