Since I did not have regular email access on my recent trip to Omsk, I've decided to publish my daily thoughts on the trip a week late. Hopefully, these entries will give a bit of insight into what daily life is like when I'm teaching seminars here.
As with my travels last year to Omsk, the days rather run together on this trip. Public transport got me to the airport just in time to make my flight to Moscow...where I had to wait 7 hours in the Vnukovo airport before the plane from Omsk was to take off. Vnukovo isn't the type of airport where you can really find things to do for 7 hours, so I tried to read and make suggestions to drafts of student thesis and forget about the clock. The flight took about 3.5 hours, and was relatively unremarkable except for the large quantity of food that they gave us and the scariest moment I think I've ever had in an airplane. At one point, about an hour from Omsk, it felt like we were just plan dropping. Three times in about 30 seconds there was a a loud swooshing... followed by a free-falling sensation. What was particularly strange is that no explanation was given... it did remind that I am thankful for life. :)
My former student, Andrey, picked up me and others at the airport; Omsk isn't a big city (somewhere in the range of 300,000 people?), but its airport is particularly small; what is more surprising, however, is that when you fly in, a bus takes you to the edge of the airport territory and just drops you off outside – you can go over to another building if you have baggage to claim, or simply walk through the airport territory gates.
Omsk is 3 time zones east of Moscow...and that puts you only in western Siberia. The country really is enormous. At any rate, this made it morning but, since I hadn't slept, I was happy that I didn't need to get up except to make it for the Russian language service at 2 pm, which would be just in the other side of the Christ Church Center, where I'll be sleeping for the next week in the “Erlangen” room.
The congregation gives a good impression – their friendly and well-organized and today's preacher (Dean Dieter Grimmsmann, with whom I'll be teaching) was good. The only hard part for me at their services is the hymns they sing. The problem is not at all with the musical style (which I don't know how to describe other than “Baptist,” meaning not classical, yet not quite contemporary piano music played at quite a lively tempo), but the theology of the texts completely contradicts what the Lutheran church tries to teach. I'll have to talk with Grimmsmann about that...
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