Doc Abroad

It is 5:30 a.m. according to my body but here I am in a smoking room in a shady hotel in Chicago waiting for a pizza delivery man to deliver us out of the depths of my own personal hell. In order to FULLY appreciate what is going on in my life, let me update you.

Last night was the final concert for our stay in Germany. It was an orchestra showcase night where we play all the recognizable classics, pomp and circumstance, arias from La Traviata, Star Wars... etc. So we spent our week after the final performance of our operas-- pulling double rehearsals daily for this show which immediately sold over 1,200 tickets. The concert was to be held on the stage of the open air concert hall that we had been performing in all summer. Our initial reaction to this was "so that concert is not going to happen." It rains everyday either a light misty sprinkle that would make even an almost entirely enclosed space impossible to have wooden instruments out in or a torrential downpour. Yesterday night was a combination of the two. They said the plan if it rains was that they were "planning for no rain"... at first I laughed thinking it was one of the famous language barrier moments... nope. They decided that just in case it rains...you know, in the off chance that a prediction of there being a 95% chance of rain actually came true... they would put a tarp over cables which would cover the top of the stage. Perfect. We spent the entire day yesterday saying "there's no way I'm bringing my instrument out in this weather" yet at 19:00 we were found traipsing down to the stage in soggy socks and performance clothes. Since we had no choice, we took their assurances that no moisture would get around the tarp and onto us. Being in the viola section which is tucked in safely into the center of the orchestra, I really didn't see a big enough reason to throw the fit that was my every right to throw. I unpacked in the dripping stage managers cabin and, using my umbrella to protect my instrument and getting soaked myself, I found my way on stage. The orchestra eventually settled down under this makeshift, tarp covered nightmare, with the torrents of rain cascading down around us and we played the first 8 bars of Weber (fitting since we're in his birth town) and, after stopping at a fermata, a few people glanced up at the tarp and the stirring this sight caused, caused the rest of us to gaze upon our impending doom. The tarp, secured on 3 sides and draped over cables keeping it flat had started to pool water between the cables therefore making it drift towards the musicians like a filling water balloon. The conductor called a few men with poles on stage (meanwhile the rain tripled in the amount it was pouring on us) to poke at the bulge and coax it off one of the sides. I, along with a few of my colleagues, took this opportunity to take off my jacket to wrap my viola up, holding it against me, my body acting as the shield and then opening the umbrella to cover this pitiful last attempt at keeping my viola from becoming drift-wood. Right then, two of the musicians in the back of the 1st violin section stand up, pop open their umbrellas and leave the stage. I'm not sure if anyone reading this believes in fate but allow me to make a believer out of you. Literally 2 seconds after this walk off happened, one side of the tarp snapped open and dumped a kiddy pool amount of water onto the horn section and what would have been the back of the first violins, now just drenching their music that was left. The orchestra, now unprotected from the downpour and remaining water dumping off the tarp, was in complete pandemonium. Screaming, we all stampeded around looking for the nearest exit that was not being blocked by percussion instruments while trying to only save our instruments. The conductor is yelling orders to stay calm and save the harp and move off the stage while countless stage hands poured on to try and get the flapping, spraying tarp under control. If I and the other 60 musicians hadn't been so mad at the recklessness and the stupidity of the whole situation, and if I hadn't been so urged to yell "I TOLD YOU SO"... maybe with a few choice words attached, it may have been funny. It is now. Needless to say the concert was canceled. And after some dried off their instruments and reported damage, I luckily dried off only myself and saluted God for handing me an epic win of a thought to protect my viola at that moment. Lessons learned? Next time you have to say the phrase "I mean, we could either build an ark or play"... don't play.


The only positive thing amidst all of this? We had been invited to lunch by the friends that we had met when we were lost looking for the tree (previous blog, don't be lazy) and enjoyed a splendidly cooked meal by a woman who we were surprised to hear thought fate had led us to her, a sentiment that my other friends and I stated right after we had stumbled across them. She said how disappointed she was when she thought she wouldn't meet anyone from the festival so that day she sent "vibes" out to try and draw us to her. Sounds crazy but how else do you explain what happened? I dare you to try. Seriously.

