Paris with a bang

I'm sorry I haven't been blogging well in Paris. I guess you could say the days are just filled. There is a lot to see and my legs are very tired, as is the rest of me by the end of each day.

I have a few more things to write about our days in Germany and then what we saw in Paris. But I wanted to write to let you know that we are coming home tomorrow. It will be good to be home. It will be strange for me as well; it has been 2 months since I have been in the USA.

Here are a few photos from our first day in Paris. The first is the view of the Eiffel Tower and Hotel des Invalides from the window of our little loft apartment in Paris. We missed the 4th of July fireworks but the national day in France is July 14th, Bastille Day. So at 10:30 pm this fireworks show started that we could see from our window. What a grand way to start our time.

And now it is coming to an end. My sabbatical is still another 4 weeks or so long, so I will be filling in more details from the trip when I arrive back home in Indiana.

Bacharach and Burg Stahleck

This was our most pleasant day of biking along the river. We did have rain off and on for maybe half of the days of biking, but it was never so heavy that we really needed to put on our rain coats. We biked north a little bit to catch a ferry across the Rhine. There are no bridges across the Rhine between Koblenz and Mainz, a distance of about 95 kilometers, or 57 miles.

Then we came to the town of St. Goar, famous for its large Rheinfalls castle. We found a pleasant street cafe to eat at. Then we headed to Bacharach. We arrived early and stayed overnight in a castle again, the one in the first photo. This is Burg Stahleck and it is a youth hostel. It is in great condition. The outside looks very much like a castle but the inside is just like any modern youth hostel.

A word of warning though. If you are biking along the Rhine and then staying overnight in castles, it is helpful to know that castles are usually built upon bluffs many meters above the Rhine. We had a huge hill to walk up to get to the castle.

I continue to search for ice cream flavors that I cannot find in America. Here in Bacharach, which is named after the Roman god Bacchus, the god of revelry and wine, they had a Riesling flavored ice cream and another called Waldmeister. Riesling is one of the wines that is made along the Rhine, and waldmeister is an herb called Woodruff in English, which doesn't really help me. Both tasted good.

It was nice to be able to relax a bit more on this second day after a long day before. We had a pleasant time, except for my difficulty in getting money. But fortunately the youth hostel took our debit card.

The Rhine River

After four nights in the Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, we are now in Paris where we have an internet connection again. Before I tell you about Paris I will tell you abour our four days in Germany. In some ways it is not surprising that we had no internet connection in Germany. We found the area where we were, at least, to be more of a rural area without all the connections you might find in other places. In that sense it reminded me of Indiana. We panicked at one point because Castle Liebenstein where we stayed one night did not accept credit or debit cards. So we gave them all our cash and then found it very difficult, actually impossible, to find a restaurant that did accept our cards. The worse point was when we bought some things at a drugstore, including snacks, only to discover that they did not accept our particular credit card. They did accept one that looked a lot like it but was actually different. We were wondering if we could eat and sleep. But fortunately the next castle where we stayed, Burg Stahleck, did accept our card.

We rode our bikes for five days, picking them up in Mainz on Thursday and then taking the train to Koblenz, from where we rode to Schloss Liebenstein. Unfortunately we got lost. I assumed that as long as we had a river on our right, we were on the right track. Unfortunately there is another river in that area, the Lahn River, and we ended up going down it. It was getting late by the time we figured this out and fortunately we could again take a train to get to our destination. Schloss Liebenstein is the castle on the right of the first picture, and it part of the "enemy brothers" with Schloss Sterrenburg on the left.

Jacob and Isaiah loved being in the castle. Jacob called the gift shop paradise. He was so excited that he couldn't stay out of there.

While the first photo is of the castle from the Rhine, the second is of the Rhine from the castle. We had a beautiful view of the river and fortunately were able to take a taxi up to the bluff overlooking the river.

While these first couple of days in Germany were focused on the beauty of the Rhine and experiencing its many castles, we also have an Amish Mennonite reason to be here as well. The Rhine River was the passageway for Amish and Mennonites out of Switzerland and into other parts of the world, whether it was first of all Alsace, France, not so far away, or a little farther down the river into the Palatinate, Germany, or down to the end of the river at Rotterdam, Holland, where they could depend on their siblings in the faith, the Dutch Mennonites, to help them settle in Holland, which a few did, or to find a way to America, which is what most did. So the ancestors of most Mennonites of Swiss background passed through here at some point.

