By Randy O’Connor – Special to The Dispatch
BERLIN
– This morning, or yesterday morning, or perhaps even the day
before (it’s all one blur to me) brought the arrival of the Germany
trip for the Gilroy High School Chamber Singers.
By Randy O’Connor
Special to The Dispatch
BERLIN – This morning, or yesterday morning, or perhaps even the day before (it’s all one blur to me) brought the arrival of the Germany trip for the Gilroy High School Chamber Singers.
This monumental voyage is the first European trip by the choir, which has, for the past decade or so, traveled to Japan every three years.
We arrived Friday morning at our high school in various states of disarray and piled our packages as a monument to luggage. Quickly, everyone made sure of their vitals: passports, IDs and outfits. I enjoyed the last-minute filling out of medical forms and was ushered out to the bus. However, the rapid preparations quickly devolved into slow good-byes. We must have waited at least half an hour before the bus finally started rolling and our trip began.
At San Francisco International Airport everything kicked into high gear. Suddenly, I was not in Gilroy anymore, and everyone around me was being hit with the same realization. An air of excitement permeated the choir, and a small group quickly formed a hacky-sack ring. Each of us exhibited a different behavior, but I definitely felt the urge to sing.
Apparently I was not alone, and eventually I was sucked into a rendition of ”Shenandoah.” Something inside me grew, and as we prepared to board the plane, I had an uninhibited sense that this trip would be like no other I had ever taken.
One could call all plane flights the same, but that would ignore the outstanding impact of company. I was surrounded by friends, and we all found ourselves easily amused by the many radio stations available. And then, half an hour later, we were bombarded with movies to watch as well. Choir members read books, listened to music and watched the movies, but it was our comfort with each other that kept many of us awake through the 10-hour flight (which concluded about 3 a.m. Pacific Standard Time).
The charisma of the chamber gained us the friendship of an English high school group that had traveled from Manchester, England, all the way to Lake Tahoe for some “wicked” skiing and snowboarding. Constant chatter kept our section of the plane – which we shared with the Manchester students – quite lively.
Ultimately, we parted with happy hearts, singing farewell to our new English friends with an undirected rendition of “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.”
The next few hours were a haze. We endured the strange fortune of witnessing noontime brightness at 4 a.m. our time, and I struggled to maintain consciousness in the Heathrow Airport and the ensuing plane ride to Berlin. But my internal clock had been rewound for a few hours because I was now in a city unlike any I had walked or driven through. Berlin is striking, with contrasting beautiful architecture and razor sharp wire weaving the city together. I cannot wait to explore it.
