Travel

Monday June 4th - Thursday June 7th:

Perhaps it's the jet-lag or wide-eyed amazement or a combination of both, but these past three days have felt like a gigantic blur. (This entry may start out as somewhat of a downer, but it gets pretty amazing by the end.)

I left Lawrence University at 7:30pm on Sunday evening was home by about 10. After working on a research paper and project for most of the night then sending the latter by mail and the former by email in the airport, I boarded a plane bound for London by 6pm the next day. Whew! And that's just the beginning...

The flight was fine. I flew Virgin Atlantic, so the stewards(?) and stewardesses were quite charming with their British accents. I spent most of the time learning and memorizing my music for the program, and after several remarks from nearby strangers and stewardesses (so you're like a lead singer in a band? -or- I've never composed music, what's it like? -or- my daughter sings in church choir, you should meet her...), I put away the music and attempted to sleep. Meanwhile the chap sitting next to me went through what seemed to be every single Vin Diesel film offered on the in-flight entertainment cue. I managed to get about an hours worth of sleep.

When I woke up, it was already light. The time was 5:45 Greenwich mean time, so you can do the math as to what time my body thought it was... Vin Diesel guy proved to be quite an asset however. He was from downtown London, so he gave me the rundown on the Tube, the attractions, and how to pronounce things in the way that won't get you teased (i.e. Leicester and Gloucester). If it weren't for him, I might still be in London Heathrow Airport.

My day in London was less fantastic than I hoped it would be (SKIP THIS PART IF YOU'RE IN A GOOD MOOD!). It started out as a cold, overcast day and only got colder (10 degrees doesn't sound good, even if it's Celsius). Being completely alone, I grabbed my bags and started wandering around the city. For a while I had this fantastic, tourist energy taking in all the sights and smells. It was the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, which was celebrating her sixtieth year on the throne, so I did get to sing with everyone as well as pronounce a resounding "Hip Hip Huzzah!" into the cold morning air. That was exciting. Soon, however, I had all the warm clothes in my suitcase on and was still shivering. Then rain. Luckily, I was able to duck into the free National Gallery, which was fantastic. I saw works by Monet, Seurat, Dürer, Van Gogh, Dali, etc. However, the rain didn't let up, so after exhausting the work in the museum, I sat down for a while (indeed, sitting down = nodding off, then waking up to see if my bags were still there, then falling asleep again). I tried my first ever expresso shot. Needless to say, I pretty much ran around in the rain for the next three hours--a poor decision in hindsight. I stopped at a store called Primart, which according to Vin Diesel guy was kind of like Walmart for clothes. It was. It was packed. Literally, I had never seen so many thousands of people in a store, but for £10 jeans and £5 shorts, I guess... Luckily, I made it out alive (and without purchasing anything!).

Soon afterward, I had my energy crash from the expresso. I really wanted to get dinner at a real English Pub but couldn't force myself to walk in there with all my bags, so instead I went to (no, not McDonalds...I wasn't THAT desperate) a small family diner and ate pasta all alone. Thanks to the friendly (or maybe unobservant) wait staff, I was able to get another half and hour of sleep in the restaurant. Which, I'll have you know, was unintentional.

The next several hours were literally terrible. It was still cold and rainy, so I went back to the train station and sat there for about four hours, drank more coffee, and learned more music. I had to catch a 6am flight the next day, so I didn't feel like a hotel room was such a good idea. Instead, I caught a bus to the airport at midnight, got there at 1:30am (in other news, the bus had free wifi!), and tried to stay awake until 4am when the gates opened (I didn't, but I still have my luggage!). Another connecting flight had me in Pisa, Italy. Soon after I was on a train to Florence. My first image looking out the train in Italy was of a old woman smacking a rug out of a window high up in a building. It was beautiful and sad and human.

By the time I got to Florence, I was completely beaten. I had an hour to go sightsee, but I was so tired that I sat in the train station and peoplewatched instead. Hopefully, I'll have time to go back and actually visit. Soon after, I boarded a train to Arezzo. I napped for an undisclosed amount of time and woke up in a tizzy, thinking that I had missed my stop, but I hadn't and soon was in beautiful Arezzo, Italy where the temperature was 65ºF and sunny.

The rest of the day was spent meeting people, trying to remember their names, and having my first pizza of the trip. It was molto bene!

In the morning, I woke up to the church bells at 8am. James and Jonathan and I walked around for a while in the morning and took in the city. We found a place to practice and commenced to do so. Soon after, the rest of the program showed up. We had an orientation and then ran through all our music. I have to say that singing with mostly graduate students was a new experience for me. They are quite amazing. It will be an awesome musical experience here, that's for sure.

After we got let out, we met as a group at a local restaurant for late afternoon hor d'oeuvres, which turned into dinner. By about sunset, we left the restaurant and headed up to the top of the city. It was an incredible experience. The sun was setting over the mountains, and coupled with the gentle haze of the valley, the effect was ethereal and a bit surreal. Climbing back down through the evening bustle of the streets, several of us stopped for the first gelato of the trip. Limonda. Molto bene. The evening ended with us sitting in the city square sharing a few laughs and stories of the day. It was very European.

I can tell that this is going to be a fantastic experience.

More later.