What makes Central European towns attractive...?

   I have now spent some time on various travels in a fair number of Central European cities and towns, both those that are big tourist destinations (Vienna, Budapest, Krakow, and now Prague), good sized cities not as well known to tourists (at least American tourists—Bratislava, Warsaw,  Łódź, Belgrade, Novi Sad), and smaller cities (Eger, Győr).   All of them—even the smaller ones (Eger is around 50,000 population) seem to have set aside areas for people to come into and slow down.  It helps that most of them have tried to protect old town centers and set aside some part of them for foot traffic, but there must be more to it than that.  I know U.S. towns that have done that only to see everyone continue to rush around them.  Perhaps it is our idolatry of the full schedule and addiction to "fast".  We are so busy speeding things up to save time we don't know how to slow down and use the time...  but how many of us dream of wandering through places like Vienna, sitting at some sidewalk cafe and having time for actual conversations?   If you have not dreamed of that, here is a picture from Bratislava...

...and On, apparently...

                        So Friday, May 28, Daniel and I went to Vienna (a 1 hour train ride from Bratislava) and after more than 6 years, this is what it looks like.  This is called "The Allegory of Painting" or "The Artist in His Studio" and it was great to finally see it.  To prove my point about the light, turn out the lights in your room and the light will still pour through the window and out of your computer screen  ;  )

This is number 36 of 37... and on Monday we will be in Prague, only 2 hours by train from Dresden, home of that last one.  I could make a quick dash there on Tuesday morning before heading back to Budapest and my flight home on Wednesday.   I will run into the museum, dash up the stairs, and...

oops.  They did it again.  That was in fact my tentative plan, but Daniel saved me great anguish and frustration, not to mention deja vu, when he discovered a web site which tracks Vermeer paintings.

The last one is on the move again.  Right now it is in The Hague for the summer, and then heads to Scotland for the fall.

   So maybe God wants to keep me on this chase for a while longer.   Am I ready for the possible letdown and sense of anticlimax in finishing this life goal?  Maybe there is something I need to do first, like in most great quests... anyone seen a Holy Grail laying around?

The Quest Will Go On...

   When I was about 18 years old, one of my mentors—Prof. DeWitt Whistler Jayne—introduced me to the art of the Dutch Reformation painters. In particular, I was moved by the slides he showed our class of the works of Jan Vermeer. Vermeer painted as though one of the paints on his palette was simply labeled "light." I later discovered that through scans and other studies it had been determined he obtained this effect by using as many as 27 layers of paint and varnishes of varying opacity, in which he suspended tiny dots of white or yellow pigment. This created a 3-dimensional sense of actual light—such that if someone were to turn out all the lights in the room you would swear the glow would continue to come in the window in a painting. When I learned that there was a relatively small number of his works surviving in the world, I resolved to add to my life list of goals: See in person every Vermeer in the world.  At the time there were 35 known, plus two over which there was some debate.

   Now, I actually had seen some as a small boy dragged into museums by his parents—but what I did not remember would not be counted.  It took 4 years to see my first, at a traveling exhibit at San Francisco's Palace of the Legion of Honor, and six more for the second, which has since been stolen from Boston's Gardner Museum.  But then they came in bunches:  5 in the National Gallery, 7 in the 2 museums in New York, 9 I had not already seen in a giant show in the National Gallery that David Kuo got me into see when it appeared to be impossible.  Along the way there were disappointments—twice I traveled out of my way only to discover the paintings I wanted to see had been removed for conservation or loaned to other museums.  In the picture above I am in Vienna, on my way to a student conference to help with the Bible study.  It is April 4, 2004 and the white paper states the painting was removed 20 minutes before my arrival when the museum opened...  The other time this happened was in Dresden.  Along the way one of the disputed paintings was authenticated—but I managed to catch it on loan in Philadelphia while helping a student propose marriage to his sweetheart.  The other maybe was in the show in Washington.
   So at the start of my sabbatical all that remained were the 2 that I should have seen but missed:
Dresden and Vienna.  And I would be close to both those cities on this trip...

Fun on the train...

