I’m here to tell you that there are times when this is worth doing. For example, if you are in the midst of* a very stressful move and an entire glass of milk lands on your laptop computer while it is running and the immediate result is that the screen goes blank. My son claims that he once spilled a can of coke on his laptop and it recovered . . . . eventually . . . . after a few days of drying out. Well lah-ti-da. Would that I should be so lucky. But alas, it was not to be. Notice, I am avoiding telling you exactly who spilled the milk on my computer. Suffice it to say that it was not I – though I am perfectly capable of such things.
So now, almost two months later, my pocketbook has still not quite recovered, but I do have a new computer and I am back to writing travelogues. Actually the computer is not so new anymore, but the incident still doesn’t totally feel like a thing of the past -- partly because the new computer is a MacIntosh. The Strohms are long-time Mac users, though some of us, including me, have departed into the PC world at various times for various reasons. Anyway, this seemed like a good opportunity to go back. So I did. The jury is out at this point as to whether that was a good decision. The learning curve was a bit steeper than I had expected and there are still some compatibility issues with Macs. But probably a year from now, I’ll be happy with my decision.
On to more important issues – like “where in the world are Mike and Nancy living at the moment?” And more interesting issues – like “where have Mike and Nancy been traveling since the last travelogue?”
Mike and I are living in Washington DC, more specifically Arlington, Virginia. We arrived here on July 14th. Mike is working for an arm of the Chief of Chaplain’s Office called DMI – Directorate of Ministry Initiatives. His job involves coordinating all Family Life Programs Army-wide. His office is in Crystal City, which is that collection of tall buildings along the west edge of Reagan National Airport – not far from the Pentagon but a separate location nonetheless. Five things to know about this job: (1) it’s mostly admin stuff, which Mike hates, (2) every day the learn curve for the task at hand is extremely steep and there is no end in sight, (3) supposedly it involves a lot of travel, although that hasn’t proven to be the case so far, (4) it involves several times as much responsibility as this same job did prior to the onset of the Iraq war and it truly isn’t doable by one person, though the powers-that-be haven’t figured that out yet and (5) Mike was more or less hand-picked for this job by his predecessor who left the job and the Army totally burned out. This guy was and still claims to be a friend of Mike’s – how exactly that works, I’m not sure. All in all it looks like a set-up for disaster to me. But who am I to say?While Mike tries to do this crazy job, we are living in a two bedroom apartment on the 4th floor of a 5 story building.
We are two metro stops away from Crystal City, 4 blocks from the Iwo Jima Memorial and about the same distance from the back gate of Ft. Myer. 
There is no view of the Washington Monument or the Jefferson Memorial or even the Iwo Jima Memorial from our apartment – hence the rent is such that we can live there and still eat. (Would you believe that Arlington County charges 5% of the value of your vehicle ANNUALLY just for the privilege of garaging your car in Arlington County?) The good thing is that our apartment is on the SW corner of a building and we have more direct sunlight flooding into our apartment than the past several places we’ve lived. For that I am extremely grateful. Growing up in Colorado, I am predisposed to think that sunlight is necessary for life and the lack thereof justifies ongoing grumpiness. The last 8 years have been a challenge on that note. The downside of our location is that we are directly in the flight path of Reagan National airport. Leaving the windows of our apartment open at night is not an option unless, of course, we want to be fully awake (as opposed to partially awake) by 6:00AM. Fortunately, by mid-morning the racket dies down somewhat.We sort of think we’ve found a church home. It’s called Capitol Hill Baptist Church. It’s about 6 blocks east of the Capitol Building. The preacher is a guy named Mark Dever and he’s really good -- so good they let him preach one solid hour every Sunday morning! The church is big, but not huge. And it’s SBC – can you believe that? The congregation is really young and erudite. Mike and I sort of stick out, actually -- not just on account of our age but also because neither of us has a PhD or is working on one. It is, however, really refreshing to see so many quality young adults feeding on solid food and not milk and right in the shadow of our nation’s capitol.
