Tour Log 5: Berlin
Friday 18 April 2008
Our afternoon tour of Leipzig was fortunately accompanied by warm and sunny weather, because we did most of it on foot. The bus dropped us on Augustusplatz, where we were met by our guide. This is the site of the Gewandhaus (concert hall) and the Leipzig Opera House. The Opera House was showcasing a programme called Modern Men, particularly focusing on the composer Schönberg.
From the Augustusplatz, we walked through some of the shopping arcades and cobbled streets and learned a little of the history of this lovely city of more than half a million people. Leipzig is a city of music and culture, enriched by being the site of Germany’s second oldest university, which is unusually located right in the centre of the city next to Augustusplatz. Bearing in mind that this is a music tour, the highlights of the walk around the centre of Leipzig naturally included the Nikolaikirche and Thomaskirche, where JS Bach worked for 27 years. It was a special experience for our young musicians to walk on floors that were once walked on by Bach. Remains thought to be Bach’s are now buried in the Thomaskirche, after their previous resting place was destroyed in World War II.
But our walking tour was not all highbrow culture, and there was an opportunity afterwards for free time. A popular destination for members of the tour group was the Stasi Museum, commemorating the activities of the East German security police, who brought ruthless German efficiency and dedication to the job of spying on their fellow citizens, so well portrayed in the recent German movie, The Lives of Others. The museum is in the former Stasi headquarters in Leipzig, known for obvious reasons (when you look at it) by the inoffensive nickname of ‘The Round Corner’, which belies what went on there. The building looks pretty much as it was during the days of the GDR, and the simple displays are all in German and look like they were put together by an officer on unpaid leave from Marrickville Council, but the shabby, almost comical, nature of the Stasi’s operations are well showcased in that setting.
A number of us also stopped for a spot of relaxation at the Coffee Tree, a centuries old coffee house with a museum dedicated to coffee, where Mendelssohn and Schumann had their own little corner for drinking coffee with their friends and generally hanging out.
At the end of our free time, we all went to Auerbach’s Keller for a great dinner. This cellar restaurant is in a small arcade off the market square and is nearly 500 years old. It was made famous by its association with Johann Wolfang Goethe (the poet, novelist, scientist, and statesman who gave a whole new meaning to multi-skilling). Goethe ate and drank at Auerbach’s Keller regularly as a student, and included it as the scene of one of the most memorable parts of his version of the Faust legend, in which the Leipzig academic Dr Faust sold his soul to the devil in exchange for great powers. Some American travel magazine allegedly conducted a survey of its readers to identify the 12 most famous restaurants in the world. Our guide told us that Auerbach’s Keller ranked number 5 in that list. I think the travel magazine must have been sold exclusively to literary academics. Anyway, I am not complaining about the food, and it was a great experience to imagine Goethe, one of my favourite poets, sitting a few tables away knocking back a good Saxon red.
After that it was back to the hotel, to get ready for the busy day ahead on Tuesday.
Weather wise, Tuesday turned out to be a complete contrast to Monday. It was cold and wet, and not at all the kind of day for walking around the streets of an historic German town. Which was kind of sad, because item one on the schedule was a drive up to Luthertstadt Wittenberg, where Martin Luther is said to have sparked the Reformation by nailing his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in October 1517.
So, after soaking up some of the history inside the Castle Church, we walked around town in small huddled groups through the rain and the cold, before retiring to the warm interior of a café for some insulation against the weather.
Then, it was time to mosey on down the road to Bad Schmiedeberg, which is a spa town closer to Leipzig. We were to perform in the Festival Hall of the Spa House, which is the centre of the whole spa complex that is the town’s claim to fame. The spa complex seemed vaguely empty and sanitised to me, with wide open pathways devoid of people (perhaps not surprising given the weather) – the kind of pristine environment where you expect to see the Stepford Wives appear at any moment. The custodians of the Spa House allowed us to eat our fabulous Ramada box lunches in the Festival Hall as we were setting up, which was a welcome relief from the cold. Then we got down to rehearsals and generally doing what had to be done.
