Coventry

Blogger’s note: this blog will be more of a diary entry describing a short trip to Coventry/University of Warwick via a hodgepodge of anecdotes, rather than the recent ups and downs of our narrator.

Dear blog-gery, there is much to say, much that has been happening lately, but I want to avoid all of that and concentrate on the little short trip that included a very nice conference. You know how it is, sometimes telling a story is dealing directly with reality, sometimes it’s a plotted escape. This is not exactly the latter, but its definitely in that ballpark.

From last Wednesday till this Sunday I was at the university of warwick, at a 60th birthday conference. It seemed that this conference was organized rather quickly which had the effect that only people who could afford coming from afar attended, along with a small group of ‘locals’. At the end of the day this meant that there were few people at the conference, all of them quite important and distinguished (read: ‘veterans’ of the profession…) and of course, me.
So I got to rub shoulders with some of the great minds of statistical mechanics, share note pads with innovators of selective random walks, drink beer with mathematicians that could describe many governing communist bodies – and in fact, chair a session and mispronounce some exotic names.
Ok, and now a bit of nerdiness - the math department at the university of warwick (as middle of nowhere as it gets in England (yes, it is England, not Wales…)) is incredible! The building is huge and modern, with lots of open space, high ceilings and light. The common room is two floors connected by stairs and an open balcony, spacious, inviting, and – excitingly, with huge blackboards! And overall, I was somehow inspired to do work while being there. In fact, I had never come back from a conference before with so much motivation to work! I am always so exhausted from attempting to concentrate so hard for 8 hours, trying to understand so many different details, so varied talks… but no, this time I came back motivated and energetic. And so far – its lasted three days! Amazing, I know. Maybe the university of warwick is in my future? Ok, we are not talking about that now…
The city of Coventry, where the university of warwick is located was heavily bombed during world war II, during the blitz. The reasoning being a jet factory. Circa 10,000 people died. The city was quite levelled. In response the brits bombed Dresden. There was a famous cathedral here from gosh, maybe the 13th century, of great importance that got a brunt of the bombing. It was located in the center of town. The walls of it still stand. The roof is gone, the inside is gone for the most part except for a few things that remained, such as some stairs. One of the towers was left completely standing. It’s a very strange place to visit, very powerful. Has that ghostly feeling of war and destruction and things that remained behind afterwards.

Interestingly, right next to it stands the new cathedral. Built in a very modern style, has no resemblance to the skeleton that it stands next to.



Inside, there is an inscription from the people of Dresden, speaking of peace and forgiveness. Coventry provided money to Dresden for its reconstruction and Dresden did the same for Coventry.

No where is it mentioned that the germans were responsible for what happened. The words forgiveness are seen throughout the cathedral.
I found this very interesting. I am not comparing this in any way to the holocaust or to Israel, but just observing that the words associated with the holocaust in Israel are do not forgive and do not forget. Again, this is not a judgement just an observation, something to think about…