Long Day Gets Longer (May 30th)

Today was not at all what anybody expected. The theme of the tour seems to be "running late...by a lot." Apparently traffic (bumper to bumper) and long rest stops caused the choir to be late to Erfurt. Today was even worse. Let me add that telling 72 people that they have 10-15 minutes to go to the bathroom is not realistic. Thats less than 30 seconds per person to pee. Throw in that each person has to pay money to use the bathroom adds even more time. In addition, telling the choir to grad sandwiches at a rest stop and get back on the bus is also unrealistic, especially when there are only 12 sandwiches available and there is a hot food grill that can make sausages and pasta for each person. Basically these kinds of things added to a long driving day that never seemed to end. But allow me to start from the beginning.

We left early in the morning to complete our supposed 9-hour bus ride from Erfurt to Pszczyna Poland. To boot we were scheduled to have a concert when we arrived, so being late was not really an option. However we were late as one could expect. The bus ride ended up being between 11-13 hours. I lost track because we never got any closer.  Most of the choir was irritated with having been stuck on a bus for that long. It did not help our mood that the concert was scheduled 30 minutes after we arrived at the church. In fact we walked in the church and warmed up in 15 minutes in front of the entire audience. Fortunately the audience was very kind and receptive and did not mind waiting an extra 20 minutes for the concert to begin. Because we missed our scheduled dinner time, we were given crackers, meat and cheese for something to eat. Of course there was hardly enough for everyone to have one large cracker, some ham and a slice of cheese.

Church that we sang at in Pszczyna

The concert went better than I thought it might after a long day. We all sang well. I guess it goes to show how professional we can be in performance even if everything else during the day did not go according to plan. What was most shocking to me was that DP said he was not stressed at all. I don't know for sure, but I was stressed with being late. During the concert it was nice to see some of the Bethel Jazz people show up at the concert.

Following the concert we had dinner across the platz. Tonights dinner was the first of many like it. Pork and potatoes. Little did we know that we would eat pork and potatoes for nearly every lunch or dinner on tour. I am fine with this because it was all really good. It was a fancier place to eat, which is different than where we would normally go on tour within the US.

But then something unexpected (or expected to some) occurred. Our accommodations were at a place called camp H2O. We did not know where it was going to be, and I guess the drivers did not know either.  I jokingly said to Madeleine that our 30 minute trip will probably end up being an hour and a half. Little did I know that I was going to be right. We drove into the middle of nowhere. Our buses drove down streets that were too small for them, and had to back up several hundred meters because there was no way out. It was foggy, dark, and super creepy looking out of the window when arriving at the camp. Many thought tonight would be our last night. But fortunately it turned out ok.

The camp is better than a cabin. I was in a building with Jeff, Corbin O, Corbin M, Ian, Josh, Jamie, and Jesse. So it is basically 4 seniors (two of whom don't go to Bethel), and 3 freshman plus one sophomore. The freshman took the upstairs and Jeff had to go with them because the lower level only had 3 beds. We walked around to other peoples cabins to see what their rooms were like. First of all, our toilet sucked. Every time you flushed it it growled and groaned for at least 30 minutes. It never got better. Courtney had a terrible first night. There were spiders crawling all over her bed. They killed some, left for a bit, came back and there were more. The entire room of girls slept in their clothes with one eye open and the lights on. They were to scared to spiders crawling on them. I spoke to another friend of mine who happened to be a girl. I said that "we have 8 guys and one bathroom and one shower." She responded to me and said she "has 8 girls and one mirror." That made me laugh. H20 was probably going to be our least plush in terms of accommodations. But it shall do. We are only there for sleeping anyway so it does not really matter much. It's not great but I can live with it.