Thanksgiving Day

I did have an American Thanksgiving here in Germany! Although my classes weren't cancelled, I was invited for a meal at Pastor Flohr's apartment- he's the pastor of the English church in Frankfurt, Trinity. It was a great meal with all the traditional fixings. The turkey was moist and delicious- both the dark and white meat; there was stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, German bread (which is much better than American bread, a suitable change to this meal), gravy, and AMERICAN FOOTBALL. As every American knows, a Thanksgiving isn't complete without football, so we let our food digest while watching the Lions' game. And then, for dessert, we had our choice of apple pie, pumpkin pie, or chocolate chip bars (there was enough to get a taste of all three)- plus they gave me half of the apple pie and some of the bars to take back! This, of course, was graciously shared with the German students who had happened to gather outside of the dorm for beer and smoking. They all agreed that the apple pie was " sehr lecker"- very delicious. So we all got a taste of an American Thanksgiving Day in one way or another.

Then, this past Saturday, I was invited to Trinity's Thanksgiving potluck, since most of the American's couldn't get off work on Thursday to celebrate. I was a bit late, but there was enough left for me to get a plate of food and some dessert. I didn't bring anything back with me, though, which is all right.

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Q&A Time!

After fielding the same questions from my relatives when I skype with them, I figured that you, my readers, probably have the same questions as well. So here's my answers to the oft-asked questions, sometimes with a hint of sarcasm, based on the unanswerability of the questions.

1. How is Germany?

A: Do you mean, "How is German doing politically and economically?" If that's the case, they're doing quite well; Germans are very industrious and orderly, and it's paying off in the long run. They keep giving money to Greece and Spain so the Euro doesn't collapse, but other than that Germany is going very well. There's no riots like in other cities, and everyone's pretty much gotten over WWII (and yes, WWII jokes here are appreciated among the youth- it's been neat to share them). Oh, you mean, "How do you like Germany and are you doing there?" In that case, please read all my previous blog posts. Sigh, ok. You've already done that I'm sure. I'm enjoying Germany and everything it has to offer. It's been great to visit the cities and the country and get a full perspective. Being from the country myself, I don't see how one can visit any country and not spend some time with the normal people in the country (bend your mind around my use of the double meanings of "country"). I've enjoyed traveling, but I've also enjoyed getting to know the people at the seminary here. So overall, things are going well.

2. How is German coming?

A: It's going well. I can converse with the other students, and while I can't understand them at times, I can usually follow a conversation based on the words that I do know in their context. There's much more that I need to learn, though. The professors are much harder, though, because they use more difficult words and phrases.

3. This question is more of a surprise to me, it's been asked by both sets of grandparents and various aunts who are worried about what I eat, "How is the food there?"

A: The food is very similar to America, to be honest. It's not like I'm visiting China where absolutely nothing is recognizable. Our diets are different, but the food is almost the same. I eat more wurst (like hot dogs and sausages) but less beef and chicken. Pasta is a staple, as is rice, and there's lots of soup. One thing I've never seen before is wurst in soup. One cuts up the wurst and eats it with the soup. All considered, the food is quite delicious, even if they do use less sugar, which is one complaint I have of American food- we put way too much sugar in our food. Finally, one difference I've noticed is in the prices- bread is much cheaper here, as is food in general I think. Clothing is very expensive though.

4. How's the beer?

A: Haha...this would follow the question about food. I have two answers to this question. If you only drink the light American beers and are used to watered-down beers, German beer will strike you as heavier and tastier, and it is. But if you're somewhat of a beer-snob (which I am, admittedly), there's not much variety here. Everyone drinks pilsners, and only pilsners. I'm used to buying good beer in America, and by "good beer" I mean stouts, porters, IPAs, and a few brown ales. (In that way, American beer tastes are closer to the English than to the Germans.) My dad brews beer, and I often go to micro-breweries to sample their taste. So in a way, German beer has been a bit disappointing. It's cheaper, and I like that, but there's just no variety, at least, not much variety between the 20 different brands of pilsners that one can buy. I did go to an Irish pub, though, and had a Guinness from the tap- it's almost making me want to go to Ireland myself and get one there. It was so delicious, and much better than the bottled Guinness in America.

Side comment, while we're talking about alcohol- their hard liquor ("Schnaps") is very, very sweet- almost sickly sweet. I'm used to a bit of a kick when drinking straight whiskey or other drinks, which is why Americans often need to combine it with Coca-cola or juices to get them down. I remember a quote from someone, but I can't find it online- it goes like this, "How do you know that it's bad for you, if it doesn't hurt going down?"