With no kids at home and Mike busy up to his ears, the voices in my head are telling me I need to find a job, but then I never can figure out exactly when I would find time to actually work. There are just too many other interesting things to do in life. At the moment I’m auditing a class called “Christian History” from an extension of Reformed Theological Seminary in McLean, VA (about 30 minutes away). I’ve actually toyed with the idea of taking this class for credit and working on a degree (possibly living in a city full of overachievers is having it’s affect on me?), but then I think about writing papers and that idea goes right out the window. So that’s what I’m up to and at least at the moment and I haven't decided exactly what to do with the voices in my head.
On to the more interesting question of where the Strohms have been traveling since the last travelogue, which was last February, I believe? You knew that the lack of communication didn’t mean we weren’t doing any traveling, right? In fact, the last six months or so we were in Germany, I was too busy traveling to edit pictures and write travelogues. (And since then I have been too busy trying to pare four bedrooms down to two!) Once I figured out that the Army wasn’t going to give us another year in Germany, I vowed to pick up the already fast pace of things. So here’s the preview of where we’ve been since my last travelogue:
Bolesławiecs, Poland
Italy – Pompeii, Assisi, Siena, and Civita Bagnoregio
Normandy – Sainte-Mère-l’Eglise, Omaha Beach, Pont du Hoc, Arromanches, Mont Saint Michel, and Etratat
Sicily (that’s Italy, too, BTW!)
Egypt – Cairo and Luxor
The Pyrenees (border of Spain and France)
Scotland (the Highlands, this time)
Croatia (with a little of Slovenia, Montenegro, and Bosnia-Herzegovina thrown in just for excitement)
That looks like about 8 travelogues, right? Ought to keep me busy until Spring. You think I won’t remember things that long? Well, I have been experiencing some senior moments lately, but I suspect that by the time I edit all my pictures from each of those trips, my memory will be adequately jogged.
OK, so here’s the test. The first of those trips, Bolesławiecs Poland, happened back in February. Let’s see what I remember . . . . . . . . (I know, I know, the one you really want to hear about is Egypt, right? But I’m determined to do this in chronological order. If you really want to hear about Egypt, you’ll have to bear with me through some slightly less exciting trips!)Bolesławiecs Poland was a weekend trip – not even really a long weekend – just Friday noon to late Sunday night. There were kind of three parts to the trip: Bolesławiecs, Poland; Görlitz, Germany; and Wittenberg, Germany.
(1) Bolesławiecs (pronounced Boh-leh-SWAH-vee-etz) is just over the border from Germany into Poland. We went there to shop for Polish Pottery. Polish Pottery is kind of the “in” thing with American military wives in Germany so I was predisposed NOT to like it . . . . but then immediately when I first saw it I discovered that . . . . I did like it! Darn. I hate it when that happens! There’s a Polish Pottery shop about an hour from Heidelberg that I discovered soon after we arrived in Germany. I went there quite a few times over next three years and ended up with quite a collection – not as extensive as that of some military wives I know, but significant nonetheless. Polish Pottery used to be quite a bit cheaper in Bolesławiecs than in Germany, but that is no longer true. I was actually aware of that before we went to Bolesławiecs but wanted to go anyway just for the experience. And I’m glad we went.
In case you don’t know about Polish Pottery. Here’s the scoop. It comes in lots of different patterns – I think I’ve been told as many as 2,000. Some are more common that others. Some people pick one pattern and buy everything in that pattern. Others mix and match. I’ve chosen to do the latter. The patterns lend themselves to mixing and matching. There are a couple of places in the US that sell Polish Pottery but typically it’s either REALLY pricey – like 2 to 3 times what it costs in Poland (Pike Place Market in Seattle for example) – or the patterns are kind of cheap looking (TJMax for example). Polish Pottery is hand painted and apparently each worker has his or her own special pattern and piece. If you want a certain piece in a certain pattern and that particular worker is on vacation, you might have to wait a while. It’s really heavy pottery and is microwave safe and dishwasher safe and all that good stuff. End of commercial. Here’s a sample some of my favorite patterns.
