Sausage in Poland, Turkey in Turkey, and Back in America

Posted on November 27, 2012 by admin

I’m happy to say that the Ramages are back in the USA and enjoying some needed R&R at grandma and grandpa’s house–a vacation from vacation, as it were. I’m looking forward to resume my theological posts on this blog, but in the meantime I’ll recap the last whirlwind week of our European expedition.

At the recommendation of my students, we flew Ryanair to Krakow and spent a few nights there. What a delight! This is a land of great food (especially its sausage), great saints (JPII, Faustina, Kolbe, Edith Stein, etc.), and important history (for me, especially that concerning JPII and the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Poland). This was one of the experiences we hadn’t planned on having, but it was made by possible by Providence as well as the great exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the Polish zloty. I highly recommend traveling to this inexpensive land where most people are Catholic and are proud to say so. Poland has a fairly Western feel, but it gives you a different flavor from countries around the Mediterranean.

Flying back from Poland to Italy, we stayed a night in Bologna and paid homage to the founders of the first university in the world located there. From here we trained back to Florence, spent one last night out on the town, grabbed the rest of our bags from our villa, and flew out to Istanbul the next morning. We had been to Istanbul before the semester began, and now we were back for a couple more days to relax, revisit some favorite sites, find some new ones, and celebrate Thanksgiving. We did not get to eat Turkey for Thanksgiving this year; we just ate in Turkey. Yes, it was kind of weird eating atop of our hotel looking out at the Blue Mosque and eating kebabs, but it was good to do once. On this trip we also took the opportunity to cruise on the Bosphorus between Asia and Europe and see a couple beautiful Byzantine Christian churches–with the exclamation point being a Hagia Sophia adorned with a full rainbow overhead. Finally, we spent a morning negotiating some bargains with the intense merchants of the Grand Bazaar,. I look forward to making use of my new souvenirs from here, in particular playing chess on my new Crusaders and Ottomans set.

Well, there you have it: my last Europe post of the Fall 2012 semester. I hope to be blogging some Benedict XVI soon. Unfortunately, I just found out that the copy of Jesus Vol. 3 I ordered won’t arrive until Christmas or shortly thereafter, so we’ll see what happens..

: Beautiful sausage, potatoes, and sauerkraut dish in our favorite Polish restaurant

: Loving the bathroom signs in our restaurant–featuring German, Hebrew, English, and Polish

: Just one example of cool architecture and colors in Krakow

: KFC in Poland. Wow.

: Jagiellonian University courtyard which reminded me of Witness to Hope, John Paul II’s biography describing his studies here and the Nazi occupation in which they led out the school’s profs and arrested them

: Franciscan church where JPII would frequently go to pray while bishop in Krakow

: Bishop’s palace in Krakow with window from which JPII would greet crowds

: Nice Romanesque tower in a church still standing since it was built in the 1000s. The only church to survive the Mongol invasion of Krakow in the 1200s

: Awesome, eclectic exterior of Krakow’s Wawel cathedral

: Altar in Krakow’s Wawel cathedral with tomb of Poland’s patron St. Stanislaus and other national saints

: Just one of many cool churches in Krakow, this one next to the bus stop to our hotel

: Example in Istanbul’s Chora Church showing remnants of frescos not dismantled by the Ottoman Muslims when they conquered the city

: Nativity in Istanbul’s Chora Church

: Flight from Egypt in Istanbul’s Chora Church

: Interior of St. Mary’s church with stained glass and carved, painted wood scenes from the life of Christ and Mary

: Poland’s best piece of baroque art, carved and painted above and around the altar in St. Mary’s church

: Awesome baroque ambo in St. Mary’s church

: Beautiful St. Mary’s church in Krakow’s main town square with its two cool, unmatched towers

: Early copy of Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in which he anticipated Galileo in demolishing the belief in a geocentric universe

: Lecture hall in Krakow’s Jagiellonian university where such famous men as John Paul II and Copernicus studied

: Sr. Faustina’s convent

: Interesting modern church at the Divine Mercy shrine consecrated by John Paul II and visited by Benedict XVI

: “Jesus, I trust in You” in the languages of the world outside the Divine Mercy Shrine in Krakow

: Joseph with friends in Krakow’s historic market square, the largest in Europe

: A Holocaust memorial in Krakow’s Jewish neighborhood. Notice the stones at the bottom

: One of many synagogues in Krakow’s Jewish quarter which are now hardly used since almost all of the city’s 60,000 Jews were hauled off and executed by the Nazis

: Scenes from Schindler’s List from the Jewish ghetto we toured in Krakow

: Piazza in Krakow’s World Wat II Jewish ghetto where thousands would be amassed and hauled off to concentration camps for execution