It is shortly after noon local time May 27 and I am sitting on a local train in the Eger station, leaving in a few minutes for Budapest and then transferring to an Intercity express for Bratislava.  Buying the ticket was another interesting experience in the art of gesture.  (pause here to shut the compartment door to keep the clouds of cigarette smoke out--smoking is still a very common thing in Hungary, and is permitted on trains)
Anyway, our gestured conversation--punctuated by my very rusty German--went something like this:
Me:  Ticket to Bratislava?
Agent:  Tomorrow?
Me:  No, no--today!
Agent:  (looking through printed schedule book--no computers are in sight anywhere in the ticket office) Departing 16:34 arriving 22:40?
Me:  No, no .  Earlier (I had looked up the times online)
Agent: Writes down a list of times, none of which include the next train which would save 4 hours.
Me: Point to my laptop, write down the departure and arrival times I had seen online.
Agent:  Ponders her book for a moment and then writes down almost identical numbers--most importantly the train change in Budapest is the same.
Me:  Nod vigorously!
Agent:  Holds up 1 finger and says "eine moment".  10 minutes later she returns bearing a paper ticket but says "Problemma."
Me:  Look of grave concern.  I don't know what language she is saying it in but fortunately (or unfortunately) it seems to mean the same thing.
Agent:  Points at various parts of the ticket, says "No reservatione" (with a long 'o') and then "No problemma".  Repeats the cycle of "Problemma"--point--"no reservatione", pause, "no problemma" about 3 times.
Me:  Having traveled on European Intercity trains before, I knew they strongly recommended that you pay an extra fee for a reserved seat.  But you need a computer to make a reservation... what she was saying was that she could not make one—but that would not be a problem.  So I started interjecting "OK" into her continuing repetitions.  Eventually she beamed and wrote out the ticket.  And then gave me a smaller ticket for the local train.  It turns out that in this part of Europe, almost no one buys a first class ticket, even though it is not much more by American standards (the total for both segments plus a return ticket to Budapest next week was less than $50).  So even though I did not have a reservation, I had a compartment of 6 seats to myself on both trains.
  The upshot is, I arrived safely in Bratislava tonight and was met by Dr. Daniel Nagaj, a 2008 Theoretical Physics graduate of MIT, and he and his wife are my hosts for the next few days.
  The European Leadership Forum was an intense experience—I thought InterVarsity conferences like Urbana had packed schedules!—but a good one.  More powerful than the content was the making of many new friendships, several of which will be reinforced in July in England and Scotland.  I hope to ruminate more on the content and share some thoughts in posts over the next few days.  Daniel is also a very good person to discuss apologetics with and has very sharp insights in a broad variety of fields.  Occasionally I even understand bits of what he is saying when he talks physics...

Pictures are first from the last full day in Eger--during one of the short breaks I hurried into the old part of town and climbed the 400 year-old Turkish minaret which is one of the signatures of the town.  It's about 100 feet high, and the stairs are incredibly narrow and tight.  Each step is about 15 inches wide, and since it is a spiral staircase only the outer part is big enough for your foot.  I'm about 25 inches wide through my chest and elbows, so I had to climb the 96 steps sideways!  No one can pass (except children and contortionists) so only a few people can be in and on it at the same time.  The view was incredible though... 1 picture from the bottom, one inside, one from the top.  The fourth picture is 4 UCCF staff walking down an Eger St.  UCCF is the name that British InterVarsity changed to a while back, so it is our sister movement.  All of these guys are big, but on the left is Hamish, who is really big (and an ardent rugby player).  I hope to visit him at Durham in July.  Right now he is taking the 8 week Oxford apologetics course...  The final picture is from the train... it is the great castle of Viseburg that guards the big bend the Danube takes through here... want to see it better?  Here are the google map coordinates:  http://maps.google.sk/maps?client=firefox-a&hl=sk&ie=UTF8&ll=47.793726,18.98283&spn=0.007063,0.024977&t=h&z=16

Just a little post...

  It is late and I am pretty tired... I am meeting lots of interesting people here, many friends of friends.  At lunch today I made a quick hike through the old town and up to the castle.  Eger is famous for being the first Hungarian town to mount a successful defense against the Ottoman Turks when they invaded in 1597... though they eventually captured it.  As such many Hungarians come to visit the castle and honor the famous siege.  There were a number of Hungarian Boy and Girl Scouts there when I climbed up the hill.  Views are looking at the castle from the town square, than vice versa.

and now the 2nd...

