United States: This is the end of the road, Galvetron!

And... we're back.

The final concert went decently, a lot of people cried, then we flew to Newark. I spent the afternoon in New York City because we had a ridiculously long layover, and enjoyed:

• immediately after walking out of Penn Station, seeing a car with a Polish license plate
• yelling the polish words for "Good Morning" at the driver of the car with the Polish license plate
• him yelling something back in Polish
• almost playing Nertz in Times Square
• Eating cheesecake at Roxy's
• observing that Times Square is the most delightfully A.D.D. place in the world

Then we flew to Little Rock and my car wouldn't start and we jumped it off and I went to see the family.

Coming up: pictures!

Ireland: Travel day!

We left Aberdeen this morning, rode the bus forever, then got on a boat for a little while, then rode the bus for more forever and now we're in Dublin. I managed to pass the time pretty well: played two games of Spades, which were both lost in glorious fashion (scores: -410 to 410 on one game and on the other, we never got above 20 points), and watched the latter two Back to the Futures. I was thinking about it (I had time) and I believe that there is still a Delorian time machine hidden in the caves at the end of the third movie that they didn't account for. Perhaps they were leaving it open for a fourth movie... idunno.

So I stayed with a Price family a few days ago. This particular Mr. Price was a Knight Templar, and it was hard to follow exactly what all that means. But he has lots of paintings by a local artist, including one of his house, and lots of fancy medallions and a sword that he was eager to show us. Best I can tell, we're not related.

Dublin is our last stop on the tour. We fly back to the states Thursday. We're flying into Newark where we have a forever-long layover, so a bunch of us are going to New York City (New York City?!) for the afternoon. Then it's back to Beautiful Searcy, Arkansas, Dallas, and Monroe for the summer.

I better get back to the hostel before curfew... more tomorrow.

Coming up: My last Chorus concert ever!

Scotland: It's pretty nice here.

Another time-crunch situation lends itself to yet another LONG STORY SHORT:

The scenery in Scotland is simply a m a z i n g.

And we have two more concerts, one of which is in about two hours at the Aberdeen Music Hall.

That's it for now!

Coming up: Actual stories from Scotland and Ireland, I promise!

England: the Quiet Game

So I have spent the past two days speaking as little as possible, as my voice has gone out for a little holiday. (This is why I haven't phoned, for those of you who might be wondering). Kris and I are staying in Leeds, England, with a family who moved here three years ago from Zimbabwe. I don't have much else to say other than I am, in fact, alive. And we get to drive for ten hours tomorrow. And that's very long time.

Coming up: a more interesting post about Scotland.

England: Bristol and the second-longest day ever

We made it! (out of France, that is)

The hostel was, as most hostels are, a unique experience. It is situated a ways up the hill that my friends and I climbed the day or so before, so anytime you left the hostel you knew you'd have an uphill walk home. The bathrooms were the dirtiest of any hostel bathrooms I've seen, but they did feature a miracle of science: Apparently, water can be below freezing and still be a liquid, however this phenomenon can only be acheived in the shower.

Since I had seen most of what I wanted to see in Lyon on the previous two days, I set about yesterday in search of the statues of Lions and Bulls. Presently, there are 80 such statues scattered throughout the city as part of a special exhibition with the city of Torino, Italy. (Torino, I suspect, is the Italian word for bull, while Lyon of course is the French word for duck-billed platypus). The statues are on display in Lyon until July 7, when they will spend a month or so in Torino. My goal was to take pictures of as many of them as possible and see if I could assemble them digitally into a neat little collage that would look nice over my dresser.

To accomplish my task, I set out for the Tourism Bureau to get a map that shows the location of these statues. I then bought an all-day public transportation pass - one ticket for the subway, bus, and tram lines for only 4.50€! I didn't quite accomplish my goal, as I succumbed to what is known on the trip as Traveller's ADD:

"Okay, if I take the B line to Part-Dieu, there should be three of them in a
park to the north and - ooh, is that a crepe stand?"

I still managed to get twelve of them, and am offically an expert in Lyon public transportation.

We met at 5:00 at the church building where we were set up with a French bus company. We loaded up and headed for England, driving through the night. We passed through Paris just after sunset, and saw (from the highway) the Eiffel Tower. It was tall. When we got to the border, we waited around a while and finally drove the bus into a train car, then rode on the bus on the train car through a tunnel in the English Channel and arrived an hour later in England. We made it to the church building at about 7:30 this morning - by the way, we gained an hour this morning - where most everybody slept and was served breakfast. Personally, I was very relieved to take an actual warm shower at my host house.

They have a 14-month old boy who is bigger than Katelyn. And his granddad is a blues singer and harmonica player who takes apart his harmonicas, adjusts the reeds and other things inside, and gets a very unique, clean sound. She played one of his CD's for us, he's very good.

Coming up: Everybody sleeps and takes a shower, and maybe we will be reunited with Sladowski. Maybe.