Apparently something about the soil around Bolesławiecs lends itself to pottery making and it has been going on there for a long time. The whole town is pretty much wrapped up in the producing and selling of pottery. Check out this traffic circle.
There are several different factories in Bolesławiecs and lots and lots of retail shops. You just sort of follow your nose from one shop to another and see what you find. Some patterns show up over and over again. Others are more rare. My favorite little shop in Germany (called “Sofia’s”, but now run by Danielle) buys from one specific factory and tends to have basically the same patterns all the time with a new one only now and again. There are tons more patterns available in Bolesławiecs. (Is it possible that some patterns never leave Poland?) However, after a day in Bolesławiecs, I’d say that Sofia has the best patterns AND the best prices. Nonetheless, it WAS fun to see what else is out there and I came home with some neat purchases, mostly serving pieces.The general consensus among military wives is that Polish Pottery shopping is best done without one’s husband. However, Mike is a good shopper, and so I was just as happy to do this with him. It was fun to combine the shopping with some other sightseeing.
Safety in Poland is a hot topic among American military personal. There are all kinds of horror stories out there about cars being stolen or broken into. There is a certain hotel in Bolesławiecs that has a secured parking lot and has been dubbed “safe.” However, we chose to do our sleeping in the little town of Görlitz on the Germany side of the border -- not so much for safety reasons as just because we understood from Rick Steves that Görlitz is a fun town to explore. Somehow this little detail seems to have escaped the attention of most Americans – in fact, I’ve never met a single American who’s spent any time in Görlitz. It’s just known as “the town you drive through on the way to Bolesławiecs.” (More about Görlitz later.) We had no reason to think about safety during our day in Poland. In fact there wasn’t really any huge difference between Germany and Poland in terms of living conditions or road conditions or anything else – subtle differences but nothing really blatant. Things in Poland have obviously changed significantly over the last couple of decades.
On to Görlitz. Görlitz was the crossroads of a couple of major trade routes during the Middle Ages. It survived WWII pretty much intact but then was divided down the middle, along it’s river, between East Germany and Poland. The interest in Görlitz isn’t that anything hugely historical happened there, but just that there are a lot of well-preserved old buildings with interesting architectural features. Somehow even the communists saw some value in preserving old stuff so even though Görlitz was part of East Germany it never acquired that utilitarian look which is so common in the rest of East Germany. Even this building called the “Biblical House” with its blatantly religious façade survived the communist era.
Here are a couple of the panels up close.
Just as a side note, the old border between East and West Germany is actually rather hard to “find” today. I have a general idea of the shape of the two countries from my public school history days and I know, for example, that anything near Berlin is going to be part of the former East Germany. But rarely, during our four years in Germany, was it obvious to me exactly where that old border really was, although I know that we must have crossed it numerous times. And of course it’s not marked on any current maps. It’s amazing how quickly things change.We spent a few hours exploring Görlitz on foot after we returned from Poland on Saturday evening and then retraced some of our steps again the next morning so I could take pictures in the daylight. On Sunday morning, we happened unto a worship service at Peterskirche which was interesting. Of course it was all in German, so we didn’t understand much. It was pretty much a full house and there were lots of families with children in attendance, which was exciting to see. One of the hymns they sang was “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” You’d think that was the protestant national anthem as often we’ve heard it sung in German churches. What was peculiar this time around was the style in which the organist played it. The meter of that hymn is always a bit irregular because of all the “holds” at the end of phrases, but this guy made it so irregular that it was impossible to sing with him. A real disappointment. I do NOT like playing the organ (piano only for me, thank-you very much). However, I found myself wishing I could just take over for him and show him how to do it – and, in doing so, see how much the congregational singing would have improve if it was just played RIGHT! Can you believe such arrogance? Even now, 9 months later as I write this, I am unrepentant. If any of you are around when my kids pick out my tombstone, try to convince them to write on it something like “When she played, people sang.”