: The Milk Bar, a remnant of Poland’s communist days where meals are still subsidized by the government

: KrakÃ³w’s barbican outpost still standing guard over the city gate 500 years after it was built

: Krakow concentration camp memorial and hill where thousands were killed by the Nazis

: Wieliczka Salt Mine is a place where you get to (safely) lick the walls. Why? Just for the experience–not because salt on its own tastes good

: Beautiful salt statues in one of dozens of rooms with similar sculptures

: Tasting some salt water from a drain in the mine

: John Paul II carved from salt

: Beautiful salt water pool in Wieliczka Salt Mine, Krakow

: Looking down to a pool at one point in our descent down 800 stairs in Wieliczka Salt Mine, Krakow

: Wieliczka Salt Mine, Krakow

: Nice chapel in Wieliczka Salt Mine, Krakow

: Polish sausage, perogies, sauerkraut, pickle, pretzel, and cider–the beauty of which defies words!

: The ball room on the second floor of a Krakow restaurant to which we returned multiple times

: St. Florian’s tower in Krakow

: Bologna palazzo housing Roman ruins–not spectacular after all that we saw this semester, but awesome to have one more taste before leaving for home

: Table upon which cadavers were examined in the first faculty of medicine in Europe at the University of Bologna. There’s a window up above not in the photo where a Vatican official would ensure the prof was following Church teaching in his scientific pursuits

: Aula in Bologna’s archiginnasio–university built in the 1500s but at the site of the first university in the world in the early 2nd millennium

: Looking out at the Blue Mosque from our hotel’s terrace restaurant

: Hagia Sophia with a full rainbow presiding overhead

: Ramages with the end of the rainbow in the background over the Bosphorous behind Hagia Sophia

: Nice photo by Julia aboard our scenic Bosphorous Cruise

: One of hundreds of shops in Istanbul’s amazing Spice Bazaar which we happened upon walking back to our hotel from a Bosphorous Cruise

: That’s one big piece of bread (hollow on the inside, however)

: Jen and Joseph in front of beautiful Turkish tiles covering our entire restaurant

: Exterior of Istanbul’s Byzantine Chora Church

: Chist Pantocrator in Istanbul’s Byzantine Chora Church

: Dormition of Mary in Istanbul’s Byzantine Chora Church

: Well-preserved scenes of the Last Judgment in Istanbul’s Byzantine Chora Church

: Christ raising Adam and Eve, in Istanbul’s Byzantine Chora Church

: Plaszow Concentration Camp in Krakow before being dismantled

: Chapel of Divine Mercy in Krakow, with the image revealed to St. Faustina and her relics on the left

: Memorial at former site of Plaszow Concentration Camp, Krakow. The Nazis were able to dismount and destroy most of this camp where some 8,000 people were killed in its day.

: Salt “cathedral” hundreds of feet underground in Krakow

: Replica of Da Vinci’s Last Supper carved in Wieliczka Salt Mine, Krakow

Arrivederci, Firenze! Our Semester Comes to a Close

Posted on November 15, 2012 by admin

This morning our students took their last final of this spectacular study abroad semester. They are all excited to get home to family and the comforts of America. The Ramages have spent our last week mainly relaxing and revisting favorite Florentine sites while also inevitably discovering a few new ones. The photos below come from Florence’s world-famous Uffizi Gallery, the splendid Etruscan and Roman town of Fiesole, Florence’s baptistery of San Giovanni, Santa Maria Novella church and convent, the Dominican convent of San Marco with paintings by Fra Angelico, and the Duomo which we climbed while the kids were babysat.

In a couple days we’re off to Poland and Istanbul before returning to Chicago. So there will be at least one more post of our pictures, and then I’ll return to blogging theology. By the grace of God, Pope Benedict’s final volume of Jesus of Nazareth is due out on Dec. 4, so of course I plan to make it the subject of my consecutive posts.

: This shot gives an idea of just where you are when atop the Duomo as you can see the sharp curve it makes downward right in front of you

: Looking over and down at the bell tower adjacent to the Duomo!

: Looking out on Florence from atop Florence’s duomo

: Looking down toward the altar from the largest dome in the world

: Julia has already become an Apple lover.

: For the final exam, I decided to show up in Adidas. As Julia says, “Well, if I can do it, well, I can do it.”

: As stated by my students, this is what Joseph thinks of the homework I assign them.

: Looking across Tuscany after Chianti wine tasting

: Beautiful late afternoon Chianti sunset glimmering over Joseph

: Looking down over the Arno and Ponte Vecchio from inside the Uffizi Gallery, one of the top museums in the world which “only” had a 1-hr wait this day

: Julia and Joseph with a friend at the park doing what they love best

: Great hair.