France: Improving your trip through Improv

THE ORIGINAL PLAN: Go into town at 2:00 for a bus tour of Lyon, sing in the Basilica, leave Lyon the following morning for a really, really long drive to Calais.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Nobody is really certain right now. We're probably going to have to cancel our first concert in Britain because the earliest the bus can be fixed is Tuesday.

The problem has something to do with ball-bearings, and has become a little complicated: The drivers had spare ball-bearings on the bus. This is unusual, and suggests that they have had this problem before. The bus drivers assert that they could fix it themselves in two hours by replacing the ball-bearings. The mechanics in France assert that the drivers' "quick fix" has actually made things worse in the long run - the casing for the ball-bearings needs to be replaced, and we don't carry a spare of those. The whole matter is complicated further thusly: We are in France. The mechanics here tend to speak French. Our bus drivers speak Polish, one of them also speaks Russian. So in order to communicate, the French mechanic speaks French to one of the girls on the tour who used to live in Brussels. She in turn speaks English to another girl on the tour who grew up in Kiev. That girl speaks Russian to the first driver, who speaks Polish to the second. Additionally, when Dr. Ganus receives the French word translated to English, he calls Mike Dawidow in Poland who speaks to the owner of the bus company in Polish. That is to say that one interaction between the drivers and the mechanics could involve as many as four- count 'em, four- languages.

Meanwhile, we got a lot of free time this afternoon in Lyon! I went exploring with Rueben, Lindsay, Kris, Nate, and Ben. We walked through a protest rally and eventually walked up a very large hill, not fully knowing what we were going to find up there (we saw an imitation Eiffel tower, and thought it'd be fun to check out). When we got to the top, we found a huge white building that looks like a castle or a church. As it turns out, it's the Basilica, and we sang in it later that night. We also learned that there is a trolley that you are supposed to take to get to the top - all that walking in vain!

The concert, though poorly-attended, went thouroughly well. Afterward, we booked it down the hill, racing to make it to the bus station by 11 via Subway. We caught the last bus home with minutes to spare. Tomorrow we stay in Lyon, but are moving to a hostel to take some pressure off our hosts, who have done some excellent work helping us improvise a way to finish our tour.

Coming up: who knows? Maybe more of Lyon, maybe Britain, maybe New York for all we know. Stay tuned.

France: Breakin' it down, Sladowski style!

The bus broke down today.

Fortunately, we were at a little medeival village where we intended to spend some time, so we had something to do. I am staying tonight and tomorrow at the Hendrix house, the missionaries in Lyon. This is a fun small-world moment because they are the parents of my suitemate from my second semester in college, to whom we happily gave the moniker "Crazy French Nathan."

This isn't the first of these small-world moments, either. In Vicenza, Kris, Rueben, and I were chatting with a military family at that congregation who had roots in Alabama, specifically the town of Florence. It turns out that they are the brother, sis-in-law, niece, and nephew of my longtime friend and former roommate Andy.

It is such a relief to be staying with the Hendrixes. They are promising tomorrow morning the thing I have missed the most on this trip: a ginormous American breakfast. Bacon. Scrambled eggs. Milk that does not come from a goat. Real, honest-to-goodness breakfast.

In response to Regan's views on DaVinci Code: I have yet to read it, and probably won't be able to until England or the US. Dr. Ganus spoke to us yesterday about fact and fiction and made an important point. On this trip, we've seen and been to many important places significant to the Reformation; where Ulrich Zwingli and Martin Luther and Calvin and others preached. Many of us have been reading Dan Brown's books and Donald Miller's books and Francine Rivers' books. Dr. G's point is that there's no reason to believe that any of these people have the truth - the only way to find it is in a relationship with God.

Coming up: more from France! the return of the bus! (hopefully)

Chorus Campaigns: a guide to maintaining sanity on the road

I'm still in the French town next to Genéve; we leave this afternoon for nearby Lyon. I spent yesterday roaming around Genéve with Wil and Brooks, and found a cute little Switzerland outfit for baby Jacqueline. It's a 6-month size, so hopefully it will fit her when I get back.

Between bus rides and free nights in hotels, you may wonder what we do to pass the time not spent rehearsing or sightseeing. Here's a sample of what amusements we find:

Literature: a card game for 6 players, divided into 2 teams. It's basically Go Fish, but much more difficult. 8's are removed from the deck, and books are determined by suit and by rank (2-7 is low and worth 1pt, 9-A is high and worth 2pts). Players ask opposing team members for specific cards. You may not ask for a card that you have, and you can only ask for a card in a book you are collecting. Books are collected as a team: you may have the 9, 10, K of spades but you can lay down the book if you know your teammates have the J, K, and A. The catch - you have to know exactly who has what, and you can't ask them. If you mess up, the other team gets the book and the points. This is my new favorite card game.

