München, Germany and Schladming, Austria: July 6th-14th, 2013 - The Big One (WYWOP)

"This is a fairly insane thing that I’m probably more excited about than I should be and going way too far out of my way for" -Matt Harding (because he would know)

In terms of solo trips so far, this is my Magnum Opus.  And I know that's just my perspective.  For a lot of people who participated, this for them was a lot like Kanuga was for me - just a week-long camp, a few hours' drive from where they live, and no more.  But for me, it was huge.  I'd say of everything, this trip is the main reason I've even put together a blog.

I should mention, too, that I only flew in and out of München, so it's inclusion in "places I've been to" is tenuous at best.  I have a few pictures of the airport, and my first train was entirely within Germany, so I figured I'd leave it in.  Someday I hope to visit the city proper.  Perhaps at the next WYWOP.

Oh, I guess I should describe why I was in Wait-How-Do-You-Pronounce-That, Austria in the first place.  There's this wind band festival called Mid-Europe held in Schladming - a small ski resort town at most other times during the year - every summer.  Part of that is the World Youth Wind Orchestra Project, or WYWOP, a wind ensemble of participants ages 16-30, who rehearse for a week then perform a concert toward the end of the festival.  The WYWOP portion of Mid-Europe is led by Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant, daughter of the director/overseer of the whole festival, Johann Mösenbichler.  Verena's husband is Steven Bryant, a composer of mainly wind band works that I follow on Facebook.  And so my connection to the festival is explained.

In early May, I just happened to notice a post Steven made on FB saying that if anyone was interested in participating in WYWOP, they were short on percussionists, string bass players, and something else - maybe bassoons - and that even though the deadline had passed to sign up, those players could jump in at the last minute due to their need.  I saw that and said, "percussionist?  Hey, I'm one of those!"  So later in the day, I researched just what this WYWOP thing was, and realized in was in Austria in July.

Austria.  They speak German there.  A language I do not speak.  I've been out of the USA very little in my life, and none of those trips were taken alone.  Only one - to Spain with my youth group in high school - was to a country whose predominant language is not English.  The idea of hopping on a plane to German-speaking country and having to sort myself out once getting there was sort of terrifying.  Nevertheless, I was for some reason driven toward this adventure.  I reasoned that at the very least, I would only be totally on my own until I got to Schladming, and then if I needed some sort of help for whatever reason, WYWOP would be there for me.  And so, when Verena responded to my application with an invitation to participate, I accepted.

I booked my flight, then re-booked once I figured out it would be an impossible itinerary when coupled with the train schedule (always make sure things are possible in advance!  Could be a costly mistake).  I dug my passport out of its hiding spot in my dresser.  I threw together a binder I called "The Bible" and organized every document, ticket, or paper I'd need within it.  By the first week of July, I was ready.

But still quite nervous.

The flight there was the easy part.  Lufthansa translates everything into English for us monolingual Americans.  I did have an "oh shit I'm in a country without knowing any of their language or customs" moment upon deplaning, but the airport was mostly in English as well, and I was too distracted by an overriding obsession with catching my train, and also jetlag, that I basically just got over it.

I sat in a Starbucks, got a frappuccino, and realized that this wasn't going to be such a terrifying and foreign experience after all.

A part of the airport was outside.  I thought that was neat.

I got on my first train, which carted me to the second train, which took me over the Austrian border to the bus station, which drove me into Schladming.

On the bus my ears picked up the distinct sound of my language being spoken.  In American accents.

Also I noticed tubas.

When I got off the bus in Schladming, I walked up to a few of these English speakers with instruments and said, "so, just a shot in the dark here, but uh...WYWOP?"  And they confirmed what I suspected.

There were about 15 of us from the bus, and only one guy - Mike - seemed to know where we were going, so he led us, an international parade of musicians with instrument cases, our roller suitcases loudly ambling over cobblestone streets, echoing off the quaint, distinctly European architecture, causing most likely every one of the town's 3,000 or so residents to wonder just what the hell was invading their home.

A guy walking next to me asked me what instrument I played.

"Percussion"

"Yes!" he says, and high-fived me.  This was Sevy, from Texas, who also happened to be one of my roommates at the hostel we were staying at.

 This is the JUFA.  We arrived there after about 15 minutes of walking and checked into our rooms.  I met my other roommate, Tommy, also from Texas.  Of the 9 or so Americans, all but 2 were from Texas, including me.  I'm still not 100% sure why.

This was our room:

There were 6 beds, but only 3 of us in the room, so there was space to stretch out.

This was the view from our window, which included one end of the main street (beyond the blue line and traffic cones):

Once moved in, we went back downstairs to the lobby to meet-n-greet with other WYWOP participants and leaders.  I saw Steven Bryant over to the side.  I walked up to him and said, "hey, you're Steven Bryant."  He agreed.  I introduced myself, and found out he's from North Carolina as well.  He then introduced me to Verena, who I had emailed a few times, but never met or even seen.  She welcomed me to WYWOP.  She is a very nice person.

