Back from Germany

I was in Germany for two weeks over July for an academic conference and summer school in the town of Wolfenbuettel, a small suburb of Braunschweig and Hanover.  It was idyllic in its way, and the library really rather excellent.

 

Upon the Oker, Wolfenbuettel

 

The conference was a great success, and I got some good feedback on my work on Locke and volition.  The big lesson is that it is worth paying a little closer attention to both possible Jesuit and Armenian sources of Locke's voluntarism.

 

Of course I've posted more pictures at my flickr album.  This also includes a short trip I took to the nearby city of Goslar.  Whilst Goslar is also rather small, it has a venerable history.  Several medieval Holy Roman Emperors lived in the city.  Its largely been untouched since the '60s.  The 1560s that is.  It was a stunning place to amble around in, and one could really see how early on the urbanisation of Germany was taking place.

 

These pictures probably give some indication of the age of Goslar.

 

 

All in all a very good day trip for a Saturday afternoon.

 

The best part of Wolfenbuettel, from a social standpoint. where the conference dinners.  Unlike most conferences, the library was actually equipped with a large kitchen and plenty of dining space in their administrative building.  Luckily, there were several people who were very good chefs among the student participants.  You can imagine that yours truly was hip deep in the cooking as well (I did much of it, and the organisation of the cooking).  By the end I was labeled "official cook" and had prepared meals for some senior academic figures.  But my point is not self-congratulation.  Because of the informality of self-catering in this sense, we were able to eat on a very nice budget (most meals came to between 3 and 5 Euros per person).  More importantly, the atmosphere created by the dinners was really helpful for getting to know each other.  Had we eaten at restaurants, with fixed seating, the scope for mingling, discussion, and relaxation would have been greatly reduced.  Wolfenbuettel's self-catering tradition is one that deserves emulation elsewhere.

 

For now back to work, I've a new Locke chapter to write.

 

Once more into the breach,

Ben