Strasbourg

From a remote farm near Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines we drove about an hour to Strasbourg, what some call the capital of Europe, because the European Parliament meets here. We are still in the Alsace. The first photo is from Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines and the second is from Strasbourg. So while one is a village and the other is a metropolis, both have a similar half-timbered Alsatian building style.

Strasbourg is an interesting place for Amish and Mennonites both historically and today. In history this is one of the cities that was fairly tolerant of Anabaptists. In the early days of the Reformation, the reformers in Strasbourg were very open to Anabaptist ideas. In fact Strasbourg tolerated both Catholics and Reformed, so maybe Anabaptists too? Michael Sattler came here to discuss believers baptism with Capito and Bucer. Melchior Hofmann also came here to preach his apocalyptic ideas that Strasbourg was the New Jerusalem. Capito was saddened when Catholics executed Sattler. But eventually Strasbourg imprisoned Hofmann. The only Anabaptists ever executed in Strasbourg were those who committed some other wrong, like the one who was a bigamist with a "holy sister" as a new wife. It was said that what other cities would execute an Anabaptist for, in Strasbourg they would beat you with rods.

Later Pilgram Marpeck came to Strasbourg and worked as a city engineer. John Calvin was in Strasbourg for a little while and met his wife there. She had been an Anabaptist.

Strasbourg was a location where Anabaptists could meet from many places. Dutch and Swiss would meet to discuss Christ's incarnation and discipline. At Strasbourg the Anabaptists were able to agree to certain issues of church order.

This became significant for the Amish as a source of the Ordnung, or church order. They draw up guidelines for membership and they could look back to the conferences at Strasbourg to say that Anabaptists had always gathered to discern together their church order.

The towers and bridge in the photo are significant in two ways. The first is that these were prison towers and so Melchior Hofmann may have been imprisoned in one of them. The second is that it was near the long bridge here, perhaps in an inn, where the first of these Strasbourg conferences was held.

For Mennonites the significance of these conferences is to see in them some tradition for general conferences like Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference, Mennonite Church USA assemblies, and Mennonite World Conference assemblies. And in fact the other significance to Strasbourg is that the headquarters of Mennonite World Conference is here. Our family briefly met executive secretary Larry Miller, his wife Eleanor, and his secretary. Larry grew up in Goshen but has lived in France for over 30 years. They were very gracious in hosting us.

Attempts at reconciliation

On Tuesday we left Switzerland. It is the first time I am out of that country for 5 ½ weeks and it does feel strange. We are far away from the Swiss trains, from any trains for that matter. My plan had been to never rent a car during our time in Europe, to stick with railroads and bicycles. I prefer both of those modes of transportation to cars anyway, so it was no sacrifice. It also seemed like an appropriate way to honor my Amish heritage as I also explored that heritage in Europe. But ironically enough, as we decided to visit the location where the Amish once flourished, and where Jacob Ammann led his followers, we needed to rent a car. The owner of the Ferme-Auberge, or farmhouse inn, said that the bus just didn’t get that close. And we are indeed in a very remote location, near Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines.

We climbed through the Jura Mountains to get here, going by Glaserberg in search of some early Kaufman farms. We were able to find an old Rich farm, and a town that had Kaufmans in it, but unfortunately we missed a number of farms as well. In any case the Jura Mountians were again beautiful and I was happy to be in them. At some point we crossed the Swiss-French border.

After passing many small towns with closed restaurants we finally found a cozy restaurant that was open. We struggled in this new country with the French language. We know very little French and the French are as bad as British and Americans, perhaps worse, when it comes to learning other languages. All three of these nations expect others to learn their language, so why should they have to learn anyone else's? But the waitress was very patient and kind and with what German, French, and English we knew we managed to order a good meal.

Very quickly we moved from mountains to a wide plain. I was surprised just how flat this section of the Alsace is. Included on this plain was a small town called Ohnenheim. It was in the mill of Ohnenheim pictured above that in 1660 Anabaptist gathered to sign the Dordrecht Confession. And some 3 decades later, in 1694, another important meeting was called, somewhat related to the first. Because part of the Dordrecht confession that was accepted included the idea of shunning those excommunicated.