Would you rather: more of a conversation starter than a game, it's a comparison of difficult choices. Would you rather slide down a slide coated with mayonaise into a swimming pool full of potato salad, or be forced to watch Sylvester Stallone movies dubbed in Catalan for the rest of your life?

Spades, Hearts, Euchre: no explanation needed. If you don't know what Euchre is, ask Nhu. I think every Ohian knows how to play it.

Mao: more of a Concert Choir favorite than a Chorus thing, this is the game where you don't know the rules and have to figure them out by breaking them. Ideal to play with a bunch of people who catch on really fast, and one or two who don't.

Required reading: If you are on Chorus tour, you are probably reading, have probably read, or are probably waiting in line to read someone's copy of The DaVinci Code, Angels and Demons, or Blue Like Jazz. There will be a quiz at the end of tour over these books.

Coming up: Lyon, f'reals.

Switzerland: the Geneva concert

So we had what I would consider our best concert of the tour last night.

We were in some kind of lecture hall/auditorium place at a school in Geneva just across from the brand-spankin'-new meeting place of the church of Christ. The church had printed programs that included French translations for all of our repertoire, so we were able to sing everything without worrying about isolating the audience. A piece that went particularly well (and also my favorite in our repertoire) was Ich bin das brot des lebens, a German setting of a couple of verses from the Gospel of John.

We also performed the Trois chansons by Debussy last night, and there were no disasters to report. We have only performed them once before (for a German audience). This audience is the first that could theoretically understand them. The Chamber Singers do a wonderful French chanson, Chant d'osyeaux about the coming of spring and the awakening of the birds and making various bird noises. There were nine of us on the trip and we had hoped to sing it in French-speaking countries, but that's looking doubtful since Jennie left to be with her Grandfather.

Today we go into back into Geneva (we're still at that hotel in France) where we will enjoy some sightseeing time and sing at the church building tonight.

We already have one correct response to the poetry trivia question: congratulations to your (my) mother, who responded correctly over the phone. For answering the trivia question correctly, she gets her own cookies. Here's another one, just for fun. The prize for getting this right is the everlasting satisfaction of a job well done. And a nickel. Punctuate the following expression (it may be more than one sentence):

John where Mary had had had had had had had had had had had the teachers approval

Coming up: Lyon, tigers and bears, oh my! (minus the tigers)

(and probably minus the bears, too)

Switzerland: Breaking out is hard to do

Except for the breaking out in hives part, Switzerland has been good. We stayed last night in a small hostel near Thun. The countryside here is gorgeous: mountains, lakes, rivers, and castles appear around every turn of the Autobahn, and the view from the highway is simply breathtaking.

We are singing tonight in Geneva, but I am actually in France right now. We're staying in a hotel in the next town over. Tomorrow we leave for nearby Lyon, and from there it's on to England.

It has been very difficult to type this message, as the French have rearranged their keyboards. They did this in Germany as well, but France has done it with much more flair. Here's an example sentence, typed as though I were on an English keyboard:

The auick brozn fox ju,ped over the lqwy dog:

That may not seem like a big difference, but it is when you're used to typing quickly!

Coming up: O Frabjous day! Caloo! Calais!*

*that is, we're going to Calais. There is not a holiday called Frabjous day. It's a slightly obscure poetry reference. Whoever correctly identifies the poem and poet gets a cookie.**

**Chocolate chip, of course.

Italy: Venice in 30 minutes or your money back

So about 9 people got sick from the food in Croatia. I was not one of them. That's a good thing.

Here's how our day in Italy went: We drove through to Venice and discovered that the place we were sent was not anywhere near S. Marco's Plaza (which is what you must see in Venice). We waited on a taxi boat, because Venice is a bunch of Islands, and had 30 minutes to see San Marco's before we had to catch the taxi boat back. I waited in line to see the Cathedral, was informed that you couldn't take bags in the cathedral, and by the time I found where you check your bags and made my way back, all my friends were out of the Cathedral. So I ate a Panini instead.

We continued to Vicenza where we sang two nights ago. The city is beautiful and lively, and as a special added bonus, the kids from HUF got up here. Some of them who were Chorus members sang the concert with us, and we all sang and laughed and had a good time. Afterward, we were given free time to see the city. So I ate some Gelato.

We drove through the most beautiful countryside ever to Zürich, Switzerland, where we are now. We have the morning and afternoon off, but because today is Pentecost the only thing open are the shops and restaurants in the Hauptbonhof (bus station). Tonight, we sing somewhere and tomorrow, we get a guided tour of Zürich before moving on to other things.

Coming up: The rest of Switzerland.

Croatia: Zapresic and Zagreb

There's about six people in line behind me, so I'm afraid you get another LONG STORY SHORT:

• There is construction everywhere here.
• They used to have World Radio here, but they got dropped because of funding problems.
• We're going to Venice tomorrow.

That's it.

Coming up: Italy is fun, even if it's just for a day