: Julia in Fiesole’s Franciscan convent, with Dominic and Francis embracing (rear painting)

: Nice shot of Jen and Joseph in the crowd

: Julia giving a performance in our local Roman theater. It’s a “small” venue that served 3,000 men at a time.

: Joseph in Fiesole’s Roman arena. He is barely as tall as the seats!

: Julia enjoying something she likes to do after we dragged her through the streets of Florence doing what we wanted to do

: One last wonderful shot of Giotto’s crucifix in Santa Maria Novella church

: The ancient south gate to Florence which leads out to Rome. Arrivederci, Firenze. You have treated us all well!

: Joseph sampling some lavender-infused chocolate. Local chocolate, bread and 2 local meats are what kept us in the game during our wine tasting extravaganza in the Chianti region.

: Ramages with shop owner Stefano in Panzano’s Accademia del Buon Gusto–here we are still standing after his 2.5 hour wine philosophy lesson in which we sampled 15 different beverages.

La joie de vivre

Posted on November 7, 2012 by admin

Last week was BC’s Fall break, and many of our group went to France, including us Ramages. After Italy, France is perhaps our favorite country to visit. It has so much culture, so much Catholic history, so much good food, and so much else to offer. Being in France one experiences the joie de vivre, “the joy of living.”

We had planned to visit the prehistoric caves at Lascaux in the south of France, but the trains all got booked up and we “had to” stay in Paris most of the trip except for a day trip to Chartres and our last day in Toulouse. Here are some highlights of the trip, and then you can enjoy the pictures that hopefully tell the story better:

Jen and I commemorated our very first date in the same restaurant in Chartres, 6 years and 2 kids later
Visiting Toulouse and its Eglise des Jacobins, where we knelt before the tomb of St. Thomas Aquinas and prayed for his intercession
Getting to browse Notre Dame cathedral without a tour group and without an agenda. Lots of time soaking in the stained glass and ornate colored wood carvings on the inside, and figuring out the figures and gargoyles carved on the outside. Getting to walk around the grounds meditatively with our family, enjoying the scenic Seine river and the church’s famous flying buttresses.
Walking through the Rodin Museum and its lush gardens lined with statues. I was never interested in modern sculpture before, but I developed a fascinating with this 19th-century impressionist sculptor once I learned that some of his key works were inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy. The gardens also offer a great view of the Eiffel Tower with The Thinker in the foreground.
The astounding stained glass in Sainte Chapelle, a chapel virtually encircled in glass and built by St. Louis to house the crown of thorns.
The Cluny medieval museum in Paris where you can see alot of great pieces up close instead of being 100 feet below them. The museum was built on Roman baths, which also gives you an indication of Paris’ place in world history.
Eating “fast food” crepes, croque monsieurs, croque madames in Parisian parks, and eating a few nice meals in Parisian restaurant.
The Eiffel Tower, sparkling gloriously in the night at the top of evening hours
Musee D’Orsay, where we got to spend quality time in front of Van Goghs, Monets, and Rodins among others
The Louvure: we spent 7 hours in this place with 2 kids! It boasts collections from Egypt, Rome, Greece, ancient Mesopotamia (biblical period and earlier findings), the Renaissance, and more. Best of all: we got to skip the hour-long security line twice because we had kids.

I have so many pictures relevant to my teaching and to the faith from this trip, I feel sorry for my students who are going to get inundated with all of my glorious illustrations inspired by this trip! Thanks to Benedictine College for offering us the opportunity to be over here, to teach great material, and to be with great students, to be students ourselves for a semester.

: Chapel of St. Denis in Notre Dame. Dedicated to an early Roman/French martyr with icon of the Greek St. Denis (Dionysius the Areopagite) in the background

: Slaughter of the innocents carving in Notre Dame

: Wood carving of Christ’s baptism, one of dozens and dozens of ornate works adorning the choir encircling the apse of Notre Dame

: Notre Dame interior view sans stained glass

: Detail of a door pillar from Notre Dame’s facade with scenes from creation. Notice Adam with his head on his hand having a rib extracted (left) as well as Eve whose bottom half of the body appears to be a snake. Very interesting to think about what this piece is trying to say about the nature of the Fall.