So, We ate with her husband, their son and their grandson and gave them all tickets to our concert. Sadly, since the concert didn't happen we did not get to see them. We walked out of the concert turned party with our hearts a little sunk because we realized we wouldn't get a chance to see them again before we left. We went upstairs to pack when one of our friends came in and called us out of our room. We emerged and who do we see? Helga and Rainer, our wonderful saviors, standing in our hotel. They had seen the bus leave the concert and since they couldn't find us before they saw them leave they followed them. They don't know how or why they went to the 3rd floor and were standing right outside our door without knowing our room number or level. Fate was on our side this day. After a big hug and a promise to write, we left our friends feeling like the day was worth living after all.

Now, quickly on to Chicago. After a day of connections, international flights, airports, lines, customs and baggage claims, we finally got to our hotel to find that we didn't in fact have rooms to stay in. The numbers that we have received, were for some reason absolutely incorrect. No numbers have ever been more wrong, it seems. So we spent 2 hours between waiting for the hotel shuttle and standing around in the lobby to finally get offered a smoking room. Fine. Let the pizza man come and then let me sleep. Save me Tom Cruise. Only if you have a pizza in hand, that is.


Love you all

Erin

Hey all!

There is a famous tree here in Eutin. It is a big oak tree that actually has it's own address and because of a tradition started a long time ago, people from all over the world sendlove letters and postcards to this tree. So, the other day 2 of my friends and I decided to go see this tree for ourselves as one of our final adventures into Eutin. And and adventure it was...

The night before our adventure, my friend looked up the address to the tree online and google mapped it. It was about 7.3 km away, so a good walk but definitely not bad when you have the whole day to kill and a burning desire to get out of a rehearsal room. We woke up late the next morning grabbed brunch and set out at a good pace towards our goal. Promptly, as usual when caught enjoying oneself outdoors , it started to rain. Luckily we were prepared and the rain only heightened the feeling that we were embarking on an epic quest to find "the tree." We walked through town, through a forest-y area and took our first turn. A half hour more of walking through the gorgeous scenery, we hit a dead end. Okay. First wrong turn only wasted 30 minutes. Not a big deal. We turned back and continued straight where we had before turned. A little while later we execute the correct left turn and continued south along 76 until we reached Bockholt (please, do everyone a favor and pull up a map, it's hysterical). We turned towards Roebel and kept walking. This was hour 3. The majority of the trip so far had been a steady flow of conversation about how this walk was like we were on a quest, how we wished we could dress like characters in our novels when they embark on journeys and the very occasional "is this the right way...?" to which we would shrug, slow our pace, get distracted by something and keep walking. Along this road we saw a bull lying on the grass on a rolling pasture surrounded by ducks as if he was there protection, we saw forest paths lit with the ominous, cloudy light where mist was still clinging to the ground and swirled when interrupted, we saw flowers that made us stop and look or smell, apples that made the branches the hung on bow until they hit the ground and we made friends with the cows along the way. In our defense, even after all of our "I don't think this is the right way"s, how could we have stopped? We walked until we reached Bujendorf. When we reached this town we really knew something wasn't quite right. We had gone through 2 forests and come out the other side with no sightings of this famous tree. We had to ask for help. We ducked out of the cloud that was encircling us, misting us from head to toe into a car repair placed called "Kramer's" and asked if they spoke English, nope. We asked how to get to the tree, he grabbed our address that we had for it and google mapped our way back to where our address was trying to lead us, because he didn't understand what "baum" we were talking about. We looked at the map and started to laugh. His map had the "tree" stationed just off Bockholt... nearly 2 hours and 6.9 km back. We laughed and thanked him and began back down the path we had just struggled up. Our feet were killing us, we were wet and cold and now very hungry. We got back to bockholt and turned down the road to Fassensdorf which was the correct road. 1 km outside of Fassensdorf and we realized that yet again google maps had failed us. We were distraught. There was then a shop to our right that, upon passing it the first time looked closed. The second time we passed it I said "What if the tree is in there?" Duh, of course it wasn't, but we decided that was a good idea to check since we had in fact checked everywhere else. We walked up to the glass doors and though we just knew it was locked. Miraculously the doors immediately swung open and we walked into an artistic looking room with concrete floors, pastel colors and classical music playing in the background. The piece playing was one that we had just played and the whole thing felt a little surreal, stepping out of our crazy exhaustion into a cool and relaxed place. Suddenly, a lady descends the stairs winding down in a back corner. Her hair is white and loosely pulled into a braid that frames her face in an "I know you're an artist" type way. She welcomes us and recognizes us as part of the festival immediately. She said that she's been waiting and wanting to meet some of us because she wants to offer her home to a student to come live with and be part of their family and teach them English and help in the garden. We fell into talking and told her we were searching for the tree. She tells us not only is it not anywhere around there, but it's in the complete opposite direction from where we were walking. Discouraged we all look at each other with what I'm sure was a pathetic expression and were going to thank the lady and cut our losses on the whole excursion when she says that she would love to drive us to the tree. She calls her husband down, we get into her car and drive the 10 minute drive to the forest. On our way, her and her husband call us "heroes" for saving their festival and thank us for everything we've done. This is the 3rd time I've either gotten a ride, or help from a person who wanted to give back to us after we have given their festival back to them. It is an amazing feeling to know how much our music does for a town. We arrive at the tree, all load out and walk with our new friends to a beautiful oak tree in a forest whose rival in beauty could only be found deep in British Columbia or the like. We took pictures in front of the tree and left. They drove us into the town square and invited ("invitated") us to dinner. We declined because of our dinner waiting at the Opernschuene (though we emailed them and invited them out tomorrow night and got them tickets to our concert).