The service we attended was in the back part of Peterskirche, allowing the front half of the church, where the famous Sun Organ resides, to remain open to tourists. There was a free concert on the Sun Organ at noon and we stayed for a little while for that, but somehow I wasn’t too impressed with that style of organ music either. Humm. Did I wake up on the wrong side of the bed that day or what? The church itself, though, and the way the organ pipes were arranged was pretty impressive.
Here are some odds and ends pictures of Görlitz
Notice the chalk markings above the door in this picture. This is common in Europe and I puzzled for several years as to what it was all about. Finally about the time we visited Görlitz, I stumbled onto an explanation. If we hadn’t lived “on post” in Germany – in a highly secured, gated community – I no doubt would have figured this out a lot sooner. The story is that sometime between New Years Day and Three Kings Day (January 6), children in Europe dress up as kings and go from door to door caroling and collecting money or sweets. The money they collect goes to various charities. If you give, they mark your door with chalk. The “20” and the “08” indicate that you gave in 2008. “C + M + B” probably stands for Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, and is probably intended to evoke the blessing of the Three Kings. However, it could also stand for "Christus Mansionem Benedictat" (Christ bless this home). So now you know.
About oneish, we tore ourselves away from Görlitz and headed for Wittenberg (almost three hours away and towards Berlin – not exactly on the way home). For those of you whose religious education is somewhat lacking, Wittenberg is the town where Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of his church.It just sort of seems like one of those places that any good Protestant ought to visit at least briefly if one is going to be in Germany any length of time, regardless of whether or not it’s included even in the index of one’s tourbook let alone the table of contents. OK, so here it is. This is the Schlosskirche (castle church), the church where Luther did his dastardly deed ----
And here’s the door upon which he did it. ----
Notice that the door is no longer wooden but bronze and the 95 theses are engraved upon it. Somehow time has worked it’s magic and transformed Luther from a villain into a hero. Notice, also, the two figures kneeling at the cross above the door which are decidedly NOT biblical characters.
Actually both the Schloss and the Schlosskirche were extensively damaged during the two world wars and were rebuilt differently than the originals. Martin Luther would probably not be able to recognize either. The elaborate tower was originally part of the castle but has now been incorporated into the church. Luther and his friend Melanchthon are both buried in the Schlosskirche. Unfortunately it was closed so we weren’t able to go inside, but the old part of the town of Wittenberg (“altstadt” is the proper German word for such areas) was close by and it was fun to explore. There were statutes of both Luther and Melanchthon in the market square and the church where Luther actually did most of his preaching is still standing.
The architecture in Lutherstadt Wittenberg, as it is formally called, is just . . . well . . . interesting. Actually, one would be hard pressed to find a German town of any size that didn’t have a carefully preserved “altstadt” that was at least mildly fun to explore. After 4 years of said exploring, I still have not had my fill. In Germany (unlike America) architecture truly is . . . . art.
Actually, I must admit that there is also some neat architecture in parts of Washington DC. In fact it’s possible that had I grown up on the East Coast or spent any significant amount of time there before living in Europe, my love affair with European architecture might have been slightly less exuberant. Here’s a sample of some DC architecture. I must admit it’s pretty interesting and quite unlike anything we saw in Europe.