: Notre Dame facade in background

: Notre Dame side view from along the Seine river

: Notre Dame’s flying buttresses on its back side

: The Three Shades, standalone statue from Rodin’s Gates of Hell with figures looking down at the damned

: Detail of Rodin’s Gates of Hell, with Dante’s Paolo and Francesca in their last adulterous embrace–lips not even touching as they were murdered in the act

: Making an offering in St. Severin

: Gargoyles adorning St. Severin church in the Latin Quarter of Paris–it’s like a mini Notre Dame without all the crowds

: Sacre Coeur in Montmartre viewed from the bottom of the funicular at night

: Eiffel Tower sparkling in the night

: Decapitated heads of statues in the Cluny Medieval Museum in Paris; during the revolution, Frenchmen cut off the heads of statues on the facade of Notre Dame, thinking they were French kings instead of the saints they were in reality

: One of the great joys of France–stopping at random street vendors to have freshly-made crepes and croque monsieurs. This is the French equivalent of stopping for a gyro in Greece, a slice of pizza in Italy, or a kebab in Turkey–all of which I love!

: Interior of Chartres cathedral. This famous labyrinth on the floor represents the windy journey of the Christian life as it requires diligence and perseverance to attain our end

: Jen and Joseph outside our restaurant with the Chartres cathedral in the background

: Cafe des Arts right outside of the cathedral of Chartres where we had our first date. As I like to say, if I couldn’t win her over in this romantic medieval French setting, it wasn’t going to happen at all, ever.

: Ramage family at dinner on Halloween in the cafe where we had our first date 6 years ago

: Fra Angelico’s Coronation of the Virgin

: Giotto’s painting of St. Francis receiving the stigmata, with scenes from his life at bottom (I like the bottom left where he is holding up the church)

: The Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas by Gozzoli, with Averroes under his feet and adorers all around sitting at his feet to learn

: The picture everyone wants to see at the Louvre; don’t tell Leonardo this, but I really am not too interested in the Mona Lisa

: The Mystery of the Passion of Christ by Campi in the Louvre–a very busy but very thorough catechesis in one painting

: Cool icon in a special Cyprus exhibit in the Louvre. This is a photo of an icon of St. Mamas riding a lion

: Mythological winged lion dating from the era of Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon who brought the Israelites into exile in 587 B.C.

: 9th-century B.C. Assyrian mythological beast, perhaps a griffin. If nothing else, this illustrates the type of religious climate Israel encountered in the first millenium B.C. and how far God had to go to reveal his true nature. No wonder he prohibited images of himself!

: 12th-century B.C. work with the Babylonian god Marduk (the horned serpent at bottom). Once again, highly illustrative for understanding the context of the biblical creation account and the nature of the serpent in Genesis 3

: The actual tablets of some Sumerian creation accounts from the 3rd millenium B.C.

: One of many Sumerian creation texts showing parallels to Genesis’ account but coming much earlier. Also very stimulating for thought about the nature of the biblical creation accounts.

: Law Code of Hammurabi, king of Babylon, famous 18th century stele with many fascinating antecedents/parallels to the later Mosaic law. Awesome for the biblical enthusiast to see!

: Early Christian mosaic of a child with the adder (Isa 11:8), in the Louvre

: Upside-down pyramid in the Louvre underground where the kids could run around and avoid some of the museum’s mass confusion

: In front of the Louvre with its pyramid-thing in the background

: Eiffel Tower sparkling at the top of the hour at dusk

: Relics of St. Therese of Lisieux, brought to Sacre Coeur church in Paris on the jubliee of a pilgrimage she made to the church on the way to Rome to petition the pope for entry into the Carmelites

: The Thinker. In its original context within Rodin’s Gates of Hell it was Dante contemplating the damned, but here it stands on its own.

: Rodin’s Fugit Amor

: Rodin’s Age of Maturity, in which he leaves youth behind and is dragged ahead by old age

: Rodin’s The Gossips

: Ugolino and his dead sons up close

: Ugolino, Dante’s infamous traitor and cannibal, on all fours in the middle of a pond amidst the gardens of the Rodin Museum

: Splendid view of The Thinker statue with Eiffel Tower in background

: Cloister of the first Dominican convent where you can walk the halls and stand in the chapter room where the first decisions of the religious order were made by its saints-to-be

: Gothic interior of the Eglise des Jacobins

: Humble tomb of st. Thomas Aquinas in the Eglise des Jacobins

: Exterior of the Eglise des Jacobins in Toulouse, site of Aquinas’ burial and first convent of the Dominican order

: In the Louvre, an Egyptian piece with the god Osiris (left), Anubis (right), and a deceased soul being passed between them (center). All are aboard a boat reminiscent of Charon’s underworld ferry in Greek mythology

: Rodin’s Ugolino in the Musee D’Orsay

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The Online Home of Theologian Matthew J. Ramage, Ph.D.

Monthly Archives: November 2012

Sausage in Poland, Turkey in Turkey, and Back in America

Arrivederci, Firenze! Our Semester Comes to a Close

La joie de vivre