Vacation Week

I just got back from a wonderful week away in Milan & Bergamo, Italy and Munster, Germany. Italy was beautiful and scenic, as you can see:

This is the view from the hotel window, down a beautiful little Italian side street. The hotel was just a block from the street car stop, which was perfect.

This is my friend Tony, looking cool in another random little street of Milan. We did a lot of wandering around. Also, lots of eating. Because, really, you must eat when you're in Italy.

This is the view from the very top of Bergamo, a little city by an airport of the same name in the foothills of the Alps. It was even more gorgeous than Milan, with amazing views of other little towns and, of course, the mountains.

For more vacation pictures (but not too many more), look here: http://picasaweb.google.com/kmferris/Italy

After Italy I snagged a few hours of sleep and then was off to the European Unitarian Universalist Fall Retreat, where Rev. Dr. Bill Schulz was speaking. Needless to say, I had a fantastic time and it was great to connect with new people. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of that fine event, but perhaps some will come soon.

Until next time...

Dappermarkt

For most of the time we've been here, Katie and I have been going to Dappermarkt on Saturday morning to do our weekly shopping. It's much cheaper than the grocery store, more fun, and people will let you practice your Dutch with them.

The market is conveniently marked with these streamers, making it easy to find.

Flowers, flowers, flowers! For the last few weeks, there has been a booth selling 20 roses for 2 euros, and other amazing deals. This is one of the "expensive" flower booths.

Of course, you have to have a nut stand. Here, you can also buy dried fruits and some grains.

This is the bread shop. While it looks rather temporary, they have their own ovens there and you can buy bread still hot. They make excellent brown bread that looks so healthy with greens and tomatoes. Here, you can see the difference in the front row. The loaves on the right are what we would call "whole grain" and the loaves on the left are the delicious amazing bread. It even has little seeds in it. Yum!

In case you were wondering where you could buy men's underwear in many colors... Dappermarkt is the place!

Here is Katie, on our adventure to culturally integrate more completely... by eating raw herring from a street vendor.

Yum... the sushi of the Dutch. Actually, it's nowhere near as frightening as you would think. Even the bits of raw onion are tasty. Perhaps not the best food before a date though...

The fabric vendors at the market are amazing! You can buy beautiful fabric for 2-6 euros/meter... and to give you an idea how cheap that is, the cheapest pretty fabric at a proper store costs about 10-12 euros/meter.

Of course, it's important to have a selection of several hundred watches.

Mhhh... this is where we buy most of our fruit & veg. Notice... one euro for a bag of bean spouts, or a bag of carrots, or a bag of peppers. On the right you see hunks of pumpkin. They also have yummy fruit for cheap. It's great!

If you wanted to buy nuts in a prettier setting, you could go down to the other end of the market. This guy also has a wider selection of dried fruits. On the right you can see fresh mint, for making mint tea. This stand is attached to one with an amazing selection of olives and other Mediterranean fare.
The view of the market... it was a beautiful day!
Ah, and of course, life would not be complete without hot peppers straight from the bush. In this case, the 1.80 you pay gets you the whole bush. What could be better?

Then, after all of our other shopping is finished, we stop by the cheese shop. It is an *amazing* place. The man and woman who run the place are super sweet, and they give you a little taste of all of the cheeses you are interested in before you buy them. They also have a great selection, and they know everything about cheese. We even found a blue cheese that both Katie and I enjoy... As a consequence of this shop, we eat far too much cheese.

Then, after buying cheese, it's time to celebrate with Turkish pizzas. It's basically a big pita with some kind of tomato/vegetable sauce on it, cooked in the oven. Then, when it's nice and toasty they add a creamy sauce, a chili sauce, tomatoes, and lettuce. Finally, it's rolled up, wrapped in foil, and if you take it "eet op" you can eat it right then.
(I'm not sure if that's a proper Dutch phrase or an adaptation by the Turkish guys who work there. It's funny going to a shop where you don't share fluency in a common language.)

Finally, on the way out you see this building that has writing on it in all sorts of different languages. Here, you can see (if you look closely) that it says "Perfectly happy in Dapperstraat." We think that maybe this used to be a bad neighborhood and this building was a government campaign, but again, this is a completely unsupported hypothesis. For Katie and I, at least, life on Saturday morning is perfectly happy on Dapperstraat.

Bits of Dutch Life

Last weekend there was some kind of rowing contest. It was like crew, except with fat boats. We decided it was Viking rowing... though this remains unverified.

This is what the parking lot at the grocery store looks like. Sometimes it's hard to find a spot and you have to park nearly 30 paces away! This must convince you that the US should switch to bikes.


Also, the other day I was cycling home and noticed a car's bumper stickers. Later, I saw the car again - as I whizzed past it. Biking is much faster than driving a car in this city.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

I've been musing more about my thesis recently. After some deliberation, I've realized that I have about 25 pursue-able interests, but I only need to write one thesis. So, it's time to work on narrowing down, narrowing down, narrowing down, until I have something super-tiny and thus manageable.

There are several ongoing debates for me at the moment - work in the US, which I know vs. work in Asia/Africa, which have statistically worse epidemics; Christian vs. Muslim vs. interfaith (other religions don't have a major presence yet); ABC prevention vs. comprehensive/life skills prevention; "human rights" discourse vs. "cultural relativism" - to name a few. I appreciate all of the input I have received so far. It is good to get all of the options on the table now, and it is so very helpful to talk through my ideas. Again, I welcome any other input you may have.

And, last but certainly not least, the upside of insane Dutch weather is... rainbows! This one appeared shortly after I woke up this morning. I think the end of it is at the public library... or at least that's my interpretation.

Moving House in Amsterdam

On a beautiful day in Amsterdam...

you might find yourself wanting to move house. But how will you ever get that piano down the steep, steep staircase?

Well, you hire a man (or two) with a big mobile elevator...

They hoist the piano out your window...

...

And down it goes!

Towards a thesis question...

This week, unfortunately, I don't have any exciting pictures to show. We've had the most wonderful weekend - Friday, Saturday, and Sunday all full of sun and blue skies!

What I have been doing, although it's rather un-photogenic, is thinking and talking about my upcoming thesis. I've had several very thought provoking conversations, but my ideas are still vague.

I started off thinking that I would do a case study of an Islamic or interfaith HIV/AIDS organization to see how it balanced religion and theology when dealing with such a contentious topic. However, this presents several challenges, including: there aren't too many of these organizations; when they do exist they often have not been formally evaluated (so I couldn't say that *this* is an approach that "works"); and many of the Islamic or interfaith efforts to prevent the spread of HIV have been conducted on an ad-hoc basis (so there's no formal organization to examine).

So, this led me to consider doing something more theoretically focused, but still practically applicable. In a conversation with Georges Tiendrebeogo I considered an Islamic "how to" for abstinence, for which I could look at writings on Islam broadly and also consult interviews with specific Islamic sources. The idea here is to go beyond abstinence as a prohibition and into a positive construction of it within the religious community.

That got me thinking about approaches to HIV prevention in general, which today tend to focus around the "ABC" model - abstinence, "being faithful," and condoms. Condoms, of course, are the traditional sticking point for religion (although some Muslims have advocated condom use), but "A" and "B" are often easily promoted by religious figures. An interesting thing about Islam is that it (in most readings) supports sexuality, within certain constraints. So that's where I've ended up for now, contemplating writing about some aspect of Islamic sexual ethics in the era of HIV/AIDS.

Obviously, as you can tell from the three paragraphs it took me to explain where I am now, I need a point of focus. Fortunately, I still have time. If you have any feedback, please either leave a comment or send me an email!