Music Tour- Day Thirteen

We spent our first morning in Belgium touring battlefield sites, starting with Hill 60 and Hill 62. Before tour, Mr Hey had warned us that if it had rained at all in the past week, our shoes would get muddy so we should bring old shoes that we wouldn’t mind throwing out after visiting the battlefields. It hadn’t rained, however, so I could keep my shoes with me for the rest of the tour.

Anyway, the first hill we went to (I can’t remember whether it was Hill 60 or Hill 62) was absolutely beautiful. We went to a clearing with a man-made lake in the middle. Apparently, the lake was caused by a mine explosion during World War One. On the other side of the lake, we could see many trees shrouded by mist. It’s hard to capture its beauty using words only. In fact, not only a picture could give you the full sense of what it was like there- you’d have to go there to get the entire effect. It’s odd how such destruction could have caused such beauty.

The other hill had a fairly convoluted landscape, again due to the battles during WWI. Some of the bunkers still remain there. You could tell which bunker belonged to which army due to the directions they faced.

After visiting the two hills we visited several other war memorials. The situation was the same- beautiful scenery in a place that exists to remember those who lost their lives during the war. Who would have thought that the death of an Austrian aristocrat could spell the death of so many others?

We had a little bit of free time in Ypres. I got some Belgian chocolate from one chocolate shop but then found out that the chocolate shop we had visited before that had had a special deal where you could get quite a lot of chocolate for only 10 euros! I was a bit annoyed at myself for that.

After that, we had a concert in the market square. Wind Orchestra was performing, as well as the Saxophone and Jazz ensembles. After playing Fantasy on an Australian Folk Song or Waltzing Matilda (can’t remember which one it was that we played) one of the members of our audience yelled, “Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!” I was surprised at this- I didn’t know that so many Europeans knew the Aussie Aussie Aussie chant!

Wind Orchestra performed last. After we were finished, we all packed up and headed up the road towards a restaurant to have dinner in our group of 166. I think we practically took up the whole restaurant. I think we had steak or some other kind of meat served with chips, which is basically what we had the night before (vegetarians had had omelette that night, but I’m not sure about this particular night).

This restaurant was where we all had our most awkward toilet experience ever (well, those who needed to go had an awkward experience anyway). The toilet was a unisex toilet. Basically, the door opened to reveal the urinal and a sink, and there was another door which led to the toilet itself. Nobody used the urinal, and I don’t blame them. It was barely concealed by a screen- in fact, the people sitting across from me at my table could see the urinal clearly. In the queue for the toilet, the boy behind me asked the waiter if that was the only toilet in the restaurant, and he said yes. The boy then said, “Good, because I’d feel awkward if I was queuing up for a girls’ bathroom.” I didn’t say anything, but I thought, “How do you think I feel?! There’s a urinal here!”

After dinner, we went back down the road but instead of going all the way back to our hostels, we stopped at Menin Gate, an arch-shaped memorial. Wind Orchestra was playing its memorial repertoire again for the ceremony, while the choir, which was present this time, sang. Quite a lot of people were watching the ceremony. I didn’t understand what was going on a lot of the time, but at least I understood what I had to do, unlike at the Dawn Service where confusion abounded.

When the ceremony was over, there were some Australian army people there handing out badges, stickers and balloons. I considered getting a badge for Tyko but by the time they got to me they had run out so I took a few balloons instead. As we walked back to our hostels, I heard someone behind me say, “Wow, what time does it set in this place?!” I looked at my watch and understood what they were talking about- it was 8.50pm and it still looked like 5pm on a summer evening! (I’m not sure what time the sun actually did set because I wasn’t paying attention.)

Lights out was 10.30pm, half an hour after the hostel manager said we had to be quiet otherwise the neighbours would complain. At 10.32, Mrs F came to our room and asked us why the lights weren’t out. She must have been pretty exact considering that our room wouldn’t have even been the first one she would have visited! I must commend her for trying such tactics on a group of teenagers on tour.

Music Tour- Day Twelve

At 3am, we woke up.

Yes, 3am.

No breakfast straight away, either- we had to get dressed, go to the Dawn Service, and sing for our breakfast.

I didn’t know that we were allowed to wear our jumpers for the Dawn Service (though not for the service afterwards), so I didn’t have mine. I found out when we got on the bus, but by that time, I thought that I would be okay without it, and besides I couldn’t be bothered going back to get it or lugging it around Westminster Abbey later. So I soldiered on without it.

When we got off the bus at the Dawn Service, I found that I may have been wrong. Actually, I’m not sure if wearing a jumper would have helped because it was my face and legs that were cold- apparently 120 denier just wasn’t going to cut it for me on a British spring morning. I probably would have been semi-okay for tiredness if I wasn’t feeling so cold. The cold just made me feel terrible, and the terribleness made me remember my tiredness. In fact, I lamented to someone, “This is my first Dawn Service- and it’s probably going to be my last.” Stevie J happened to overhear, and he laughed before remembering that he should be serious and said, “Don’t say things like that!”