OK, enough philosophizing. And I’ve already told you about Mike and I. So, here’s the latest on other Strohms and their whereabouts. Alan is still in Zurich, Switzerland, working for Google though he was back in Washington State for a few weeks this summer. Somehow Google doesn’t seem to care too much what office he works out of as long as he produces (oh wait . . . what exactly does Google “produce?”). Alan has rescued me from insanity several times recently on various computer issues (like how to get my new computer to make the funny “l” in the name “Bolesławiecs” ). It’s nice to have a computer geek in the family even if he is half a world away. Things like IM and Skype eat up the distance pretty well. If you want to see Alan’s most recent project with Google, go to www.googlemaps.com and put in Beirut, Lebanon and see what comes up. Until a week or so ago you would only have found a bare skeleton of major roads. The next time you visit Beirut be sure to say thanks to Alan for making life so much easier for you.As of last February, Rose (Alan’s girlfriend) is officially enrolled in a Master of Linguistics program at the University of Geneva. Now, instead of attending classes taught in Hebrew (as she was at the University of Tel Aviv), she is attending classes taught in French. That wouldn’t be much of an improvement in my book, but she thinks it is. The other nice perk is that someone actual seems to be able to tell her what classes she has to take to finish her degree and how long it might take to do that. Somehow no one in Tel Aviv was ever able to do that! The down side is that she is having trouble finding a place to live in Geneva. About a month ago she was finally able to get into a dorm room, which isn’t ideal but better than computing from Zurich to Geneva several times a week (3 hours each way by train). She is also teaching English for Berlitz, so she is really busy at the moment.
Amy spent the summer in Alaska – about 100 miles south of the Arctic Ocean (not the Arctic Circle, but the Arctic Ocean) at a place called Toolik Research Station. She was a research assistant (with pay, no less!) for some gal named Angie who is working on a PhD at Brown University (Rhode Island) in shrubification. Honest, I didn’t make up that word. It has to do with the advancement of shrubs northward due to global warming. Anyway, Amy spent the summer sleeping in her tent, flying in helicopters to various sites to collect data, and looking at bugs under a microscope -- specifically bugs that live in the bottom of streams but feed off of the leaves that fall from the shrubs -- or something like that. She apparently had a blast and is hoping to land another job at Toolik next summer and then stay on in Alaska and see how she likes winter there, with the idea of maybe working on a master’s degree at the University of Fairbanks. I’ll have to see that last part to believe it! Not that she couldn’t do it, if she wanted to! It’s just . . . well . . . you know. After the job was over Amy spent almost a month hitchhiking and backpacking around the lower part of the state of Alaska, by herself mostly, seeing the sights. Apparently “the sights” included at least a couple of grizzly bears, but you’d have to ask her about that. She is now back in Bellingham, Washington finishing up a degree in Environmental Science from WWU (hopefully she will walk at the end of the Spring Quarter or at least have the opportunity to do that, if she chooses).
Deanna is back at Cedarville University (Cedarville, Ohio) for her junior year. There are a couple of new things this year for her: (1) she has a car – the one Alan left in Tacoma when he moved to Zurich. Deanna and I spent a couple of weeks this summer driving said car from Washington State to Washington DC and then back to Cedarville. Mom (that’s me) has some trepidation about this new possession – especially since a car isn’t exactly a requirement for college attendance – but presumably this too will pass (the trepidation, that is, not the car itself!) (2) she has a new roommate, (3) she has a smaller class load this term which is allowing her to do some new things like volunteer at the Crisis Pregnancy Center and attend a small group at her church and (4) she no longer has to endure a transatlantic flight to come home for a visit! She’s pretty pleased about this last thing – “seeing” Europe somehow never made that long flight worth it for her. Deanna is majoring in Exercise Science - or Pre-Physical Therapy – however you want to look at it. She also has thoughts of graduate school (where did I get all these ambitious kids?). She had the opportunity to do some Physical Therapy observation at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center (the “clearing house” for all American soldiers wounded in Iraq) before we left Germany this summer and it apparently was a fairly positive experience. If nothing else, it clarified in her mind that if she’s going to be in Physical Therapy she wants to be the one in charge not just the assistant who carries out orders.
OK, so that’s the news from the Strohms. Thanks for staying in touch with us through all our moves. In this transient world, I’m learning that friends are truly a blessing from the Lord even if they are friends in far away places.
Nancy
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