Performing in Martinikerk in Groningen, Netherlands - Choir Tour Day 12

Lübeck was a beautiful town.  There were so many old buildings and walking the streets was a little like stepping back in time.  Even though many things were destroyed during the war, I love that they rebuilt everything by using old pieces they could find and restoring it to look as similar as possible. 

I also love towns are on the water, and it was a nice reprieve for me to be able to go and be in the little woodlot at the shore of the canal and just relax and watch ducks when I needed a break from being social.  

One of the most profound things I saw in Lübeck was inside the Marienkirche.  There was a corner of the church where they had left two enormous bells that had fallen during World War II.  They were not touched and allowed to remain where they’d fallen.  The smashed bells and damaged stone floor was the most powerful war memorial I’ve ever seen. It was so stark and honest.

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I think leaving Germany was a little hard for all of us.  Having sung so much music in German and studied the language and the music of all the composers that lived there, it felt a little like a second home.  Italy also felt a little like home for me because the culture is so similar to Portuguese.  

But after both those countries, arriving in the Netherlands, where many of us had never been, was a little bit of a culture shock.  We happened to arrive on the evening of a world cup soccer match when the Netherlands was playing, so the entire city was shutting down all the shops and restaurants so everyone could watch the game.  The streets were full of excited fans wearing orange and everywhere was decorated with orange banners and flags.

While Italian and German are both languages that I’ve studied and can sort of figure out, I could not make heads nor tails of Dutch, either in written or spoken form, and had to rely entirely on English, a first for me in a foreign country.  (I did, however, try out my “Dank u” a few times which seemed to make the Dutch very happy).

And the bicycles...  they are everywhere.  They ride way too fast, they don’t slow down in the slightest for pedestrians, they appear out of nowhere when you least expect it, and there appears to be no rhyme or reason to the rules of the road.  (Even a hotel guidebook says that while there is a complex system of lights and paths and pavement markings to control bicycles, pedestrians, and other traffic, most locals don’t actually follow any of these rules.)  I ended up saving our conductor from near-death-by-bicycle on at least half a dozen occasions while we were in this country...

But the people are friendly, they speak English very well, and they have good food, as we discovered during a nice group dinner yesterday evening.

Martinikerk, Groningen, Netherlands

The Martinikerk (Martin’s Church) was a beautiful church that backed on to a large park.  It’s origins date back to the 13^th century, and some of the original artwork has been preserved.   The organ in this church is thought to be one of the finest in the world, not only because of it’s sound but because it is the only instrument in the world that still has the original prestant pipes manufactured in 1690. 

The church also had a wonderful acoustic (like so many of the churches on this continent).  We sang an afternoon concert to a small but very appreciative audience.  Even though most of us are getting very tired by this point in the tour, we still always manage to find the emotional, mental, and spiritual strength and energy to make it through another concert.  The church volunteer was very moved by our performance and told us that no choir like us had ever sung in that church.  It’s hard not to feel humbled when people say things like that to you.  Sometimes I feel so in awe by the fact that a group of human beings can come together and somehow put aside all their differences, their personal lives and their day-to-day problems and somehow become one just long enough to create something beautiful like a musical performance, or anything else that requires a complex fusion of skill and intuition, like dance performances or certain sports.  It’s a pretty incredible thing to be part of.

About an hour after the concert, we were back on the tour bus, ready to be taken to Amsterdam, where we would finish off the tour with one last concert.