5. How are classes?

Honestly, see my previous blog post on this- not much has changed. Understanding the profs is still a bit difficult.

6. What's travel like there?

A: Germans are known for their punctuality and order, and it pays off in their train system. The network is fairly fast and quite punctual, so I've never had a problem getting to a place on time, given that I've planned my trip out beforehand with the Deutsche Bahn app on my iPad. And even if I get lost somewhere, I just need to look for the (H) sign nearby, get on the bus, and find my way to a train station. That's in the cities. Traveling between cities is very easy with the IC (inter-city) and ICE (express). If it's not too far away, I take the RB (regional bahn), because it's much cheaper. I miss my car and the freedom it provides, but I'm adapting here just fine. There's a lot more walking, though, which is good.

Those six questions just about cover more frequent questions I get. Feel free to comment below and ask more.

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Frankfurt! (or also "A Journey from East to West")

School began October 23rd, about three weeks after I arrived in Oberursel. I spent most of that time on campus, playing soccer, drinking, talking, and hanging out with the other students. I did make it into Frankfurt one weekend, and it turned out to be very interesting. I honestly didn't have much of a plan; I picked out two museums at least to visit, and looked at various churches that I could visit, and thought that those would fill up the rest of the morning and the afternoon (like the museums in Berlin). Oh how wrong I was. 

I left about 10, and first went to the Bibelhaus, a museum about...you guessed it...the Bible. The basement was about the text of the Bible, but especially the Old Testament, the main floor was about the NT and life in Jesus' time, and the upper floor held an exhibit of life in Abraham's time. There was a replica of the Isaiah scroll, one of the best preserved scrolls from collection of the Dead Sea Scrolls; it wasn't as impressive as one would think, since I'd seen another replica during the Dead Sea exhibit in Milwaukee (twice), and also have it split up into pdfs on my computer (anyone can find these pdfs online if they really have a burning desire to look at them). I downloaded them during my increased interest in textual criticism, which hasn't quite fully gone away. 

There were some Greek papyri (below is a portion from Matt. 25:41-26:39) and the beginnings of an exhibit on the Christmas story.


The New Testament room had some artifacts showing life in the New Testament times; there was a model fishing boat, instruments from the era, and a model of the heel bone with a nail through it, showing conclusively that criminals were indeed nailed to crosses (somehow in doubt among critical scholars prior to this find). After I was seen taking pictures of the boat, an employee informed me that pictures were not allowed. Oh. Oops. Considering that I didn't see "no photography" signs anywhere in the museum, I dutifully obeyed and didn't take any more pictures, but didn't delete the ones I had taken. Actually, that's a lie...I did take more pictures, in the room on the third story. The cut-away of the temple was just too interesting to not take a picture of it. But next time...next time I won't take pictures.

(As a side note, I don't understand this prohibition on taking pictures. I don't mind it if they charge for permission to take pictures, as several churches or cathedrals do, but I see pictures as advertisement. I know that most people don't have blogs and won't put pictures up on them, but I'm doing that while advertising for these places, and I really do encourage my readers to visit the Bibelhaus, the Ikone Museum, and everywhere I go, even if I give less-than-stellar reviews of different parts of the places. If I don't like a place, I won't take pictures of it and won't talk about it.) 

So after that run-in about pictures, I was more cautious about looking for "no photography" signs. The Bibelhaus took almost no time at all to explore...it was so small and mostly tried to teach more about Christianity to those of the population who had little to no idea of what was in the Bible. For me, it really didn't have much to offer (I say this as a theology student, mind you); I was expecting a lot more artifacts and more papyri. Nonetheless, it was worth my time, and I'd encourage you to visit it.

The next museum that I visited was an Icon Museum. This was a fascinating museum, but also very small- basically just one room with an open balcony, filled with icons. I didn't know what to expect coming here; I guess I knew it would be small, because icons can be very expensive, and there's really not many of them. Plus, the Orthodox tend to actually use them by praying to/through them, so a museum is not a normal home for icons. Nonetheless, here are some of the most impressive ones. (No, I did not ask for permission to take these pictures, nor did I see signs prohibiting me.) This is also where the alternate title to my blog gets the "East" part, referring to Eastern Orthodoxy, that part of the church that excommunicated and was excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church in the Great Schism. You'll see where I get the "West" part later. I had quite the time picking out which icons to show, but you can see the full collection here:  https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151214458918788.483894.500163787&type=1&l=29b50743c3

Something to help you read the icons: 

The Icon Museum was on the opposite side of the river to the city of Frankfurt; here is an absolutely beautiful photo of the city of Frankfurt from the opposite bank.

