I have been avoiding using an acronym for the Kongress because I don’t want to initiate any association with something that might send you to the toilet.

This being the fourth morning of waking up on the continent of Europe I think I have made it past the jet lag.  The mornings have felt rough but long days at the Kongress and the walking have helped as well as the Tamazapan every night.  Tonight will be the first night that I will go without so I will see how that goes.  It was the first morning I was tempted to skip out on the first session but overcame that and scuttled my butt over to the Missionstrasse albeit a little late for devotions.  

The first session was presented by an Englishwoman and was interesting in her suggestion of “slow-ethics” ala’ “slow food”.  She began by claiming responsibility for the ecological destruction wrought by a large iron ore mine in southern Africa.  This set me off on a parallel thought while she was presenting of my grandpa as a human-rights activist.  His response to the death of his father in an iron ore mine in Ely and the circumstances into which his family was thrown as a result was to set off to organize for the workers of this world.  To keep more from dying.  That is my description of it anyhow.  I am sure human rights was not the preferred nomenclature for his activities but perhaps it was part of the lexicon of the movement. I don’t know. I will have to find that out. I had not had the thought of him as such before and am thankful to this Englishwoman’s presentation for sending me down that journey of thought.

I did skip out on the next of the morning sessions as it was to be presented in German and I was at my limit profound thought communicated through a polite translation.  So I went for a walk about around the old part of the city.  Walking about cities is one of my favorite parts of travel. I think I really caught that bug when I visited Jerusalem and it’s old city twenty years ago.  The exploration and adventure of finding your way around and discovering odd places and unique things is inspiring to me for whatever reason.  Basel’s old city was great because it is so old and mostly untouched by war and destruction.  The location dates back to the Celts settling and then became a Roman outpost.  It’s location as a hill on the Rhine aided in its development as a significant spot. It suffered an earthquake in the 11th or 12th century that necessitated the rebuilding of the Munster with the red sandstone that makes it so striking.  But other than that it was not bombed or destroyed in the two world wars nor did the structures suffer in previous wars, although the people may have.

The walk about led me down to and across the Rhine.  As you can see the Basel Munster sits above the flowing waters.

People love to float down the Rhine and sometimes even swim across it.  It is a big enough activity that they make special bags for it.  They are essentially big dry bags that you put all your clothes into along with a fair bit of the atmosphere and then seal with the folds and the clip.  Then you jump in.  With the current moving like it does you will surely end up somewhere much farther down the river so having your clothes with you is appreciated.  And with the bag acting as a bouy you needn’t swim and are visible in the water.  I wanted to have a go at it but timing and being alone I felt it to be a bit too much to go after.  

I cut up a narrow street that was obviously very old as it was not concerned with appropriate grade or modern ordinances.

I cut off of that street up another towards a fountain I saw and ended up very excited to have done so.  The street with the fountain was deserted but I continued down it and noticed some Legos built into the wall at one point.

A few weeks ago Paavo, Tuuli and I had watched the Lego Brickomentary and this little movement of filling in holes in walls with Legos was documented as happening all over the world.  And here it was.  Needless to say, I am excited to share it with Paavo and Tuuli.

I finished the walk about in time for lunch back at Missionstrasse 21.  I went to the first part of a session after that but then ducked out so I could go on a tour of Karl Barth’s house.  This may seems like a strange activity to some but bear with me and call me strange afterwards. 

 I caught a taxi over to a different part of the city with Luis, who was from outside of Rio de Janiero, Brasil and had been coming to the Kongresses for some years and was part of organizing this one.  He was in a wheelchair so the organizers called him a taxi and so I went with to help him with the stairs and such.  As was evident later on our way back on the Tram he needed neither the taxi nor all the help we were intent on giving him getting on and off Trams.  I suppose if you navigate Rio in a wheelchair Switzerland isn’t much.  But we all tried nonetheless.

