A boat, CAndy, and goodbyes

On one hand we have been gone for 6 months; on the other hand, we have been gone 6 minutes. It doesn’t feel possible that today was the last day of the band tour. Oof!

We were somewhere in Germany this morning and we had a great breakfast. That has really been a thing during this trip – amazing breakfast buffets every day. We ate outside on the patio with Dan and Stacy and two bees, then we walked around the hotel. I took the opportunity to run through the sprinkler – LIES! I just stood there and let the sprinkler come to me – several times. It was hot in our room last night – I was up at 5am leaning out the window trying to catch a breeze. I checked the time and there was a text from my sister, asking if I had registered as a verified fan of Bruce Springsteen in order to qualify for buying tickets to his St. Paul concert in March. The registration time ended at midnight ET, so the too-hot led to my having time to register. Silver lining! Anyway, the hot led to having morning sprinkler time, then we visited the meditation area, but only briefly because it was time to get on the road.

We got to Boppard with about 20 minutes to spare before we boarded our boat, the Goethe, for a 3 hour Rhein river cruise. I took off the instant Joachim gave us the word that we could scatter and be back by 10:55. I walked quickly down the street, then up the street, looking for a pharmacy or a grocery store. I needed to buy candy. We have had almost zero minutes to shop – our only free days seemed to be on Sunday when everything is closed. Dan and Stacy are taking home our second suitcase and I wanted to grab more wine gums if I could find them. I found two pharmacies, but both had limits to the number of people inside, and there were lines outside. I found a grocery store and looked for wine gums. Nothing. It is really hard to find specific candy, because Europe has really big candy aisles. I did find Milka bars and grabbed 9 and literally ran to the check-out. Nine. Why would I by 9? Grab and go – no thinking at all. Then I RAN back to the shore and made it with minutes to spare. About 20 minutes down river, we stopped at another town and picked up the three people from the band who missed the boat – literally. Joachim called the boat people and the station master from the next town and his mom (he was about 50) drove up and picked them up and got them to the next dock. The boat wouldn’t have stopped if not for them. Glad I ran!

We boarded and sat outside in the shade on the back of the bus. What fun. Friends and water (Oh, did I want to jump in and swim!!) and castles and grapes. We were fascinated at how high up the mountains the grapes were planted and that they were vertical. We all wondered about erosion. We all wondered about how in the world you get up there to plant and harvest.

I walked around sharing chocolate, because that is fun. After we all got really hot (93degrees today), we went in the very nice in of the boat. Keith was feeling very really, really crummy, so he just puddled in a seat while the rest of us ran around visiting and looking at the shoreline. He was in charge of keeping the chocolate from melting. He did a great job. We shared a butter pretzel and penne arrabiata for lunch. Nice.

We got off in Bacharach – a really tiny town. I was still questing on my wine gums, so I set off looking for a grocery. When we found it, it was closed. SERIOUSLY? Ok, it was only closed for lunch and was opening in 10 minutes. I left Keith sitting on the steps and ventured on. I ran out of town and was back in 6 minutes. It was very cute – about 20 of our people were all waiting for the store to open. When the lady unlocked the door and came out, she said, “What are you all doing here?!” We said, “Waiting for you.” This is obviously NOT something that happens to her very often. Again, no wine gums, so I bought 14 Milka bars and two Cokes. The others seemed to be interested in wine and bottles of water. Huh.

We drove toward Frankfurt, our final destination, and suddenly there was a big, loud, scraping sound coming from the back of us. Something was definitely wrong with our instrument trailer. We started shouting STOP STOP and Joachim was confused why we really didn’t want to hear the rest of his story. He and Oskar used bungee cords to let us limp along that last 45 minutes of our trip. I don’t know what it was – Joachim said, “one of the four weldings had come apart.” So, that.

We had an hour to check in and get ready to go to the last concert. We all were randomly handed room keys on the third floor. Of course, lucky Jenny got the room that hadn’t been cleaned yet. Gah. Keith was feeling so crummy (his skin hurt, along with everything else) that I was afraid he couldn’t play. He cancelled his feature tune. I gave him all of the cold medicine we had and he dragged himself to the bus.

Best concert he’s played the entire trip. He nailed absolutely everything and even took the end of the last song up an octave. Yay!!

This concert was shared with the volunteer fire department wind band of Groß-Umstadt. Our leader is gone with covid and their leader is gone with covid. Gah. I was feeling awkward before we even got there, but there was confusion about whether they were going to feed us after the concert and exactly how it was all going to go. We got there and they were rehearsing, so we came in and set up quietly. They finished rehearsing and left, while our band set up behind where they were set up.

They played three songs, then we played a tune with them. Then they went out into the audience and we played a short set. Part way through that first half, the lady ahead of me took a pretzel out of her purse and starting snacking on it. I felt like Germany was complete for me. At intermission, there were big pretzels for sale, as well as “bratwurst”. It was a cold, smoked sausage and was probably the best thing I ate the entire trip.

The second half was fabulous. The band was smokin’. It was the Dan show, with several solos and stuff, because he is playing his part and covering the flugel horn chair. Yay Dan.The audience was very appreciative and demanded a second encore. No Minnesota obligatory encore for them – they clapped and cheered and then got a rhymical clap going, demanding another song. I’m not even in the band and I was thrilled.

We were treated to schnitzel and chicken and pretzels and au gratin potatoes and potato salad and more after the concert. As Keith and I sat down to eat, I looked around and realized that there were tables of blue shirts and tables of white shirts and no mixing at all. I said that was not okay and we moved over to the white shirt tables. We ate with another couple and asked questions and learned about “their” Germany. No polkas. No lederhosen or dirdl.

Then we chatted with some of the younger members of their band. One of them was a speech therapist, so we had a bit of a chat about that. One of them just finished high school and was afraid to speak English to me (although when he did, he was perfectly fine). I said Keith was my husband – the little cornet player and they said, “Oh, the squeaky one.” They thought the instrument made the high sounds, so when I told them that he could play higher on a regular trumpet, two of them said, “Can you move here?”

So, that is the plan. We will next move to Groß-Umstadt, Germany. I am going to speak German to the shy young man while he speaks English to me and Keith is going to play high notes in the volunteer fire brigade band.

On the bus ride back to the hotel, several people gave out “awards” for the trip. I got the Prada award for having an outfit to match every occasion. Our funniest back of the bus friend lost his voice early on in the trip and has been quiet the whole time. His voice came back today and he was telling jokes and keeping us laughing all the way home. Hugs and goodbyes filled the lobby as the elevator kept coming and going and no one wanted to go up. It’s like camp for grown-ups.