Programmes were handed out, but they never reached my end of the choir. If I had had a programme, I would have known that we were to sing verses 1, 2 and 5 of Abide With Me, and I would have known what the words were. Unfortunately, I thought that we were going to sing verses 1, 3, 4 and 5, the way we had practised in choir, and in choir we had been told that we hadn’t had to learn the words for verse 2. That was the first problem I had in the choir. I managed to borrow a programme off someone else later (they at least had someone that they could share with while I didn’t) when we had to sing New Zealand’s national anthem, so at least I had the words for that. When the band played, they left a random pause before the last line which threw everybody off, at least the first time around. I think they may have also done this for the Australian national anthem too. In any case, it was pretty annoying.

After the Dawn Service, we headed off somewhere else for breakfast. I can’t remember what the place was called but I do remember that one of the chaperones or teachers said that it was a “bloke’s club” which is why there were only two ladies’ toilets. (I was lucky enough to go when there were only three or four people in the queue- by the time I left the queue was several metres long!) Anyway, when we got to the place the ten of us found that most of the tables were taken up so, after Mrs F telling us/half-yelling at us to sit down, we accepted our fate and split up. I ended up at a table where I was the only girl. We went up table at a time to get our breakfast, and when our table was called, Mrs Harvey said, “Okay, boys, you can get your breakfast!” I went up to her and indignantly told her that not everyone at that table was a boy. According to her, I was the lucky girl among all the boys. (So she says.)

The next event after breakfast was our performance at Westminster Abbey. There was a bit of panic at first as the instrument van was not waiting for us and some of the teachers were trying to ring up to find out where it was. I was a bit nervous at this- the only time I’d left my clarinet on the van, it failed to arrive! Fortunately it turned out that the van was simply late, and not too late either.

Only Wind Orchestra performed at Westminster Abbey- everyone else was singing at the Cenotaph service. It made things a bit awkward when on the Westminster Abbey programme it said that one of the songs (Thine be the Glory) would be led by our choir- which I soon realised was represented only by us band members! There were some bits in the service which felt a bit drawn out but there were some bits which I found fairly moving, even though I’m an atheist.

The service was followed by a hectic pack-up of instruments before returning to the youth hostel. Eventually we loaded everything onto the buses, and after getting on the buses, a lady got onto the bus and told us that as there would be no eating on the buses and there would be several hours until we got onto the Eurostar, we would have to eat before leaving, so we did. When we returned to the bus, Claire, sitting at the back, said, “If anybody needs to go to the toilet, go to the toilet at the youth hostel! We will seriously punch you if you use the bus toilet.”

On the bus, I played Mario Kart DS with Angus, Boyuan, Jess and one or two other people. Angus was using his sister’s DS, and for some reason his sister had set the DS name to “Lindsay” so everyone was laughing at him for it. I did pretty well at the races but soon it was time to get off temporarily at the Eurostar station. I had a look at the bookshop inside the station even though I wasn’t planning on spending any money (I wasn’t even going to bother finding anything that I could buy with 7p).

Eventually we got back on the bus and the bus drove into the train. I was excited about going on the train because of course it’s a totally new experience. I also thought that there would be carriages for vehicles and then a passenger part of the train, but I was wrong. The train we were on was entirely for vehicles. There were 17 carriages (if I remember correctly) with toilets at either end, though I’m not sure if the toilet carriages were included in that count. We were in the second carriage, not counting the front carriage with the toilets (which apparently were vacuum toilets but I didn’t need to use them).

Our ears all popped as we went downwards into the Channel Tunnel. Although I don’t usually get claustrophobic, I did feel a little hemmed in because the train didn’t have any windows. I went out of the bus to take a bit of a walk to the toilet carriages and back. I had a bit of an odd fear that I would get trapped between two train carriages and fall between them but it was okay because most of the time someone would be opening the door on the other side so I didn’t have that to worry about. It seemed like only an hour before we had to reboard the buses to resurface but apparently it was only about 45min or less!

We drove out of the train into France, and then north into Belgium. Apparently there’s a sign indicating the border between the two countries and we shouldn’t blink or else we’d miss it. I think I blinked because I didn’t see it. My first indication that we were in Belgium were road signs in Dutch, especially the one pointing towards Ypres (Ieper in Dutch). Eventually we arrived in the beautiful Belgian town which apparently got practically rebuilt after WWI. We headed towards our different hostels. Bus 3 and Bus 4 shared the Salient School Hostel, and it wasn’t too much of a walk, which was good. After listening to the talk about rules and so forth, we headed up to our actual rooms, where I began to make a list of pros and cons about the place.

