Emporia High School was well-represented in Europe this summer, when four music students toured seven countries performing concerts as part of the Kansas Ambassadors of Music.
Three of them — Tim Weaver, Melissa Heinitz and Austin Miller — talked about their experiences during an interview this week. The fourth, Hannah Watkins, was working and unable to take part in the interview.
All three coincidentally showed up wearing T-shirts from Rothenburg, Germany, a favorite stop on the trip.
The teens traveled, toured and performed in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, England, France and Luxembourg during their two weeks abroad. The local group was accompanied by Christine Simons, music instructor at William Allen White Elementary School, who talked about the trip last week, and her husband, Curtis Simon, Hartford High School principal.
The musicians are chosen, based on more than simple talent and ability.
“We don’t want to take just everybody,” Simons said. “You have to have character.”
Sponsors with the program preceded the musicians by several weeks, to allow them to publicize the concerts and make arrangements for the students.
One of the Kansas teens was given a full refund of his travel costs because he was the 100,000th student to take part in the KAM program. It is part of a national performance project that involves students in every state in the United States.
One-half of the states take part one year, with the other half going to Europe the second year.
The youngsters were nominated for the program by music instructors. Others were chosen for the honor, they said, but for various reasons did not make the trip.
Tim remembered being notified that he had been selected.
“We got a letter in the mail,” he said. “I thought it was fake.”
His mother read the letter and knew otherwise.
So, after months and months of doing yard work to earn money for the trip, Tim accumulated enough to pay his share of the almost $4,000 cost of the flight overseas and the lodging for the two weeks.
The local students made music wherever and whenever they could to earn money for the trip. Melissa played violin at Christmas parties at the American Legion, and Austin earned money demonstrating musical instruments to children in after-school programs.
“These guys used their instruments for fund-raising,” Simons said.
The orchestra students had just finished performing in Chicago and came back to Kansas in time to board a plane for Europe, via Newark, N.J.
Tim, Melissa and Hannah all performed with the KAM orchestra, often in small village churches; Austin, a percussionist, played with the band, which performed outside for all of its concerts. EHS was not represented in the KAM choir.
The performances were always to packed houses. Europeans tend to appreciate having opportunities to hear good music, and respond accordingly, the students said.
“They wouldn’t even let the band come in because they wanted the people of the village to be able to attend,” Melissa said.
“Once we got to Europe, we didn’t practice at all,” Melissa said. “It was just sight-seeing” and performing.
They saw musicals and toured castles, Buckingham Palace, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Artists’ Square, took a day trip to Venice and rode a train uneasily up the Matterhorn at an almost-perpendicular angle, in addition to many other stops.
“We got to see Big Ben,” Tim said.
“Like five times,” Melissa added.
The Matterhorn is the seventh highest mountain in the world, she said, “but it’s the hardest to climb.”
The group also stopped briefly at the Dachau concentration camp, where Jews were put to death during World War II. The tour there was not extensive enough for Austin, who wanted to spend more time. But the musicians were held to a tight schedule set by sponsors.
The tours took the musicians into fast-paced cities, overcrowded with people and surging with traffic, and to breath-taking countrysides, where walking is commonplace, as it is throughout Europe.
Austin said he was struck by the obesity of Americans, after seeing the fit-and-trim Europeans.
“People walk everywhere,” he said, mentioning the eight pounds he lost walking in Europe.
“I know Hannah and I gained over in Europe,” Melissa said. “We would have four-course meals.”
And the ice cream proved an irresistible attraction, she said, recalling one day when she snacked on it three times.
“It’s to die for,” interjected Simons, who also succumbed to the creamy treat. “It’s so much different than ours.”
“It’s different because they don’t use corn syrup,” Melissa said, offering a theory of her own.
Potato chips tasted better, too, and chocolate became almost a necessity.
“Tim and I, oh my gosh, the grocery stores where we bought chocolate,” Melissa said. “I brought home like 30 bars.”
They got to the check-out counter of a small grocery store and found that owners did not accept the credit cards they tried to present. They could not speak German, nor could the clerks speak English, as the teens tried to explain that they would go to an ATM, withdraw the cash and come back.
When they returned to the store, the chocolate already had been re-stocked on the shelves, so the Emporians replenished their supply of souvenir chocolate and paid for it.
“We were so embarrassed,” Melissa said.
In England and France, the students found that fashion was important to the natives.
“I was intimidated,” she said. “Everybody dressed so much better than we did. They were like, high-fashion.”
Taxis, buses and train rides were appropriate transportation for the young musicians, but subways could not be used because of previous bombings.
“But since the bombing, no double-decker buses,” Simons said.
At Monmarte, gypsies with colored strings stood by the tourists and made bracelets on their wrists while they waited in line.
“They’ll make a bracelet and then they’ll charge you for it,” Simons said.
Pickpockets were a rather constant risk among the crowded streets and buildings.
“When we were in Venice, I saw people trying to take things out of my pocket,” Tim said.
The local musicians arrived home, though, fiscally and physically intact, and ready to move on to their next performances.
All they have to do now is to download, edit, delete, and organize the lasting memories of their trip — 700 to 900 photographs. Each.