At 3:00 PM, or 9:00 AM according to my very confused internal clock, we marched a few streets over to the rehearsal space, a gymnasium in a school:

We all then split off for sectionals, and I met the percussion section - or at least, some of it.  One participant, a mysterious stranger called "Neis", had not shown up yet, and our section instructor, someone none of us knew, had a prior engagement and wouldn't be in until that night.  So we just sort of did what we could until the group returned and we ran each piece start to finish.  They went okay.  Then it was dinner time!

This is where we ate all of our lunches and dinners throughout the week:

It's also where we held our final concert.  And had a big dance party.  Quite the multi-functional venue.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

At dinner, I met Rachel, Amber, Ogechi, and Jaymee, four more Texans who knew Sevy and had traveled here with him.  The same group went out for weißbeer that night, which I almost didn't join in on, since I had been up for about 32 hours straight at that point.  I quickly learned that being tired was sort of the name of the game with WYWOP.  That's just sort of how it goes.  So really I had just been getting into the spirit of things by not sleeping on the flight over.

The next day was pretty much solid rehearsal, getting prepared for the Mid-Europe opening ceremony taking place Tuesday night, which we were playing a few fanfares at.  It was sort of nuts to be performing pieces we had just started looking at two days before, but I guess that's why basically all we did Monday was rehearse.  We also recorded a few of our pieces, for something later in the week.  I was literally falling asleep while actively playing notes on a timpani, and it was only Monday.  Hoo boy.

Tuesday I had a chance to walk around and take a few pictures of the town:

I took a few more around the Congress (our meal area/concert hall) during some down time before the performance that night:

Notice the mountains in the background of the first picture.  The ones behind those other mountains.  The whole town was surrounded by these picturesque peaks, which seemed too impossible to be real.  They looked like set pieces.  Cardboard cutouts that were put up while a movie was being filmed and just hadn't been taken down yet.

Here's the concert hall:

We played our few pieces for the opening ceremony there, then grabbed dinner.  By Tuesday night I was totally worn out.  Knowing that I had the rest of the week to get through, and knowing that the next morning was to be a particularly early one, I bowed out of revelry for that night and hit the bed at about 9:30 PM

I think that was an excellent decision.  It may have saved the whole week for me.

The next morning, as I mentioned, was an early one - 6:00 AM, in order to leave for the DACHSTEIN, which is a word that I think sounds like it should always be in all caps.  The DACHSTEIN is a glacier up on top of a mountain in the Alps.  We were going there to shoot some promotional video for WYWOP and Mid-Europe, but I like to think we were also going there just because it's cool.

Here are some shots of rural Austria I took from our bus:

I promise that mountain is not fake.  I know it looks painted on.  I know it looks like I just zoomed in on some Bob Ross and pretended I was traveling.  That was my reaction to it to, and I was there.

We got to the DACHSTEIN and rode the gondola up into a cloudy haze:

And at last, arrived at the top of the world:

It was less cold than it looks and exactly as breathtaking as it looks.  I could try to summon my inner poet to describe the place, but I took pictures, so I won't put you through that.

We were there to do a bunch of this:

Which is, pretend to play along with the recorded track from Monday, then put them together in a video to make it look like we were performing on top of the mountain.

I don't know if I was supposed to reveal that we didn't actually play.  Don't tell anyone.

We then left the comfort of the structure made of steel and iron for the mountain proper.  We carefully made our way down through the snow:

And into an ice cave:

Like ya do.

We recorded another fake video of us fake playing Fanfare for the Common Man inside the ice cave.  I pretended to play the triangle, despite no triangle part existing for that piece.

I mean, it's not like we were going to carry timpani in there.

We then went onto a hanging bridge to record the last piece.  I didn't take a picture of it, but here's one someone else did:

Photo credit: Herbert Raffalt

I did, however, manage to get a picture of what the view straight down looked like:

aaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

The percussion section took a photo:

Neis did show up eventually, by the way.  That's her on the left.

We left the DACHSTEIN just after lunch and returned to town for our longest free time yet.  I hit the water park (which was really just a large pool complex with slides) with two Germans, Jürgen and Juliana.  It was interesting discussing differences in everyday life between us.  They had never heard of adult swim, for one, and to be honest, it's a strange practice to begin with.  10 minutes of every hour is enough to satiate the "serious" swimmers among us?  Really?  Can't you just find a lake?

We hit the bars again after rehearsal that night.  "My" group - the Americans plus a few - went to the Schwaubenbräu and ran into several others from WYWOP there.  I met a girl from Slovenia and had to admit to her that I honestly wasn't even aware up until that moment that her country was a real place.  To make it worse, Slovenia borders Austria.  It's like, right over there and I'd never heard of it.

In my defense, the country is younger than I am.

She showed me some photos of a lake area in Slovenia and I gotta say, it looked wonderful.  Yet another spot on my list.

Some Spaniards, of which there were many in this group, began singing songs and slamming their fists on the table, so we, being American, responded in kind.  After a few patriotic songs, we ran out of legitimately American songs to sing, so Sevy came up with an alternative that kinda worked.