 Karl Barth was a seminal systematic theologian of the 20th century.  He was the last theologian to create a systematic theology- which is to say he accounted for every dogmatic angle of life in this world and the role of God in it. A crude description but these were complete theologies that would take years to complete and they would fill volumes. I think Barth’s Christian Dogmatics had eight volumes. It was a practice for theologians going to back to the Middle Ages if they could accomplish it. It’s never been done in America (your wondering why someone would do such a thing is probably why) except for Paul Tillich who started his while he was still living in Germany before the war. Anyway, we don’t do it any more because we no longer think God has much of a role in the world or if we think that God does have a role we don’t really want think through the details of it. 

So Barth has been the most influential of systematic theologians in recent times (he was even on the cover of Time magazine) and wrote many of his works in this house in Basel. Hard for a guy like me not to visit. The house was unremarkable, nothing special.

His study was most interesting with the walls filled with books as one might expect. The were two rooms adjacent to each other that defined the study. His library was filled mostly with theology, history, biblical studies, with one shelf devoted entirely to Mozart that was within easy reach of the reading chairs. 

Here is Barth (right) with his publisher and friend.

Barth had a relationship to Bonhoeffer and the younger German visited the older Swiss in the Thirties.  Bonhoeffer was greatly influenced by Barth although he was never considered a Barthian.  That visit is one of the reasons this Kongress was held in Basel.  Most every Kongress has been held in a city in which Bonhoeffer had a connection during his life.  The exceptions I know of were Prague and South Africa but his theology held a large influence in those spots so it was appropriate.  A local good organizing committee helps, as well.  The next Kongress will be back in South Africa, again due to his large influence in the Apartheid movement.  As one participant told me, as Bonhoeffer’s writings were passed around the circles of that struggle they often came with no titles or author mentioned.  Most of those readers thought the writer was a living member of their struggle.

Barth later claimed Bonhoeffer’s Dissertation Sanctorum Communio, which he wrote at age 21, to be a theological miracle.  I found Bonhoeffer’s works from that time in Barth’s collection.

Enough about Barth, for a moment anyway. We returned in time for a last session and then a dinner that we lingered over because of the beautiful evening.  Later that evening the Karl Barth award was award was handed out in conjunction with our conference to a fellow with three Dr.’s in front of his name.  He seemed a deserving candidate for such a distinguished award but what do I really know. It was all in German. That was followed by champagne in the courtyard and another late night walk back to my bedroom.

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The second day was like the first with its schedule.  Two long sessions in the morning with a coffee break followed by lunch.  And then three shorter sessions with a coffee break followed by dinner.  It made for full days with dinner not finishing until after 7:00 if you were enjoying your dinner conversation.

The meals and the coffee breaks played the wonderful role of having the opportunity to talk and build relationships as they weren’t abbreviated. Coffee breaks were half-an-hour and lunch was an hour-and-forty-five minutes. Coming right after the sessions they also provided further discussion time.  And for those deep into the academic world it provided rare face-to-face time with important colleagues.  But it was most important as a time to relate, meet new people from around the world and to continue friendships that, for some, stretch over the 40 years ago of these Kongresses.

But as someone new to Kongress it can be a bit intimidating. Initially I am more reserved in such social times considering I don’t hold a position anywhere, I haven’t been published (mostly true) and I hold no degree beyond a lowly Masters.  And these factors are the currency of introductions. Thus my narrative in response to the introductory queries could be quite short in comparison to others.  So I went with the shorten-it-even-further tack to dislodge the routine conversation.  As in: The Other, “And what do you?”; Me, “Nothing.”  I’ve found it not only dislodges routine conversation but also sifts through people quicker in finding those whose interests are more than whether I may be of use to them.  Pleasantly there were a lot less of those folks at the gathering than others I’ve attended. While networking is not always a bad thing for further work together the common interest in the other for who they are was the common currency of interactions at this gathering.  That idea as being a core part of Bonhoeffer’s theology probably created this currency. All of this is to say is that coffee and meals were more enjoyable than they could’ve been. But if I just said that you’d be done with the pictures by now.