Palatine Mennonites were trying to effect a reconciliation between the Swiss and the Alsatian Anabaptists, or more properly the Amish and the Reist factions of the Anabaptists. Some of the Amish were still in the Berner Oberland in Switzerland. The Palatinate in Germany had been another location, along with the Alsace in today's France, that had tolerated Swiss Anabaptists. So all these folks were connected with Switzerland, but now they were in different locations.

The Palatines found themselves somewhat caught in the middle. They were accustomed to thinking of themselves as siblings in the faith and so the idea that the Alsatians had excommunicated the Swiss was very troubling. There was no idea of national autonomy. All believers were connected with one another and needed to be reconciled with each other.

So in 1694 Palatine Mennnonites called for reconciliation at this mill in Ohnenheim, Alsace. Reist admitted he was negligent in church discipline and in teaching that the true-hearted were saved, the Palatines rejected the shunning of the excommunicated, saying it goes too far. However Ammann would not drop shunning. For him that was unthinkable.

In fact some years later Ammann and his followers did ask for forgiveness for their wrongs. He admitted that he was too hasty in excommunicating Reist and his followers. He called for reconcliation. However he also continued to believe that shunning was essential and so would not reconcile unless they admitted that shunning was necessary. So again there was no reconciliation. According to some manuscripts my ancestor Isaac Kaufmann was one of the signers of this letter asking for forgiveness.

Here the the Palatines and Swiss were united in greeting Ammann's plea for forgiveness with silence. They did nothing. Jacob Gut of the Palatinate wrote that he thought silence was the best response to Ammann.

So there is an interesting, in my opinion, use of silence on both sides of this disagreement. Recall that the schism first started when Reist in practice silenced Ammann by ignoring him. He didn't come to a general conference because he was too busy farming. And then decades later again Ammann's attempts at reconciliation are greeted with silence, or what we might even call shunning.

I am a Mennonite and so in that sense I am more sympathetic with those who rejected shunning. But on this I sympathize with Ammann. The Swiss were saying they don't believe in shunning and yet in practice were shunning Ammann. I prefer Ammann's shunning to theirs. For Ammann the shunning is open and it has the goal of reconciliation. The Reist practice of shunning is veiled. Because it is done in what we today would call a passive-aggressive way, there is no way for the silenced one to achieve reconciliation. Because the other party does not openly admit that they are silencing the person, there is really no hope of reconciliation.

We are just outside Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, or what was also known as Markirch in German. This is the town where Ammann moved after he left Switzerland. This is a small town that is in the next mountain range, the Vosges. It is nestled in a valley in the mountains and it again, like Erlenbach im Simmental where Ammann was born, gives one the sense of being protected and secluded from the wider world. Amman was there for decades, my wandering ancestor Isaac Kaufmann was there for a little while.

I also have a photo of one of the many castles we saw in this region of Alsace. This is a reminder of Alsace's location as the border between France and the Holy Roman Empire, or what became Germany. It changed hands many times and there are so many castles, one supposes, because people had a great need to protect themselves from the many wars that raged across this land.

This is also a reminder that the Amish were able to live in this area because the local lords permitted it. I have not yet verified whether this was the castle of the lords of Rappolstein, but they are the ones who tolerated the Anabaptists.

Jacob Kaufmann farm

Tonight is our last night in Switzerland. I again will have an internet connection in an off and on sort of way. Sorry I have blogged so many entries all at once. But that is the way it will probably be for the rest of the trip. And while I have a few more Amish and Mennonite sites to visit, the blog will probably be more travelogue at this point.

The morning began with a lot of rain in Grindelwald, but then we went again to Thun. I wanted to hike out to the farm that once belonged to Jacob Kaufmann, the brother of my ancestor Isaac, and it may very well have been the farm where he grew up as well. It is in Dornhalte, in Heimberg. This is a small and out of the way place, though by taking the train between Thun and Konolfingen to Heimberg, I only had to walk about 20 minutes to reach it.

To get there I headed north on the bike path between the highway and the railroad tracks. When I saw the Dornhalde sign I turned right. Then I almost immediately made a left onto a Wanderweg, which is to say a farm road that prohibits other vehicles from using it. The street name was Rothachenweg, or something like that. And then I saw the main farm house.

