Today's post should, if I am at all successful, be a quick one. We just got back from a fantastic conference in a little town in Hessen, about 4 hours from here, and we leave tomorrow for a week in Turkey! After that, there will be no more traveling for me until well after this baby arrives.
I did want to post about this conference, though. We were invited by our really wonderful friends Reinhard and Ulrika--we posted about them earlier, when they had us over for dinner after church one Sunday. They may very well be the nicest people that I have ever met. Reinhard is a retired professor of business and economics, and he's involved with a group called "Wort & Wissen" (or "the word and knowledge"). It is a group of Christian academics in a variety of fields--geology, chemistry, biology, economics, theology, archeology, etc. The conference went from Thursday evening through this morning, and there were probably 150 people in attendance.
Now, here's the impressive part: It was a holiday weekend, and many (maybe most) of the attendees were not themselves in academic fields. In fact, people brought their children and, while the younger ones had a kids program, the youth-aged kids just went to the talks. At this point, it probably sounds more like a church retreat than a conference--and that was what I
began to wonder when we first arrived. Then we went to the first talk, which was given by a Geologist, and I realized what we were in for. It went from 8-10:30 the first night, and they had to eventually cut-off the questions to keep the discussion from going all night. The talk itself was extremely impressive--really an academic paper of high caliber. (I only partially understood it, but Michael was very impressed.)This was to be the case with all of the talks; the weekend was essentially a rigorous academic conference attended by intellectually interested Christians from all walks of life. I thought I was getting off easy by choosing a "botanical excursion" for one of my seminars.
I expected to walk through the woods with someone who could show me the pretty flowers. We did a little bit of walking, but mostly we stood around gathering specimens which we dissected while listening to some pretty hard-core botany lessons. This went on for 2 and a half hours, and we barely left the periphery of the building!I've never been to anything like this conference, and it made me want to either find or eventually found something like it back in the States. I have been, on the whole, really impressed by the intellectual curiosity here in Germany. There is a far greater overlap between what academics are working on and what people want to talk about over the dinner table than I am used to.
Here's one pretty amusing example: Michael and I were walking home one evening a few months ago and we noticed that we were walking against a tide of people. It seemed the whole city was walking downtown, while we were walking home. We thought about following to see what was going on, but we had groceries with us and were tired so we just went home. The next day, I asked around--expecting to hear about a free concert, or something of that sort. It was an exhibition on light, hosted by Jena Optics. Now, it culminated in a laser light show which is surely why some people came out with their families, but still: an exhibition on light. That was enough to get the whole city out on a cool evening. We were impressed.
I've included some photo from the grounds of the conference center. It really was a beautiful location, and Michael and I were able to go for some short walks in the area. I will say this: I have never in my life experienced mental fatigue like I did this weekend. Even after my comprehensive exams in grad school, which came after my first year of course work and an intense summer of studying--I can still say that this was a new level of exhaustion. We would wake up (earlier than we prefer :), go to a morning service at 8, then breakfast at 8:30, then a talk at 9:30 (some went until 12, others only until 11 or so.) Lunch was at 12, then another talk at 3:30. Dinner at 6, then a talk at 8:30. The thing is, even the meals were work! We were the only Americans at the conference, and (as is to be expected) everything was conducted in German. Breakfast in German is particularly difficult for me, as it turns out. In any case, I ended up needing a nap on Friday and on Saturday--and anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely do not take naps. I think my brain just needed to power-down for an hour or so...it was simply fed up with translating and trying to construct German sentences.
OK that's it for now. Sorry if this is totally rambly but, as I said, my brain is pretty tired! We leave for a week in Turkey tomorrow afternoon, so the blog will be down until next Tuesday or so. (Unless I decide to do a post from there, but that seems unlikely.) When we return, though, we should have lovely pictures!
*****************************************************************************
PS--(In response to some comments) Aleisha, if you could find a way to send El Serrano's Pollo Fondito to us here in Germany, I would be forever grateful! (And very impressed, and probably a little afraid.) And Katie, I will email you once we get back from Turkey. I'm really looking forward to getting together!
No comments:
Post a Comment