The only picture I have of the courtyard with gathering area hidden behind the bike and shrubs.  There was also a beautifully large garden at the far end. 

 The beginning of the 10-minute walk from my Airbnb.

 Friday evening I caught a tour to the Basel Munster, the iconic church of the city to see an Erasmus exihibit.  This year is the 500th anniversary of first published Greek New Testament, translated at the hand of Erasmus.  This was significant because until that publication there was no complete collection of the Greek New Testament (the language in which it was written) and it certainly wasn’t available to anyone for study unless you traveled to the various locations where different recovered Greek manuscripts were kept.  What was available was the Latin translation of the New Testament.  This was used in the Mass but was insufficient for good translation into other languages.  So Erasmus’ publication enabled a new wave of translations into other languages and thus unintentionally contributed to the efforts of the reformation movement.

At Basel Munster were some of the original texts from that process. It also is Erasmus’ final resting spot.  His headstone sits off of the main sanctuary of the church.

 Basel Munster

 Original annotations of Eramus’. His handwriting is in black on the side under the red.

 Beautiful art within a Latin text.

 Erasmus’ headstone.

“Erasmus orchestrates a Shitstorm” is the headline from 500 years ago.  He orchestrated an even bigger shitstorm with his published arguments with Martin Luther in the 1520’s concerning the Bondage of the Will.  This was a seminal argument in the Reformation.  Luther won the argument but lost the war as is evidenced in our theology today.  I recommend any investigation into that argument amongst giants.

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Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so celebratory of my smooth intinerary. After sitting in the SAS lounge and retruning to Oslo for a walkabout I made it back to my gate at Gardermoen only to have that flight delayed.  It was the 200 K/ph headwind for the inbound flight that set us back.  The return flight would have a corresponding tailwind though (turned out to be 220, or 136 mph) so the pilot was optimistic about an ontime arrival until some fellow didn’t show up and they had to rummage through the luggage compartment to find his luggage.  I was hoping for an ontime arrival as I had a train to catch to Basel from Zurich which would deliver me to my Airbnb around midnight.  The search for baggage put me on a Swiss train an hour later than hoped for and without my checked bag. Turns out that keeping a bag with it’s passenger isn’t as necessary as their under-planning rummaging suggests. I arrived at the Basel train station at 12:30 am and tried to figure which tram was needed to bring me to my accomadation.  And if it was running at that time.  After a bit of wandering/figuring I finally smartened up and took a taxi to the address, found the hidden and descended the stairs to my waiting bed, about twelve hours after planned.  There goes my Swiss timing.

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Air travel for me, of late, has been a story of delays.  And that is not hyperbole.  I have kept track going back more than seven years and not once have I completed an air travel itinerary without a delay or obstruction.  The delays and cancellations have been due to the frequent thunder storms, snowstorms, fog, overbooking and the less frequent pilot’s seats that don’t swivel, the unexplained (where conveniently the later plane we were delayed to had just enough seats for both flights) and once a pilot simply did not show up. The airlines have varied from Delta, Westjet, Porter, SAS, KLM, and Alaska Airlines (the most frequent contributor to my airline woes).  And they have spanned including Thunder Bay, Toronto, NYC, Montreal, Lexington, Seattle, Kelowna, Chicago, Calgary, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Duluth and once being sent to Edmonton instead Seattle for what seemed to  for kicks and giggles (I got a pair of nice wool underwear out that one courtesy of Westjet even though it was Alaska that lost my lugagge).  To sum up, I travel the skies with the expectation of delay because I have known nothing else for almost a decade (no exaggeration). 