Before I crossed the river, there was a church near the bridge, so I decided to visit. It was the Three Kings Church, presumable EKD, but it was beautiful inside.

Finally I made my way across the river to the Römer District of Frankfurt; this is the old part of town, which was left in ruins after WWII. Nonetheless, everything was rebuilt with a mind toward restoration, so it has an old look to it (which is quite different from the modern "Neustadt," which is full of bustling commerce, bankers, and shopping. From here I mostly just wandered around, visiting places that looked interesting without really a plan toward anything. For if you remember, my only plans of the day were to see the Bibelhaus and Ikone Museum and a few churches, thinking that would take up my whole day. It was only 1pm by this time.

So the first thing after crossing the bridge that I noticed was a Historical Museum. It honestly didn't look very big at first sight, but I paid the entrance fee, took a map, and decided to see what it had to offer. At first there wasn't much; I could climb a tower that was original to Frankfurt and overlooked the river, and then see a room about the history and restoration of city. The tower held a display of the inner mechanics of a clock.

Before WWII: 

After WWII: 

The red is old (before the war), and the blue is what has been rebuilt since the war 

Another room held an exhibit about the third world countries involved in WWII (which I suppose is important if you're going to call it a "World" War). It wasn't as spectacular as you might think (I didn't take any pictures- see my above statement about my suggesting things to see), but I walked through it. Then, I explored the second wing, which had much more to offer than the map suggested. First, I went downstairs to the basement, which showed the foundations of an old tower built on this spot in the city wall. There was a model of what they think it looked like.

Next, as I went upstairs, probably 4-5 stories in total, there was exhibition after exhibition of various themes. This museum certainly wasn't like the Deutsches Historisches Museum, which went chronologically through history. This didn't have the space for that, but did have some nice exhibits, which focused more particularly on something in German culture or history. I enjoyed each one, and I'll summarize them here.

First: German literature and scientific work of the 19th Century. Fascinating stuff, especially since these fields of study were booming in this time of German unity. 

Next: Medieval Weaponry. You bet I took a lot of pictures here. :-) 

Coins and expensive things, which I tried to get a picture of both: 

China! (not the country...) Actually, it'd be more accurate to call this "porcelain."

Edit: After doing some research in the portion of the internet which is rhetorically abhorrent to me- Internet forums that feature rants by supposed experts over inanely stupid and pointless things, in this case being the difference between porcelain and china- I've found that I simply don't care anymore. China is porcelain is china, apparently. Tomato tomato, potato potato, my glass is empty either way.

Not far away was the center of the Altstadt, which was very beautiful and decorated neatly.

In this "Platz" was a church, the St. Nicolas' Church, and while it was small and probably not used much, it was beautiful.

Finally, I walked not too far away to the Cathedral (Frankfurter Dom). You can see it in the picture of Frankfurt's skyline, and it was quite a sight. I was very impressed with its restoration and accompanying museum. There was some construction or excavations in front of it; I couldn't exactly figure out what they were doing.

The first thing I did was climb the tower. It was probably taller than the Berliner Dom, which I also climbed, and it was certainly harder to climb- the passage was narrower, and we had to accomodate those coming down, none of whch needed to happen in the Berlin Cathedral, the way that it was set up. So it was a squeeze sometimes, and I got a kick out of some Spanish-speaking tourists counting the number of stairs on their way down. I realized that I haven't heard Spanish in quite a long time. 

Oberursel is that-a-ways -->

Walking down, I toured the cathedral itself, which took my breath away. I have yet to see Rome, but it's amazing how the Catholic Church can collect its funds and build such beautiful places of worship. Like almost every major building project in Frankfurt, red standstone from the nearby quarry was used in its construction. I saw the same thing in Mainz at the Cathedral there, and in many churches in the area.

And...here's the 1000th picture I've taken since leaving for Germany. 

After visiting the Cathedral, I went through the two-part museum nearby, and I got my fill of marvelous chasubles, thuribles, gilded crucifixes, and communion ware. The ornateness and cost of everything also stunned me. You can see a lot more here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151214458918788.483894.500163787&type=1&l=29b50743c3

 

A rose chasuble? Think again...the sign said it was supposed to be scarlet, for the red Sundays. 

So, having seen the Dom and its museum, I wandered a little bit more around Frankfurt's Römerberg before returning to the seminary. There's a few more museums in Frankfurt that I want to see, but I'll leave those for another, colder day. 

