St. Martin's Day Charm in Bonn

We were invited to the Max Planck Institut fur Radioastronomie in Bonn, originally intended only for Wed. afternoon and Thursday, but then extended into Friday morning (today) too, for further discussions.   We drove down -- stressful for Richard since there is so much traffic and it is impossible to avoid some kind of slow down or stoppage, especially as we got close to Koeln.  Our departure from Bochum corresponded to a certain American election result that has left most of the world aghast, including us.  At the MPIfR, I gave a colloquium on Thursday which generated some interest, and both of us were involved in rather intensive discussions about magnetic fields and polarization in galaxies. Richard presented his model explaining the changes in sign of rotation measure seen by Carolina in the galaxy, NGC4631.

Richard here: A little annotation is in order. Judith's colloquium was a raving success! At perhaps the best Institute for Radio Astronomy in the world, one of the scientists announced that Judith had given
the clearest and most interesting talk he had heard at the Institute. He excitedly (he is greek by origin)
followed her to our office with his grad student in tow and humbly asked for her comments  on their work. Others went out of their way to announce that there had been a `great' colloquium. She is too modest and should be proud. The weather has been lousy of late--but full compensation for the long period of heat and sun I suppose. However the children's parade and the children were a charm and a treat (see below). TheAmerican election leaves one thinking of staying here--but only thinking.



Wednesday night at the hotel, we heard the sounds of instruments playing in the street and peaked out the window to see a parade going by.  There were many children carrying white paper lanterns and much celebration.  Our pictures aren't so good because of the darkness and angle, but they give you some idea as to how it looked on this cold rainy night.



Thursday night Marita invited us over for dinner and we met her husband, Fritz.  They treated us to a rather unique and delicious dish, a pumpkin filled with ground veal, pumpkin and cranberries (which I now have the recipe for!).






Here Marita explained what all the celebration was about.  St. Martin's day is Nov. 11 and Thursday was St. Martin's day eve.  (I'm copying from a website here)  "Martinstag is named after St. Martin of Tours, a Roman soldier who became a monk after being baptised as an adult. He was eventually made a saint by the Catholic Church for being a kind man who cut his cloak in half to share with a beggar during a snowstorm. In many parts of Germany it is traditional for children to participate in a procession of paper lanterns in remembrance of St. Martin. They make their own little lanterns in school or kindergarten and then gather on city streets to sing songs about good old Marty and their lanterns. Often a man dressed as St. Martin with a long red cloak leads the parade on horseback."   And that is what we saw except that we missed the man on the horse.

Yet we were charmed that same night by children coming to Marita's door.  They carried their lanterns and sang a song.  For this they were rewarded by Fritz giving them treats.  The little imps were shrewd.  They asked for extra treats for their sisters and brothers who were not with them.  We think that the sisters and brothers were out doing the same thing at different doors!



Back we drove to Bochum today with the usual traffic challenges.  Richard deals with it.  We have a little running joke about 'all roads leading to Wuppertal'.  As we approach Bochum, Wuppertal always seems to crop up no matter what road we're on.  We really must visit Wuppertal before we leave..

With still time left this afternoon, I got my hair done.  Not that anyone would want to read about this in a blog.  However, the man who did it was a Syrian refugee.  He came over on a boat with his wife who was pregnant at the time, but they had to leave their two other children in Damascus with relatives.  Now, they are trying to get the children, but there has not been a possibility to do this after a year in Germany.  "I was a rich man in Syria", he said, "but now I have nothing.  Yet you do what you must."  I apologize for ending this blog on a sad note, but it was very moving.  I pray that the family will soon be united.

Signing off for Nov. 11, 2016,

J&R