My intinerary for this trip from Duluth to Oslo had me on an Airport Shuttle (10 people in a 10 passenger van) from the DECC in Duluth to Terminal 2 (old Humphrey Terminal) at MSP followed by an Icelandair flight to Keflavik (Reykjavik’s airport) and a flight to Oslo. I was looking forward to the shorter trans-Atlantic flight (under 6 hours to Keflavik) and the seeming easier transfer in there.  And then it happened.  I was in Oslo exactly when I had planned to be there. No delays except for the extra minutes the immigration woman took to make sure I was who I claimed to be (I looked different than my passport photo, she said. I’ll take it as a compliment as we all know how passport photos turn out).  I was happy to experience a seamless itinerary and very tired from not having slept on the flight. I stumbled around Gardermoen (Oslo Airport) and the train station and made it to Joel and Emily’s apartment (my brother and sister-in-law).  There I took a quick nap and then went for a walk-about to reacquaint myself with Oslo as well as to ward off sleep.  For waking up in Duluth and going to sleep in Oslo it was a good day of traveling.

But I won’t let it go to my head.  I am writing this from the SAS lounge in Gardermoen.  My flight was overbooked and I was bumped.  I’ll add SwissAir and Zurich to my list.

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It has been about twenty-two months since the conclusion of my last overseas adventure to Helsinki.  It finished up fast and the transition back to a schooltime ritual was quick. 

The time between has been uneventful in an event-filled kind of way.  Life is good if it is moving on with the meaning that comes from the time you spend with those you love.  Having concluded the last post on the day before the first day of school for my then First and Third graders, I now have a Third and Fifth grader starting this Fall.  That is two years of life experienced with individuals for whom the world is getting bigger and bigger and life is becoming more complex but for whom cynicism is still a few years away.  They are an enjoyable way to spend my living. 

I returned from Helsinki twenty-two months ago on Labor Day and am leaving for Oslo and Basel, Switzerland on the Fourth of July.  I guess I like to travel on Holidays. The conference I went to Helsinki to be a part of was entitled “Holy Crap” and concerned itself with exploring the intersection of Popular Culture, Technology and the Sacred.  The paper I presented was included in a digital journal published afterwards.  A link to that journal is here.  I haven’t read that paper since I submitted a revision of it and feel it to be incomplete in its intentions.  But I was intentionally trying to explore intersections and so it is what it was.  Less an academic paper, more a presentation of ideas.

The conference I am heading to now is a bigger gathering with a more specific focus.  The International Bonhoeffer Society meets every four years at a Kongress held at different spots around the world.  This meeting is being held in Basel, Switzerland.  It is occurring the week before Nancy, Paavo, Tuuli and I are to set out on five-week adventure in Scandanavia. With such timing I was able to travel early to be a part of the Kongress.  I have been a member of the International Bonhoeffer Society before and am now again. The schedule for the Kongress looks exciting for Bonhoeffer geeks like me.

So, off I go.

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We woke up to a beautiful morning in Helsinki, blue skies and a little cool. It felt like Fall as I’m sure it has in Minnesota as well. After breakfast we set off in the neighborhood of the hotel to find a church my dad had heard about. After a nice walk we found it nestled in part of the neighborhood nestled amongst the pines. They were in the midst of Sunday morning worship but it was in Finnish so we didn’t stay. There was a bike trailer pulled into one of the aisles.

Then we checked out and headed to Helsinki for our last day of walking around the city. We dropped our bags in a locker and headed to the Lutheran Cathedral, easy to see from many parts of the city.

It is a Cathedral despite being Lutheran as is attested to in its grandeur and statues.