There are two farms there now, and the one is owned by a Shenk family, the name of my uncle. They are both dairy farms, and the one also has an orchard. The building are tucked away in a small valley and there really is a beautiful view of some nearby mountains.

This was again a strongly emotional experience for me, like when I sat in the prison in Thun and imagined Isaac Kaufmann there. I have focused a lot on places where Isaac was incarcerated, but this was now a place where he was productive and worked the land. This is where he contributed to his own welfare and the welfare of his community. It was a beautiful place to me. It felt good to imagine what he did there but then to also see that today there are farmers there who are also taking care of the land and contributing to their own welfare and the welfare of the community.

I found it interesting that the Reformed Church of Switzerland, once a bitter enemy of Mennonites, but now working at reconciliation in a number of positive ways, has a poster about loving enemies with an image of George Bush. Is he the enemy to be loved or the person being questioned? The translation is something like this: "Do you really have to love your enemies?" Then the subtitle is "What touches the world, touches us." It is for the Reformed church magazine. The Swiss Reformed have done a lot of work on acknowledging the dark episode of Anabaptist persecution in their past. Just in the last couple of years great strides have been made in the relationship. All the Mennonite churches I visited were working with the Reformed church in their area. It was heartening to see.

We ended our day in Basel. This was a last minute change to the itinerary. It partly was a way for me to see Basel again. I really love this city and I will miss it. We ate in a sidewalk café and then took the ferry across the Rhine River. These ferries have no engines. They use a cable and the current of the river to pull them across. The Rhine River will keep reappearing in the upcoming blogs. The Rhine finds its source in Switzerland but then journeys through the Alsace in France and then Germany, and finally to the Netherlands. It is the river that has defined European Mennonite identity for centuries.

James Bond and the Schilthorn

Because of a mix up with our apartment in Murren, we had to leave a day earlier than planned. So we spent an uneventful night in Grindelwald. But before we went there we took a cable car to the top of the Schilthorn. We were very lucky when we were on the Jungfraujoch. We were able to see all the way to the Black Forest in Germany and into France. As we climbed the Schilthorn it started to rain and the clouds came in so thick that we couldn’t see a thing.

So we went into the movie room where they showed excerpts of the James Bond Movie “In her majesty’s service.” Why? Well, at the top of the Schilthorn is a restaurant called the Piz Gloria. As it was being constructed the James Bond producer came by and asked to use it for the movie before it opened. So this restaurant served as a remarkable lair and hideout for the movie’s bad guy. They showed the remarkable skiing scenes in the movie.

After this we went into the restaurant which revolves so that as you sit there for an hour you have a 360 degree panoramic view of the mountains surrounding you. At first we couldn’t see a thing but as we began to get our food the clouds started to disperse and finally we saw clear views of the mountains, and even Lake Thun which we had crossed in a boat on our way to the Alps. If you look carefully you too can see Lake Thun in the second photo. What a magnificent way to dine. And in Switzerland it takes so long to dine that we had no problem circling the panorama almost twice.

In Switzerland eating out is expensive. One time I ate at Burger King to see if it was any different from the US. I ordered a whopper, small fries, and small drink. It cost $13.25. It wasn’t very different from the US except the high price, that they gave me mayonnaise to eat with my french fries, and that one of the drinks was Rivella, a Swiss pop made from whey, a byproduct of cheese production. Anyway it costs maybe $20 for a low priced meal at a dining in restaurant. But one nice thing about Switzerland is that the restaurants in these fancy places like the Schilthorn and Jungfraujoch are not any more expensive than the restaurants out in the middle of nowhere. They don’t gouge you.

As I said, we then went to Grindelwald, which is a beautiful place. But we were very tired from our days of hiking and going to the tops of mountains. So mostly we rested and played games. Grindelwald is yet another location associated with my ancestor Isaac Kaufmann, who clearly led a chaotic life as an Anabaptist teacher, moving from one place to another to keep ahead of the authorities. An alp in Grindelwald is one place where he managed to farm for awhile, according to Sam Wenger. This would have been a nice place to stay. My last two photos are of Grindelwald.