The Season of Oberammergau is Here
May 17, 2010 at 8:36 am Tina Hay 5 comments
Every year after the December holidays I buy one of those Page-a-Day calendars at a half-price sale, and the theme of this year’s calendar is “1,000 Places to See Before You Die.” The vast majority are places I can only dream of visiting, but the entry for this weekend got my attention: It’s somewhere I’ll be going this summer.
I’ll be joining the Alumni Association’s trip to Oberammergau, a small village in Germany where the townspeople stage a version of the Passion Play every 10 years. The legend is that the villagers agreed to this back in 1637, in exchange for being spared the plague that was sweeping their region.
For our traveling group, the Passion Play will be the culmination of a 10-day trip that starts in Paris (woo hoo!) and includes stops in Strasbourg and Wurzburg, as well as side trips to some smaller villages known for their beer, wine, and cathedrals (not necessarily in that order).
The cool part—besides how much fun it is to say “Oberammergau”—is that the trip hosts will be two faculty members in Penn State’s history and religious studies department. Their commentary should add an excellent extra dimension to the trip. My job is to take pictures, blog along the way (more about that later), and perhaps bring back a story for the magazine. Needless to say, I’m really looking forward to the trip!
Tina Hay, editor
Entry filed under: Alumni Association, College of the Liberal Arts, The Penn Stater magazine. Tags: Alumni Association travel, Oberammergau, Paris, Passion play, Strasbourg, Wurzburg.
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1. R Thomas Berner | May 17, 2010 at 9:29 am
In Strasbourg, Tina, get thee to Gutenberg Plaza and pay homage to the man you can thank for your job. (Not to mention, the man I can thank for a life in print.)
2. Tina Hay | May 17, 2010 at 9:36 am
Will do! I see there’s a statue of Gutenberg there. (Most of the photos I found of “Place Gutenberg” on a Google Images search just now show cloudy skies — we cannot have that!)
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