The statutes are of Martin Luther, Phillip Melanchthon and Mikael Agricola. For those unaware the first two are the Father’s of the Reformation and Agricola was a student of Luther’s whom brought back the Reformation to Finland. I am always surprised that Finland doesn’t have a statue of Katie Luther as the mother of the Reformation considering Finland’s record on recognizing women. The statues spark some pride in me for reasons you can guess. Another part of the Cathedral that I enjoyed considering is the crypt. Because it’s a Cathedral they built a crypt into it but because it’s Lutheran no one has ever been buried in it. Instead they used it to store wood for the heat source until the early Seventies when they put it to an even better use as a small chapel and as a cafe in the summer. Of course, different groups from the congregation take turns volunteering to work the Cafe. Hard to get more Lutheran than that.
Following this pilgrimage we set about the main harbor square and the Esplanade in search of some memories to buy. As far as spending money there were not many opportunities as most stores were closed. I missed out on a few things I was hoping to bring home because of this but the prices are high enough that I may be able to find some at home for cheaper. We finished the day tired from all the walking of the past week. Taking a bus out to the airport we found our hotel with a very small room. It wasn’t an issue as there was only sleep to be found there and my dad had to rise at 4:00 am for his flight back.
Labor Day was a travel day that started early and is going to end late. Four different airports in three countries with planes, trains and automobiles.
My dad wandered the streets of Helsinki for five days straight and found many interesting spots and places. I wished to have another normal day to see a little more but am happy with the opportunity just to be here and get to know a different and cool city. I will be happy to see my family and to be around for the first day of school tomorrow. Also, we still need to settle in to our new house in Duluth and be done with the moving in stage that still exists in it at present.
A few more pictures.

Back to the meet up with Ville, the arrangements for which were mostly made breaking my Facebook silence and last minute e-mails. Ville is a fellow who lived in the US from the age of 4 to 16. I knew him from church and the youth group growing up and his family have been friends of my family since they came to St. Paul. My parents and brother and his family have been in touch with Ville since his return to Finland. But having spent only an ad hoc day in Helsinki since his return I have not seen him. All of which is to ask how do you find a fellow across from city centre, in front of Stockmanns, under the clock when you haven’t seen each other in some twenty-six years? Having hair much longer than it once was I figured it was more in my favor to find him whose Facebook picture was much more recognizable. My dad and I split up in an effort to find him in the midst of all the people and after a bit of walking around to make sure that was the only clock present, I found him standing there. After a bit of reacquainting while my dad made his way around Stockmanns to us we went inside for a refreshment.
We decided to head out Soumenlinna for a walk around and to see the historic place. Soumenlinna was built back when Sweden ruled the area as an outpost and fortress against the Russians to east. Turku, another city in Finland was the capitol at the time and most of the Helsinki consisted of a settlement at the mouth of the Vantaa River. As a fortress it was very high tech for the time (18th century) with star-shaped embattlements and heavy artillery to protect to only safe strait into the area. Alas, it was not to last for Sweden. The Russians laid siege to it, conquering the area and later the whole of Finland which they held on to until Finnish independence almost one hundred years ago.
Some pictures of Soumenlinna.
Part of the fortress.

Looking out onto the Baltic.

Looking back to Helsinki.

Ville and I.

The Finnish submarine.

Six Finnish subs were manufactured in Finland in the interwar period with technological funding coming from Germany. Since the Germans were not allowed to manufacture weapons of war under the treaty of Versailles they R&D’ed their submarine technology in Finland and then used it to great effect in building their U-boats. Only one Finnish sub remains, dry docked here.
The visit to Soumenlinna was more of a social visit as walk around the grounds than a seeing of the site. I enjoyed it as such. There was much more to be seen there that will happen on another visit.
On returning from the island fortress we headed to a restaurant that Ville had picked out for us. The Sea Horse was a place that base once been a hang out for architects and designers and previous to that was a socialist hang out (maybe both together). I think he chose it with my dad in mind. We also figured there to be a great chance that my grandpa had eaten there on his visit for those reasons. The meal of Baltic herring, mashed potatoes and beets was delicious and familiar fare to me although prepared with a Finnish twist. The conversation and catching up was good as well. After after dinner coffee Ville walked us back to the bus, bringing us past his flat and pointing out buildings by famous architects (he was an architecture student). He bid us adieu and we found our way back to our hotel by 11:00 pm. A second late night out in Helsinki and most of the reason why I am now catching up on this blog.
Pics below at the moment.