The day was a perfect one. Good company, beautiful sights, and wonderful people. Days like this restore my love of people and remind me that no matter where you are, walking 14 miles to who knows where and lost in a random town in Germany, people are willing to help and offer you the best of them.

Pay it forward.

E and Doc

Nothing says relaxation like a little canoe ride around the Kellersee... at least for the people in the boat.

Earlier in the week last week two of my friends and I decided to take a boat that the hotel supplies out around the surrounding lake for an hour or so. Since this was the first time the weather really permitted this activity we asked the lady at the main desk to clarify if we could simply just walk up to a tethered boat and take it out. She waved in the general direction of where we knew the boats to be so taking this as a confirmation of our words, we set off. We walked over to a little house that could be a boat house and our key worked in the gate so we opened it and went out on this poorly kept dock and pulled the boat towards us. The boat was FULL of water so, being the brainiacs/ slightly immature kids we are, our first reaction was to try and get the boat out of water so we can tip it over. We all start pulling as hard as we can and the thing doesn't even budge. We pull harder, still nothing. We start rocking the boat as hard as we can in order to slosh the water out of the boat and only succeed in filling the thing with more water. It was around our 3rd attempt at this that a lady emerges from the house (boat house...?) and starts talking to us. She is speaking German and since none of us speak past what we need to get around, we just say "sorry we speak english" she says... "are you going to bring it back" and points to the boat we were like "yes, of course" I mean, obviously we weren't just going to steal it. So she just kind of nods and watches us then goes in and brings us a bucket to help get the water out of it. We thanked her and embarked on our journey. The lake was beautiful to be on and so relaxing but halfway through our trip we started discussing the weird interaction we had with this lady and that's when it hit us.... the "boat house" was not a boat house it was an actual house. Everything in the windows pointed to that, the welcome mat, the plants and curtains in the window... everything. This wasn't the hotel boats that we now saw tied in front of the hotel that were the actual canoes we were expecting not this weird shaped old boat with mismatched oars.... the lady asked us if we were planning on returning the boat... oh my gosh. We stole an old woman's boat.

Needless to say our return journey was filled with a tad more anxiety than we had expected our relaxing afternoon to include. We tied the boat off at the dock, grabbed our shoes and RAN. If only I could write enough German to apologize and thank this lady for, even when she thought we were stealing her boat, got a bucket and helped make our get-away more comfortable.


