Music Tour- Day Seventeen

On our second morning in France, we went to Amiens via the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux, a fairly large war memorial. It had a tower which we climbed up. There was a good view, but it was a view of gravestones (as well as other people from our tour group). We stopped another time to have a lunch which was slightly rushed if you factored in the toilet queue as well. At last, we were back on the bus and off to Amiens.

When we arrived in Amiens, I was told by the bus driver to put my clarinet onto Bus 3 with all of the other small instruments, which I did gratefully as it saved me the bother of lugging it around with me. Our first stop was Notre Dame d’Amiens, which we were given a tour of. It was an enormous cathedral, with large stained glass windows and plenty of sculptures and decorations.

Following our tour, we were given time to explore Amiens in small groups before meeting at the Town Hall (l’Hôtel de Ville). We went down to the road the town hall was on as it had a lot of shops in it, and turned right and right again to another small street with some stalls and shops. At one of the stalls, Jacinta saw some mini suits and she and Boyuan were talking about buying them for their younger brothers. At one of the shops, I saw a bag pinkish in colour that caught my eye, and I debated for a little over whether or not to buy it. In the end, I decided to buy it because I had bought very little up to this point.

Once we had left this store, we went back to the main road and walked in the other direction. We saw a shop called “Claire’s Accessories,” so we took pictures of Claire standing in front of it. Some people bought crêpes at a crêpe stall. I wasn’t hungry so I didn’t get one. We then headed off to McDonalds for a toilet stop, and although access to the toilets is meant to be via a password provided on the bottom of your receipt (to stop people like us who don’t want to go to public pay toilets!), some nice people held open the doors for us so we didn’t have to pay a cent.

After leaving McDonalds, we continued down the road and stopped by a pâtisserie. I bought a caramel macaroon because my sister told me that I had to have at least one macaroon in France. I ordered in French, and was very proud of myself until I realised that I couldn’t understand the shop assistant’s reply and had to guess by her body language. A couple of other people bought macaroons as well.

Eventually we came to a junction with a double-decker merry-go-round. For some reason, that excited us. I spoke in broken French to the merry-go-round attendant because he was curious about what school we came from and why we were in France. We then proceeded to go onto the merry-go-round. Some people didn’t want to go on but when we found that the tickets were cheaper if a certain number of people went on, we dragged them on too. I sat on a swinging bench on the top deck. As our ride neared its end, we caught sight of Mr Hey who was watching us from below and shouted greetings down to him.

It was now time to head back to the Amiens Town Hall. Unfortunately, as we headed over there, it started to rain, which spoiled our plans of having a concert outside the town hall. We were shepherded into the town hall, where we were provided with food and drink. As it started to clear up, we warmed up our voices. Later we had a sort of mini-concert on the steps of the town hall and we had our photos taken, both while we were singing and after we were singing. As you can imagine, the former looked rather odd due to the positions of everyone’s mouths.

We were given a short amount of time- fifteen minutes or so- to roam the streets of Amiens again before heading back to Notre Dame d’Amiens. I had remembered the way we had taken to get to the street with the town hall, so when we passed that road, I thought the others intended to do a quick spot of shopping. Later I found out that this was not the case, and we all realised at once that we had not taken the most efficient route of returning to the cathedral.

Upon returning, I noticed, to my horror, that some people already had their small instruments with them. I asked Mr Hey where Bus 3 was because my clarinet was on it, and he scared me further by saying, “No buses are carrying instruments.” Later on, however, he told me that he realised that Bus 3 was, indeed, carrying instruments, and it was going to arrive when we would actually be performing.

Dinner was at what seemed to be the refectory of a nearby university. The food was pretty good, at least good enough to make up for the fact that the person who was meant to have opened the refectory in time for us arrived late. After dinner, we walked to a smaller cathedral which was practically right behind the university refectory. This was where we would have our concert that night.

If I remember correctly, Bus 3 was a little late, but I was glad to be reunited with my clarinet, and Boyuan was glad to be reunited with her violin. I performed with both Wind Orchestra and Chorale that night. Not too many people arrived for the concert, and the coughs that punctuated the gaps between Chorale songs didn’t exactly make for our best concert ever, but I don’t remember our playing being terrible either. Symphony Orchestra’s playing of Small Town was made a little spooky by the trumpet players’ utilisation of the balcony at the back of the auditorium, which made us wonder where the trumpet sound was coming from.

On the bus home from Amiens, I just played my DS and occasionally tried to peer out the window with little success due to the darkness outside. Part way through the drive, I heard Kieran yell to Angus, “They’re talking about how the 50^th Battalion’s a herp derp!”

I had no idea what “herp derp” meant, but I was a little sick of the phrase since I’d been hearing it from the mouths of the boys since Hungary, so I just sighed and kept playing. Eventually, however, Angus got sick of the “herp derp” talk and yelled at the other boys to stop talking about the 50^th Battalion. Their response was as to be expected:

“Okay- 60^th Battalion!”

“51^st Battalion!”
“55^th Battalion!”
“40^th Battalion!”