Fall Break

We had a week for fall break off, and it couldn't have been more needed. We had just finished midterm (a music history test, paper, and conducting evaluation) and everyone was exhausted. Even planning the trip was pretty hectic, including flights, buses, trains, and hostels, but it was certainly worth it. A few of us flew out of Pisa, so while we waited for our plane we took a short trip to visit the Leaning Tower of Pisa at the Duomo. Beautiful, certainly, but very touristy.

I then started my trip in London, where I stayed on the floor of a friend who was studying abroad. For only a few days I tried to pack as much stuff in as I could. Went to the British Library (saw original manscripts of poets, musicians, politicians, etc),

British Museum (saw the Rosetta Stone),

walked over to Trafalgar Square and took a peek inside St.-Martin-in-the-Fields which has some of the most amazing concerts lined up, and it's only a church (Mozart's Requiem was playing that night for instance),

had dinner at the Texas Embassy (a restaurant in the building of where the Texas Embassy used to be when they were independent way back yonder), and then we just walked around the city for a little while.

The next day decided to take it a little easier and slept in, walked around town and took some photos of the Parliament House, James' Park, Westminster Abbey, and the River Thames. Most things are closed for tourists on Sunday, so I had to wait a day to go inside those but instead I went to an Evensong at St. Paul's Church. Walked across the river to the South Bank (the artsy side of town), because I really wanted to visit the Globe Theater, a recent reconstruction of the theater Shakespeare wrote for and premiered many of his works. It's a near-exact replica, including the building technique to floor space and frescoes, from the ruins of the original they found below a building only 20 years ago where it lied for almost 450 years.

Afterwards we jumped over to the Barbican Center and saw the London Symphony Orchestra play Sibelius Symphony No. 9, Schumann Symphony No. 2, and a Mozart Piano concerto with Imogen Cooper.

Monday was just as exciting: started with a trip to the Parliament House (where Big Ben is, and near the London Eye),

and literally right across the street is the Westminster Abbey, where royalty is coronated and people such as William Purcell, Charles Darwin, George F. Handel, Charles Dickens, Robert Stephenson, Isaac Newton, and many nobelmen are buried. Since London is very protective of their historic landmarks, we weren't allowed pictures of much inside, but seeing Protestant London (and later Lutheran Germany) was a change of pace from all the Cathedrals I've been visiting. Took make me feel a little more at home we walked to Westminster Cathedral after that, but English take on Gothic and Romanesque architecture is different enough to be worth seeing. The Cathedral is only a century or so old, and it was already getting renovated. That night I was able to get a free ticket to a play called War Horse (based on the children's book of the same name) at the National Theater that the Furman students were going to see, and it was certainly worth the chance to see.

I had to get up early for a flight that left at 7 in the morning, and be able to catch a train from Amsterdam to Erfurt, Germany. While we waited during the layover in Amsterdam we visited the Anne Frank house, which was a neat experience. After that I hopped on a train to Germany by myself, which sounds scary but it was very relaxing. I did a J. S. Bach tour: I stayed in Erfurt for a couple nights (where his father was born and worked), and visited Eisenach (where he was born) and Weimar (a place where he worked).

The Bach House was amazing; it has period instruments that I never heard of, and there was a short presentation on 5 different keyboard instruments of the time. Even was able to visit the Martin Luther House while I was there.
Nothing much survives from Bach's time in Weimar, except for a church he worked at (and where 2 of his sons were baptized), but it was one of my favorite towns to visit; it is even more famous for Goethe and Schiller, poets.
The last night I spent in Leipzig, where Bach also worked and is now buried at St. Thomas's Church.
This famous statue was erected for him, and is based on a plaster mold of his corpse (incidentally, the Bach House is doing an exhibition on using digital technology to provide an even more accurate picture of what he looked like).

Bach's body is actually on the altar.


I think all three towns I visited had streets named after German/Germanic composers: Wagner, Strauss, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, etc. They are very proud of their musicians, and they have every right to be!
The cheapest flight(s) I could get back to Italy took me to Girona, Spain (near Barcelona), where I had a nice dinner in town, over to Rome where I spent the night, and then a train back to Arezzo. It was definitely a great trip!