Drake Choir 2016 International Tour – Days 1 and 2 – Rob Jedlicka, senior tenor and president of the Drake Choir, pharmacy major
Sveiki visieum and greetings from Latvia! I have the wonderful opportunity to provide one of the first blog posts about the Drake Choir’s International Tour. While these last two days have certainly been a whirlwind, there is little to show for our work other than some sore necks and swollen feet from logging 20 hours of flight time through 9 time zones and 4 different airports.
Personally, my journey to this amazing city began at 4:00 am on Wednesday morning, as I frantically finalized packing while simultaneously finishing moving out of my apartment. Once arrived at the Des Moines airport, we began our journey to Europe. An easy hour and a half flight to Chicago was met with an arduous 6-hour layover as we waited for the remainder of the choir to arrive from Des Moines before our international flight began. While I can safely say O’Hare is not the most entertaining airport to kill a half-day in, reading, playing cards, and swapping stories with other choir members helped to make the time literally fly by (I’m sorry, I had to).
Once the remainder of the choir arrived, we began our trek across the ocean with our international flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany. An eight-hour flight with a seven-hour time change left us landing in Frankfurt feeling disoriented and a little cranky, but, as is customary with college students, a quick run to re-caffeinate left us focused enough for our final jaunt from Frankfurt to here in Riga.
A smooth hour and a half flight with a final hour of additional time zone displacement left us on the ground in Latvia at 12:35 pm local time (4:35 am for those of you reading this in the Midwest). Energy was definitely diminished and patience was waning, but after a quick lunch break on the outskirts of town, we finally arrived at our hotel. After some fresh air, time to stretch our legs, and much-needed showers, we culminated our day of travel with a group dinner at the hotel.
With the meat-and-potatoes of the tour looming close ahead, the choir is absolutely ready to get started tomorrow morning. However, while that long day of travel may be the butt of several jokes over the next few days, the moments captured on Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat can reassure you that our journey eastward was not without a lot of fun.
As I come to the conclusion of my time in Drake Choir, the performances and presentations may show a very neat-and-tidy view of what choir was like, but the time spent roaming around O’Hare airport, or cracking jokes across the aisle of a 747 will hold just as much of a special place in my heart. Sure they aren’t picture-perfect, but they’re shared among friends, so they are still perfect.
Be sure to follow the choir as we continue our journey through the Baltic states and Finland. We cannot thank you enough for all the support you provide from Des Moines and beyond. This would not be possible without you. Until next time, Ardievas!
Drake International Tour Days 1 and 2 – Allison Richter, junior alto, accounting major
After arriving at the DSM Airport on Thursday morning at the later time of 9am (the first group’s report time was 6am!), our group flew out around 11:30am to Chicago, Illinois. The excitement everyone conveyed was contagious and to many of us, me especially, the trip was finally becoming real. After a short flight, our group joined up with the first group in the O’Hare airport to have lunch and prepare for our upcoming 8-hour flight to Frankfurt, Germany.
The flight to Frankfurt was long, but luckily we were able to fill the time by napping, watching movies, or even watching the plane’s cameras of the views from the front or bottom of the plane. This was my first time flying with Lufthansa, and for the first time I was hearing a lot of German and other languages being spoken. I even had to ask a few people to repeat themselves in English for me when I was talked to during the flight! It was an eye-opener that we weren’t even in Europe yet, but we had already entered another culture.
When we landed in Frankfurt, it was a little after 7 in the morning and it was bright and beautiful. Back in Des Moines it was 11pm. The 8-hour time difference had a lot of people feeling exhausted, but the excitement that we were almost to Riga, Latvia erased our fatigue. I finally got a window seat when we boarded the plane to Riga, and it was fantastic. I was able to see the beautiful Latvian countryside and lush, green forests as we flew in.
When we finally landed, it was just about 12pm in Latvia. We met up with our tour guides (Kÿlli and Gerard) in the airport, and off we went! All of us loaded onto two buses and went to a nice Latvian buffet for lunch. We all had fun trying new things, as most of us weren’t sure what we were ordering . The colorful mash I picked up ended up being a delicious hash brown dish. Others tried fish or bread or soup. I accidentally picked up a glass of milk (well, I thought it was!), and it actually tasted like liquid sour cream! It wasn’t my cup of tea, but I saw a lot of other Latvians getting it so I assumed it was something Latvian I should try.
When we were finished eating, we headed to our hotel in Riga, called the Albert Hotel, as our guides gave us some facts and background about the city on the way. We had some free time before dinner so I relaxed with some friends and walked around the nieghborhood for a little while. For dinner, we had a delicious salad, a fish dish, and a delectable cheesecake for dessert in the hotel. After that, I caught up on some much-needed sleep!! Tomorrow, we will begin our activities and concerts. All of us are really excited! It is so fun to be travelling in such a large group, and all of us are friends. We were thankful to have safe and easy flights to Riga and are excited for what we will do and accomplish in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!