Guest Blogger and His Trip to Germany



While Deb was in Jonkoping looking for pumpkin latte, I went to Nuremberg, Germany for a guest lecture at the Lutheran University of Applied Science. My host, Klaus Schellberg, put me up at a cool historically renovated hotel a couple of blocks from the university. It had two floors with the top floor a sleeping loft and a kitchenette and booth/table on the first floor. Here's a picture of the room.




On Friday we toured campus and met the president of the university and some of her international office staff. The picture shows Klaus on the left, the president in the middle with me and the head of the international office on the right.


Next I went to the Memorial Museum at the building which held the Nuremberg trials in 1945. It was a great exhibit to go through and the highlight was looking down at the actual court room used for the historic trial. 




Friday evening, we met the students at a restaurant and I had the dish below. Way too much to eat in one sitting. But way good!



Saturday was teaching day with Uwe Kaspers. Here we are after an all-day class on management for our human services nonprofit students. We did some discussion on Peter Senge and I suggested students work on short skits to make the archetypes as concrete as possible in their minds. We all had a great time.


Saturday night, Klaus showed me around the old part of town--churches, castle, shopping market place--and we ended up at a great little restaurant and sat by the wood oven and ate sausage and potato salad and drank German beer.











Sunday I went to church at the Lorenz Church. It was Lutheran, but actually was built to be a Catholic Church. As it was opening, the reformation happened. It still has a lot of features of a Catholic Church and the worship service was very liturgical, even more than in Sweden. Communion was interesting in that we gathered in a circle around the table. Extra ladies wiped off the cup with an antiseptic solution between users. I just used intinction. Then at the end everyone held hands as the woman minister gave a blessing to us. Very moving to be a part of this in the main Lutheran cathedral of Bavaria.



Final tour on Sunday was to the Nazi Party grounds (1933-39). Walking through the area where Hitler spoke was very crazy--having seen it on news reels as a young person. The area where the US soldiers blew up the Nazi symbols was still standing. You can see me standing where Hitler made speeches to 100,000 people in the grounds. We also saw the start of a building project (never finished) that was modeled after the Colosseum. It was supposed to have a roof and was for gatherings of the party faithful. After we finished looking around, Klaus and his wife and I had a final visit with some coffee/pop/treats. They were wonderful hosts. I flew back to Sweden early in the morning on Monday and made it back in time for my 12:40 class.









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