Gushing water

Eger (prounounced 'hager' with an almost silent 'h' and a long 'a'). It is a place of gushing water, literally and figuratively. There are fountains and parks everywhere, unusual for a city this small; and this conference has taken the InterVarisity model of telling you to drink from a firehose and amped up the pressure. Not much time for reflection in a schedule that had only one long break–1.5 hours at dinner—between 8:30 am and 10 pm. Don't think working that long--think of listening to a sermon that long! Nonetheless there is good stuff here and I am networking like crazy. I'll try and process a bit tomorrow (I'm skipping an optional seminar to walk the town) and include the gigantic fountain by my hotel.
2 pictures tonight. The first is the view from last night in the day, the second is of a young Slovak cellist who played for us tonight. He does this wild Bobby McFerrin kind of thing, playing the cello, producing rhythm by clicking and popping his mouth, and using his voice to be a third instrument. I made a brief recording—I'll post it upon request.

Ack!

I was so pre-occupied by traveling yesterday, I only remembered today that it was Pentecost. Happy Birthday to Jesus' church!

1 wedding and a redeye

I am sitting in Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, it is lunch local time, but 5:20 in the morning by my body clock, and boy is my body tired.
We celebrated a wonderful wedding yesterday in St. Louis. The MIT gang made a respectable showing (see pictures) and at the rehearsal dinner/reception the bride-to-be started a game of Settlers of Catan…
I also had an all too quick catch-up with Sloan alum Frank Hull at my Atlanta stopover last night.

I have not slept in the last 24 hours (and only 4 hours in the previous 24)…but still have a plane-bus-subway-bus-van combo before arriving in Eger sometime tonight. At least I should have little trouble adjusting to the time change!

UPDATE* I am now sitting on my 3rd floor balcony overlooking Eger with a glass of orange juice and surrounded by bird songs. Interesting trip in—didn’t run into too many people who admitted to any English—so I just wrote “Eger” on a piece of paper and figured out their gestures. I hope to turn in soon and wake up early for a full day…
The pictures are from the wedding and the view I am looking at right now...

In less than 72 hours I will be officially on Sabbatical—and in exactly 72 hours I should be on a plane between St. Louis and Atlanta. But the travel actually starts tomorrow, as I fly to St. Louis for the wedding of GCF alumnae Prof. Cynthia Lo to Christopher Jones—I will be officiating. There will be several gatherings in the next couple of days for the other alumni able to come to the wedding.
The MIT Grad Christian Fellowship students have showered me with blessings as I go... note the profile photo to the right. A group (mostly exec members) took me to a Korean restaurant on Sunday evening and I tried my hand at table bbq—I think I did pretty well, too. Afterward they took turns blessing and affirming me—what an incredible privilege to be sent off that way! Last night the Mark Manuscript Study celebrated the successful completion of the semester-long study, with a great dinner (honey almond chocolate tort for dessert!) catered by Matt and Tamiko (immediately to my left in the group picture). See the giant card? The message is partially written with candy bars, commemorating the chocolate that fueled our time in Mark.
Again, what a privilege to be sent off this way!
The last, and less comfortable piece of my departure for this first leg of my sabbatical journeys was a cardiac stress echo exam (yep, the one on the treadmill) as part of a physical. And while one of my sabbatical goals is to get in better shape, I'm good to go...

We Shall Find the Stars

As I prepared for this time, a colleague showed me a prayer by Sir Francis Drake... that's right, not St. Francis but Sir Francis—first Englishman to circumnavigate the earth, defeater of the Spanish Armada, and privateer (legal pirate). This prayer resonated with me at a very deep level, and expresses some of what I hope this sabbatical will accomplish.
Here it is:

"Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ."

—Sir Francis Drake, 1577 (the year he started his voyage around the world)

Countdown to sabbatical...

After 24 years with InterVarsity, I'm finally taking my first sabbatical. As part of that I want to help those who have been a part of that experience--as students or supporters or both--share the experience. When I am traveling it may tend toward a travel documentary, but I also want to share the experience of seeking refreshment and renewal--and will welcome your feedback.
D-Day is May 21; I will fly to St. Louis the evening of the 20th. I hope to 'see' you then!