This morning we accidentally slept in and barely got breakfast before it was closed. It was a good breakfast and a full breakfast and held us through the day as these free hotel breakfasts are best utilized to do. No pictures of it though. The hotel we stayed at for the two nights of the conference did not have breakfast but I supplemented it with snacks from the conference and the free lunch we received both days in the University Cafe. It was not pleasant food. Makes me happy I’m not in college any longer. Here is a picture of the building at the Univ. of Helsinki where the conference was held.

Pretty non-descript and sits right in the middle of the city. I walked past it the first evening without a clue I would be spending two days there. It is best known in my world for being the locale of the New Finnish Interpretation of Luther initiated by Tuomo Mannermaa. And you thought Finns were just pretty faces.
So after that tangent we headed into Helsinki from our spot in Espoo which is next door to Helsinki. We wandered the city for a bit as we window shopped and tried to find some finds. It is an expensive city soit is hard to want to spend money while at the same time you want to buy all kinds of things. Lucky for the pocket book many shops were closed on the weekend.
Helsinki seems to exhale design on so many levels that you simply breathe it in while walking the streets. It makes you feel good about life and future it holds even when Mr. Putin is right next door.
Time for some pictures

This is a chapel in one of the main squares called Kamppi (both the square and the chapel go by the name). It was purposed with providing a quiet place for prayer and meditation in the midst of the city bustle. In tourist season I don’t think it succeeds but I hope for the rest of the year that it might. It is dramatic in its effect and I think is also a nice counterpoint to the steel and concrete which surrounds it.
I showed the picture before of the boy peeing near the main harbor market and found the title for the sculpture so I thought I should share it again.

In the afternoon we met an old friend who lives in Helsinki. He is not old, just a guy I haven’t seen for over 25 years. But that will have to wait till the morning as I need to fall asleep in order to get early in order to fall asleep on flight across the ocean in order to not fall asleep on the drive back up to Duluth tomorrow. That’s the plan anyway. So is a flight free of Icelandic Ash.

The second day of the conference also started with a run. I love running in different cities because it is a great way to see parts of the city you often don’t get to. I took some pictures today.

This is looking out to Soumenlinna (which I will tell you more about later) from the the city.

This another island just across the water. There are thousands of islands along the southern coast.

Here is a morning ferry heading Tallinn, Estonia which is only 30km away according to one of the conference participants. I can’t verify that at the moment as I’m laying in my bed but that seems kind of close.
The run was nice as it helps with the jet lag and gave me the chance to see Helsinki wake up.
Being a two day conference this was the last day as well. It sounds short but I sat in 16 different sessions in the two days. That’s a lot of ideas being proposed. Some of the topics today were more interesting to me: Fandom and Religion, Pentavangelical Glocalisation in the West Cape of South Africa, Leonard Cohen as a Modern Troubadour, Religionless Christianity in Mumford and Sons, the appropriation of social media in British evangelical aid organisations and the religious undertones of Lego’s Ninjago and Chima. That last one was presented by a Norwegian woman whose PhD thesis was on virginity in late Antiquity. Little did you know, eh? A picture just so that you believe me.

Also, during a break I ran an errand and came upon this dude on a smoke break from the construction site wearing knicker work pants.

Pragmatic fashion.
The conference filled the whole of the day. It was interesting and an enjoyable time for myself and reminded me of what my undergrad mentor once told me, with PhD. you know more and more about less and less until you know all there is about absolutely nothing. In this case it is a turn on that phrase in that it is the realization that I know less and less about more and more until I know absolutely nothing about all there is. Hopefully that is also a lesson in traveling the world. It’s a big world and we really don’t know much about it.
The other lesson of travel I also experienced at the conference, we are all human beings and pretty interesting if we get to know each other. There were people from 19 different countries at the conference and most were really fun to spend time with. I was the only American I met so I freely represented the other 316,999,999 of you all with my opinions. I heard more variety of British accents in one room than I had before and also heard a Senegalese Sufi worship band who. Closed out the conference. Academics can be boring and we can criticize them for having their heads in the clouds or being irrelevant but the truth borne out to me was that the exchange of ideas is very important for moving things forward.
Any way time to sleep.