There were only six of us assigned to room 3, and it was a room designed to fit ten, so it was pretty comfortable. One of the bunks was pretty isolated, so we divided the remaining four bunks among us. I had a bunk to myself so I took the bottom part. My suitcase stank pretty badly due to the clothes that didn’t dry properly while I was in London, but Julia O possibly had a worse problem- one of the liquids in her suitcase spilled over half of her clothes. Once we were set up, we went and looked in one of the other rooms, where they weren’t so lucky- they had one of the attic rooms which looked quite cramped due to the slanting roof but at least there was the novelty factor I suppose.

Other good things about the hostel included the showers. Larger rooms had two showers, and since our room was meant to fit ten, that included ours. We had two showers for six people, which was as good as the shower to person ratio in the hotels. The showers were quite good as well. We also had access to computers downstairs (though they had AZERTY keyboards which were pretty annoying for us English-speakers used to the QWERTY variety), with free internet and calls to landlines. Finally, we had sole use of this hostel, as well as the hostels that Bus 1 and Bus 2 were occupying, so we didn’t have to worry about security.

There were some drawbacks, though. Firstly, we had to carry our suitcases up the stairs. I’m pretty weak, so I was glad that I only had to carry my suitcases up one flight of stairs. I felt sorry for the people who were sleeping on the 3^rd floor. Also, the next day I found that we were to have continental breakfasts as opposed to the full cooked breakfasts that we had been having previously. All in all, though, the hostel was a pretty comfortable place to stay.

Music Tour- Day Eleven

Although Sunday was yet another free day, we had a tour of the Tower of London scheduled in the morning. Bus 3 and 4 were first, followed by buses 1 and 2 later on. This was fortunate for us because that meant that we could have the rest of the day to explore freely without having to worry about being anywhere at any particular time (though we had to be back to the hostel fairly early-ish due to the early morning the next day).

At the Tower of London, we waited in the absolutely massive queue for the Crown Jewels. That must have been the longest queue I have ever been in. The queue went through some of the other rooms of the building, out the door, snaked around for a bit and then stretched out down the path from one wall to the other. Outside, someone got their photos taken with one of the guards. In the rooms, there were little videos playing displaying some information about the crown jewels so that you had something to do while waiting. When you actually got to the jewels, you had to go on a conveyor belt so that you didn’t stand gazing at them and holding up the queue. The end crown, if I remember correctly, was only worn once because the king or whoever had to wear it complained that it was too heavy!

After coming out of the building, we had lunch and were given some free time to explore the Tower of London (which, incidentally, is made up of several towers) as we wished, though we had to be back to the spot we were eating by a particular time. After eating lunch I decided to explore the central tower which displayed lots of old weapons and armour which were quite interesting to look at. Towards the end of it I needed to go to the toilet, so I waited to go downstairs in the super slow-moving queue and then made a beeline for the toilets (at least the queue for the toilets was relatively fast-moving!) before dashing back to the meeting point. I ended up being exactly on time (to the nearest minute, at least- not sure about seconds).

When we left, we decided that we would head for the British Museum. The British Museum is absolutely huge, and it’s free to enter. We had time to visit the China, Korea and Egypt rooms before it was time to head back downstairs. When we did head back downstairs to our meeting place (under the banner which said “Australian Season” on it), we were told that we were allowed to have another 30min to explore, but it was a bit pointless since the museum was so large we wouldn’t be able to do very much with half an hour, especially now that we were away from the exhibits, so we went to the gift shop instead. I had £5.06 left to spend by the next day, so I spent £4.99 on a Horribly Famous book about Julius Caesar and was left with only 7p, so I had spent my money fairly neatly. (I found another 1p coin when I got home, so now I have 8p. Whoop-de-doop.)

As we left, the other members of my group decided to stop by some of the souvenir shops. I had a look around as well, to see if there was anything that 7p could buy or if anybody was 7p short of anything. The cheapest item available was 10p, and that was a postcard.

Finally, we returned to the youth hostel for dinner. That night, Diffy and I were the sensible ones. We both set our alarms and made plans to go to bed at least semi-early. Xanthe and Boyuan, however, decided to go to Jess’ room. I decided to go after them and give them one of the keys to our room so that they did not have to wake us up when they returned. I gave them an awful fright when I went over there. When I knocked, I heard agitated whisperings: they thought I was a teacher! I waited while some of them hid and the rest tried to look like they were almost ready for bed. At long last, the door was opened, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. I handed Xanthe the key and headed back to my room to hopefully get some decent rest before the next day.

Phobia Awakens

I have mild composer's block. So this section isn't quite finished yet.

And I apologise for the terrible quality voice over and my retarded voice :P Ah well this was a test run.