In lighter and less illegal news, we have been in several prominent German newspapers all that say basically who needs the Hamburg Symphony (professional orchestra they had before we came) when they have us. It's good to hear because a lot of people were skeptical whether the festival would be worth coming to and the word from the media and the audiences that have come is that IT IS. Pretty cool stuff.

That leaves the "Mayhem" portion of my blog. A week or so ago we all got on a bus (55 members of the orchestra) and went on a day excursion to Hamburg. We got there and spent the largest part of our trip just sitting in the U.S. Embassy with one of our orchestras "fans" who happens to be a higher up in the embassy talking to us about what goes on there. A brief tour concluded the boring event and we were bussed to the docks to eat and roam as we pleased. After grabbing pizza we only had an hour to look at the city so we decided to take a running tour of the city. We saw a Gothic churches steeple in the distance and HAD to see it. Since it was a good distance from the docks and where we were supposed to meet the bus we said, "Okay, let's run to that corner and then we'll have a good view of it" so we ran to the corner and there was a building in the way. "okay" we said, "one more corner". This continued until we had run all the way to the church which turned out to be just the steeple of a church built in the 12th century that was bombed and only had a shell remaining. Well worth the run. So we took a couple pictures and a video and ran all the way back making the bus with way too much time to spare to justify our sweaty dash through town.

Love you all,

Doc and E

A quick anecdote:

Tonight there was a chamber concert that we were all encouraged to attend. After being locked outside of the building for an hour while the important people socialized and ate... we were allowed inside but more importantly, into the concert. One of the main people from this trip stood up to introduce the piece he was about to play and this is what came out:

We are currently doing Don Giovanni under the direction of a very famous conductor. The rehearsals are going pretty well... If you count rebellions, brawls, the conductor pantomiming shooting us, storming out of rehearsals and mutinous section members. Welcome to the big leagues, eh? The rehearsals have been one of the most stressful things of my existence actually. If my section comes in wrong guess who's fault it is? If they play out of tune guess who's responsible? If you guessed me, you would be correct. Hearing someone play in a rest and then bracing myself for the imminent baton being brandished in my face like a sword or a finger-gun being pointed in your face is not what I call confidence boosting. We have generally 2 rehearsals a day with the exception of last night, which was a ticketed dress rehearsal, and tonight, which is a blessed break from stress. Don Giovanni gets officially underway tomorrow (Friday) with our first official public performance.

We haven't had a lot of time to get out and see things because of our rehearsal schedule but even the town square is a lot of fun. For example:

The other day Paula, Jessika, Ren and I were walking out of a greek restaurant and heading back to the rehearsal hall which is through the town square. We hit the cross-walk sign that gives us the light to cross and instantly an explosion of noise reached our ears. We looked to the right and were surprised to see a parade marching down the street towards us. Showers of candy began raining down on us and a lady walked up and gave us roses. Just like that, it was over. It was a yearly festival that, after the parade, culminates in a contest to see who can drink the most and still maintain the best shot at a wooden bird they hang. Sound dangerous? I thought so too. I'm hoping that it's not as similar to a pinata as I imagined when a local told us this story. It's bad enough to have men drinking and shooting at this wooden bird until it falls without adding the image of candy falling from said wooden bird to waiting children below. Yikes.


Love you all,

E and Doc

**Disclaimer** it's 1 in the morning here and I'm exhausted. I WILL make grammatical errors and spelling errors and I don't care.

Yesterday I went to the Sky market to pick up some supplies and my dinner. I walked through the store and I didn't find anything that was easy enough to make that I really wanted so I decided to go over to the deli section and try my luck there. The sign was all written in a rather short hand german. For example it would say something like "Roast beef sandwhich" and then have "with a roll and cheese" but since I didn't understand what the "roast beef" part meant, I wasn't entirely sure I wasn't just going to purchase cheese and a roll. There was a lady at the counter so I asked her if she spoke English. She shook her head. I said out loud "oh brother, this isn't going to work very well" she shrugged and said something in German to which I looked at the sign and shrugged. She pointed to a really delightful looking sandwich and then at me and said "yes, good" so I nodded, she brought out the sandwich and put it in the oven. When she was heating it up she asked me "Kansas?" I said yes because that's where we're technically from on this trip. She ran over to the counter and started thumbing through a pile of newspaper which she then showed me after rapidly flicking through 3 of them. It was a picture of my group that was taken at the fourth of July celebration in the town square. She gestured for me to take the paper and upon a closer inspection, I found that most of it was dedicated to us and there was actually a picture of just me in it as well. I thanked her as she handed me my sandwich saying in German "hot, hot" then walked outside. She came to the window and gave me the thumbs up, I returned it. I think I made a friend and I'm in a German newspaper. Pretty successful day I'd say.