Yelling "She'll Be Comin' Round The Mountain" at the top of your lungs, half past midnight, at some Spaniards, sitting next to a Slovenian, in an Austrian bar.  One of those "this is why I travel" moments.

The next day was more rehearsal, but Thursday night was the Lange Nacht, or Long Night, an all-night party that takes place during the Mid-Europe festival.  I walked around and got a few photos of main street early in the evening, but they really don't capture the craziness that took place after sundown.  Nevertheless:

 The festivities started with a marching band show/quasi-competition out in a large town square.  That then morphed into a parade, which I was apparently participating in.  They handed us torches and sent us on our way, following the drumlines in lockstep.  That ended, dropping us off in the middle of some road, and Sevy, Tommy, and I jogged back to our room at the JUFA to grab the remainder of our beer.  By the time we returned to the street, most people had gone.  I "prost"ed Steven Bryant, which is basically the German version of "cheers!", then we were off to the main stage on main street, where the rock band was playing.

Here we caught up with most everyone we had lost.  A gigantic circle of these brand new friends of mine danced into the wee hours of the night, ending with a crowd of Germans singing "ein Mösenbichler" to the tune of "Guantanamera" while Johann Mösenbichler ran around in a circle giving everyone a high-five.

Again, reasons I travel.

Sadly the group lost track of each other while searching for a bar once the rock band show had ended.  I wandered around for a bit with a couple others, discussing across not-quite-bridged language gaps our plan of attack for finding the rest of the group, but eventually headed back to the JUFA and went to sleep.  I turned in at about 2:00 or 2:30, which was early for the Lange Nacht.

The next morning we had an open reading session, where we played pieces we'd never seen before for an audience.  Really the perfect thing for a group who had been out drinking until the very wee hours the night before.  But it went alright.

Saturday we had the morning off, since that was our concert day.  A group of us went up to Planai, the peak immediately accessible from town via a ski lift.

That's Schladming down in the valley.

We hiked around a bit, admiring the spectacular views.  

Eventually we came up upon this thing:

So we skipped some stones:

And explored the other side of the mysterious wooden structure:

That's Petra, giving a speech to the tadpoles.

We then returned to the ski lift and headed back into town for lunch and the dress rehearsal.

Another brief stop at the water park pool thing, with a bigger group, then back to the JUFA to change into concert dress.  Dinner, then at last, we played the concert.

It went great!

I don't have photos or videos of it, so you'll just sort of have to believe me on this one.

Then, after everything had been put away, and everyone had changed and packed up, we had one last party, right there in the Congress where we had played our concert only hours before.  I drank and danced and hung out with these people one last time, lasting until about 3:30 AM, at which point I could literally not keep both eyes open.  I said my last goodbyes to everyone, since I had an early departure and wouldn't get the chance the next morning.  I said goodbye to the Americans, who had become like a second family to me.  I said goodbye to the percussionists, and the percussion section leader, who had kindly bought me a beer earlier in the party.  I said goodbye to Steven Bryant, who by that point was basically my best friend forever.  I'm just saying.  What's that?  You don't know any celebrities personally?  Well I'm bffs with Steven Bryant.  Yeah.  I know.  It's cool.  I'm cool.  Okay.

I had an 8 AM bus to catch, so I set my alarm for 6:30, intending to shower, toss the last few items into my suitcase, then have a leisurely stroll across town to the bus station, where I could get a good seat and settle in long before the bus took off.

I woke up at 7:25.  My first word that morning was just "no."

I scrambled to get everything together and rush out the door, no time to shower, no time to eat.  I power-walked across the same cobblestone streets the group of us had paraded over just 7 days earlier, only having the vaguest notion of where I was headed, and by some miracle, I made it to the bus literally minutes before it drove off.

I almost didn't make it.  15 more minutes of sleep could have set off a chain reaction, making me miss the bus, and thus the first train, and thus the second, and thus my flight out of  München, and thus my connecting flight in Chicago, all of that secondary to the fact that I would not have made it home.

But I didn't miss the bus.  I scrambled and made it and everything was fine.

Adrenaline, I suspect, kept me awake and alert for almost the entirety of my 22 straight hours of travel.  It wasn't until the last flight, Chicago to Charlotte, than I passed.  Right.  The.  Hell.  Out.

They didn't even serve me a drink.  I was gone as soon as I took my seat.

Got my bags at the Charlotte airport, found my parents waiting to pick me up, got home, and went to bed.  It was the end of a very, very long day.

I'm very happy I went.  I'm very happy the me in May decided this was just the right adventure for the me in July to take.  I needed this.  I needed to know I could do it.  I needed to face the scary thing and come out absolutely fine on the other end.

Literally the only downside - minus the monetary cost, of course, but I consider it money well spent - is that now I can't get my mind off of doing more international travel.  I'm like a druggie, trying to get a bigger fix, and now a 30 minute drive to a small town won't do the trick.

I gotta see more.  I gotta cross more places off my list.  I gotta jump into more frightening but exciting situations and work my way out of them.

I gotta see the damn world!