Fall is a beautiful time to wander around Frankfurt. The red buildings really complement the changing of the leaves, and I enjoy a little bit of a nip in air. It can get a bit rainy and overcast here, so I have to pick which days I can take pictures outside. Obviously overcast is appreciated, but I can't take pictures in rain. There's a few other cities in the Frankfurt area that I'm probably going to visit and tell you about. As the time of writing this, I've already been to Herford, three hours north of here, to visit some good college friends. I'll update you on that and give you the pictures that I took. So for now, Tschüss!

Dies Academicus, Cup of the Brothers, an Ordination

Whew! What a busy weekend it was!

The Hochschule offered their yearly conference with the theme of Hermeneutics. A booklet had been prepared which was to serve as the basis for the conference. It was only one day and featured four presenters, two professors from the seminary, one pastor from the SELK, and one professor outside the SELK to give a different perspective on the booklet. I understood a little bit at the beginning of the conference, but as the day dragged on, my mind wandered, and I didn't understand as much. This tends to be a repeating occurrence: I can only hear so much German before I'm not even listening. Luckily I don't have so many classes per day that this would happen. Nonetheless, there was a very nice lunch provided by the seminary, and it provided some discussion questions among the students. It seems that Hermeneutics is just as much of a question here as it is at CTS, considering it was stricken from CTS's course catalog totally, when it had been formally a required course. And no, it's not being taught in the OT classes as was promised. So whether or not I agree with the presentations here or CTS's decisions, it's been good to talk about it with students.

Also, I got this mug (but not the book) at the Dies Academicus. They go well together though.

A group of us woke up early Saturday for a soccer tournament with other free-church seminaries and hochschulen around Germany and Switzerland. It took us maybe two hours to get there, in the town of Wölmersen (which I thought was ironic). There were ten of us, which was quite enough for one team with a few subs throughout the fast-paced 6-min games. The atmosphere was full of excitement and activity- some of the schools had brought a large group of fans to cheer them on. While we didn't have a cheering section, we did quite well, at least initially, going 3-0-1, assured we thought of a place in the quarterfinals. What was better was that we only allowed 1 goal throughout those four games, though we didn't score much to boost our goal differential. There were seven teams in our group, and little did we know that we had beaten the 3 easiest and tied with the hardest. Because the last two teams had scored grossly large scores against the easiest teams (even 6 goals in 6 minutes), we needed to have decisive wins against both to proceed, but we ended up finishing with a disappointing loss and draw, meaning that we placed fourth in the group with 11 points (3 for wins, 1 for draws, and 0 for losses). Had we won the one we lost, we would've made the cut, but that's just the way it goes sometimes. Anyway, it fun, I had a great time with the other students, and I got to see some pretty sweet goals.

Then, on Sunday, there was an ordination at St. Johannes-Gemeinde! It was exciting, and there was a bunch of special music all day- the brass choir played in the Sunday morning service, and the choir sang in the afternoon ordination service. I guess I never really realized the size difference between our two church bodies until many of the seminarians said that this was the very first ordination they've witnessed. The very first! I mean, in Fort Wayne alone in any given June or July, there's at least one or two ordinations, and it's fashionable to go to various ordinations of one's friends around the United States. I can't honestly say how many ordinations I've been to- probably 3-4 in the past two years though. And as we all know, just like single seminarians have their entire marriage ceremony planned out (whether or not they're dating/engaged), both single and married seminarians have their ordinations all planned out at least by the end of their vicarage. No comment on the status of my plans. So the day was quite special for those at the seminary and in the community. The ordination was well-attended and quite the service. Congratulations also to Pastor Andreas Berg, and God's blessings on your service in Bonn!

Also: I saw Skyfall last night. It's an awesome Bond movie, better than most, but it's not the best, as many are attributing to it. Crait does an awesome job again, and I absolutely enjoyed the setting in London and Scotland. I encourage it if you're into action/suspense movies.

 

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My Classes Here at LThH

I've been putting off this post for a while, but it's about time that I told about my classes this year. Unfortunately, for various reasons, I still haven't been to all of them yet, but I'll tell you about the ones I've attended so far.

So here's a post with a lot of text and almost no pictures. Es tut mir leid...

The class structure here is such that almost all classes are 2 hours per week, and occur in a 2 hour block, once a week. 4 credit classes meet twice a week, as do 3 credit classes, but only for 1 hour on one of the days.