Tonight we had our first concert. We performed various works ranging from Copland to Gershwin to Von Suppe. It was in the "barn" at Hasselburg which is a castle in Eutin. The concert was the opening concert to kick off the Eutiner Festspiele and we played to a sold-out crowd of 900 people! The program was fun to play, especially with all the American music, and looking out over the crowd told me that I wasn't the only one enjoying myself. We also played "the evening prayer" from Hansel und Gretel, one of the opera's we're doing this summer, as sort of a "teaser" for the audience. It is an incredible piece and one that is well known to German audiences. By the time we played the final chord, there was hardly a dry eye in both the audience and on stage. We got several standing ovations and each one of us received a rose and countless compliments on our energy and performance.

So I made it!

Passed the TSA agent that insisted on poking my viola with a wand while I tried to put my belt back on after my latest airport strip tease,

passed the lady who checks boarding passes and yells at musicians to check their instruments because they take up too much of the overhead compartment space,

through the first flight and the first airport, and onto the plane that would take me to our first airport in Germany and landed....

Right next to a 16 year old girl with the highest pitched voice, biggest love for excersising said voice, and most uncontrolled elbows and knees I have ever heard/met/seen in my life.

On the airline we were flying, there were no TV's on the backs of every chair that I, as an entitled American, have grown used to on any flight longer than a few hours. In addition to this disappointing lack of digital stimulation, my headset that was supposed to connected me to the in-flight entertainment that WAS available (retro mickey mouse, German version of bob the builder, Disney's "prom" and an episode of Golden Girls) was giving me the sound of a tennis match that was not being televised. Needless to say, I spent my time trying to fall asleep and having 16-year-old Elbows McGee fighting me for every last inch of my space.
The sun set and rose at what would have been our early afternoon and then only about 4 hours later at 5 a.m. local time. I lost track of time, sense of hearing from the constant booming of the airplane's engine, feeling in my feet and... (Corie close your eyes) a red jacket that I realized halfway through the flight I had left it in the women's room in the Chicago airport. Luckily, this had the keys to my suitcase in the pocket as well (told you they'd be safe there, mom).

I survived the plane somehow, it's sequel from Frankfurt into Hamburg, and after being shepherded to the buses, driven through the beautiful northern German countryside with 60 other delirious and rather smelly individuals who were all packed into yet another moving tin box, arrived at the beautiful seeschloss hotel in Eutin, Germany.

The missing key proved not difficult thanks to my stealthy friend who proceeded to look at me, have a conversation, while pulling a bobby pin out of her hair and popping the lock without even blinking... good thing I have her on my side eh?

The first day passed quite uneventfully and after being greeted by the Eutiner Festspiele officials and people at the Opernscheune we were free to collapse in our beds.

Yesterday was a different story. We had a reahearsal from 10-7 with a lunch break in between and then we were to go to the town square for our independence day party thrown by the people of Eutin. The whole town square was used and there were food and drink vendors as well as a singer and some other entertainers. It was fun to just be able to enjoy the city and have everyone know who we were and why we were there and appreciate us for it. They had us line up by sections of the orchestra and sign the official festival guest book, it was cool knowing that I left my mark on the festival history. After a night of good food and jazz music, American rock 'n' roll music and soft love hits from various countries, we relaxed with our drinks and, to the sound of the band playing America the beautiful, we sung the anthem and watched a firework display shot right from the heart of the town square. It was a beautiful night and the fact that it was done to welcome us and make us feel at home made it even greater.

Hopefully that gets you caught up on where I am. I will start my usual anecdote posting soon as well as picture posting as soon as I can.

Off to rehearsal.

Love you all,

Doc and E