There was some trepidation in the ranks that we would find ourselves well short of an audience, given that people come to Bad Schmiedeberg to ‘take the waters’ for arthritis and a host of other ailments that do not react well to a stroll with a walking stick on a cold wet night from accommodation elsewhere in the complex. However, we need not have worried. The 200 chairs set out by the Spa House staff only just fitted the number of spa guests who came to hear the students from the other side of the world.
Once again, the audience loved the programme, the Australian sounds, dijiridus, Akubra hats and the whole presentation, and they even gave the ensemble a standing ovation at the end. After the concert, it was back to the Ramada in Leipzig for a hot chocolate and straight to bed.
Wednesday morning also turned out to be cold, but not so wet. We started the day by driving down to Colditz Castle, on the way to Dresden. This is the famous castle that was used as a prisoner of war camp for all of the incorrigible Allied officers who had been caught trying to escape multiple times from other camps. Of course, putting them all together in Colditz and telling them that the Castle was escape-proof merely heightened the challenge, and something like 30 successful escapes were made by the most ingenious methods. Even a full size glider was constructed, but was not used before the Castle was liberated in April 1945. I noticed the close attention the students were paying to the guide’s details of how the prisoners escaped, and I wondered if this might have been just a little too much information for teenagers being told by their guards – sorry, I mean teachers – that they must be in their rooms with lights out by 10.30pm.
From Colditz, it was on to Dresden, the beautiful capital of the Free State of Saxony, and the scene of the terrible firebombing of February 1945. We had a quick guided walking tour, lasting about one and a quarter hours, taking in the major landmarks in the centre of the city – the Residenz Palace, the Frauenkirche and the Zwinger. The Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) is a marvel, with its restoration finally completed in 2005, after it had lain in ruins for nearly 50 years after being destroyed in the firebombing. We sat inside for a while absorbing the ambience, and then convened in the square outside, where the kids sang Ubi Caritas, Laudate Dominum, and Shine on Me for the passers-by.
But time marched on, so it was back to coach for the drive across country to the little town of Pegau, south of Leipzig, for the next concert at the Church of St Laurence. When we got there, we settled in before more rehearsal and sound checks. Jo Ladd and I were able to mount one of the cameras up in a first floor dress circle and the other down on one side of the ground floor to give us the maximum flexibility with angles, which was great. Then we had dinner in the Ratskeller before returning to the church for the concert.
This concert was being done as a benefit concert to raise money for the restoration of the church organ. Once again, the people of this little town turned out in force to support their local parish church, and we had about 200 in the audience, and raised more than €500 for the organ fund, for which they were very appreciative.
The next morning, it was get ourselves packed and in that coach for the trip to Berlin, which took about 2 and a half hours on the Autobahn. On the way we passed Dessau, the home of Bauhaus architecture, and I gave the students a little talk about that, as well as about the place of Berlin in German history and government. Eventually, we arrived at the Student Hotel in the Berlin suburb of Grunewald. We had a little time to get organised and eat our last Ramada boxed lunch before getting back in the coach for a three hour coach tour of central Berlin. With the rain, our options for walking around were a little limited, but we spent a little time at Checkpoint Charlie, where I noted the replica Soviet Army uniform items seemed to be popular with the boys. Then we drove around to the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag and the Jewish Memorial. It is fascinating how comprehensively the Germans have managed to erase almost all traces of the Berlin Wall in only about 15 years.
At the end of the tour, it was back to the hotel for an early dinner round the corner at the Berlin Sports Club, followed by a drive back into the city to the Deutsche Oper Berlin for a rather avant garde, shall we say, performance of the choral work Carmina Burana by Karl Orff (you know the piece – they use some of it in that huge Carlton Draught ad with hundreds of people streaming across some New Zealand field).
Then it was back to the hotel, and I for one was very happy to fall into bed.
This morning, we have some free time in Berlin, before our concert at the Pauluskirche in Zehlendorf this afternoon. I am off to the Instrument Museum, followed by the fabulous Gemäldegalerie, with its wonderful collection of old masters from the 13th to the 18th centuries.
Catch you again in the next report!