Also, all but two of my classes are "lecture" classes, which means that there's no homework or reading, unless one is particularly interested in that topic. Then, the professor does provide other materials that one could read or look into. The other types of classes are "exercise/practice" and "seminar." In the former, we work through a given text- translation if it's from another language, and deeper understanding if it's in German- and discuss it as a class, with the professor's guidance. The readings are done in-class, and we usually don't read it beforehand. On the other hand, while the seminar classes are similar, there's a lot more reading beforehand. We discuss the readings, usually much longer (~40 pages), and talk with the prof about them. Both also have student presentations throughout, which I may or may not participate in (it's not required for exchange students, but I might try some next semester when my German is better).

So my week begins with Practical Theology in Overview by Prof. Dr. Barnbrock. It's a bit early (7:30am), but is somewhat understandable, with help from my iPad's dictionary. We spent the last two class periods on the history of practical theology, and today we started the overview of some of the different divisions- homiletics, catechetics, and liturgics. Looking at the syllabus, we're going to continue with the divisions before going through various theologians who have been influential in various ways. I can't say I recognize any of them, though. This is a class for those beginning seminary.

I have two classes with Prof. Dr. da Silva: Church History 3 (from the Reformation to the Peace of Westphalia) and History of the SELK. He is probably the easiest to understand, because he's actually from Brazil. Both classes therefore have been easier to follow, not only in language, but also in substance. In Church History 3, we studied the societal and political influences on the start of the Reformation; the times and thoughts were changing and were ripe for Martin Luther and the Reformers. Just last week we discussed Martin Luther's early life, through his posting of the 95 Theses. Tomorrow we discuss the conflict with Rome and the Emperor. In History of the SELK, we've been discussing the Prussian Union, and I think today we'll get to the Saxon emigration. So it'll be interesting to hear about the history of those who stayed in Germany, albeit separated from the State (Lutheran/Reformed) Church. After today, it looks like we'll spend each class studying a different synod which eventually joined the SELK instead of studying history chronologically. Considering the number of independent church bodies and the long process towards a unified church body, this is probably the best way to study the History of the SELK. It certainly doesn't have a clear leader (like Martin Stephan had been) or founder (like C.F.W. Walther) in the LCMS. Nonetheless, it looks to be an informative class.

With the OT professor, Prof. Dr. Behrens, I'm taking Hermeneutik OT/NT. This is the hardest class to understand, because Behrens talks extremely fast, and his German is garbled at times. "At times" here means "all the time." I have a hard time picking out what he's saying, and the only words I pick out are the ones I know. What compounds this is that it's my only seminar class, so I have to read (and try to understand) 40 pages of German before the class, which is never fully completed by class-time. So I'm pretty much lost during those two hours, but hopefully it gets better. I'm not too worried.

I'm taking the Book of Romans with the NT professor (and director of the exchange program), Dr. Salzmann. I'm enjoying this class so far, because we're interacting with the Greek text (which I understand!), as well as the German translation (which is significantly easier to understand than conversational German). Salzmann's pronunciation is fairly clear, and I can follow his reasoning and presentation for the most part. So far we've gotten through Romans 1:17, and we'll continue today for an hour on Romans 1:18 and following. This is my 3 credit class and is a lecture class, so we don't have a lot of discussion over the Greek text with Dr. Salzmann. There's room for questions, but not our own translations. Not that I'm really interested in translating Greek into German.

Finally, I have two classes (Apology of the Augsburg Confession and Dogmatics 1) with Pastor Wenz, who is the pastor of the nearby St. Johannes-Gemeinde in Oberursel. For the first two weeks of classes, he was in America, first in Atlanta, then in St. Louis, for the International Conference on Conference Leadership. Last week, after he came back, we had the first meeting of the Apology of the AC class. It's an "exercise/practice" class, and we go through the Apology in detail, studying primarily the Latin text. It's been good to get back into a bit of Latin.

This past Friday was "Dies Academicus," in which some professors and pastors presented papers on the theme, "Biblical Hermeneutics." It was informative and good, but it also prevented Dogmatics 1 from meeting, so we'll meet for the first time this Friday morning.

More on Dies Academicus and this exciting weekend later. (And hopefully a post about my travels around Frankfurt.)


That's about all. Feel free to ask questions in the comments sections or by email. I like hearing from people.

US Election 2012

I will say one thing about living in Germany: it's really nice not having to hear or see political ads. I can visit news channels or Facebook if I want to here various opinions. However, having said that, I encourage everyone to vote. I'm not going to say the cliché thing and say it's the most important election of your life, because honestly, it probably won't be. Nonetheless, it is important, and it is a civic duty in our democratic republic. So exercise your rights as a citizen, and vote for the man you think will best lead our country. Yet also recognize that God is finally in control, and though earthly governments rise and fall, he is the one that we turn to in peace and in war, with good or bad leaders, always praying for the safety of our neighbor.