European ways

I'm back from my latest visit to Europe. This was my first time to attend the Annual Meeting of the European Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. Each year during Easter week, the chapter members convene in some predetermined corner of Europe to visit and play organs. It's all set up by a volunteer chapter member. This year, the corner was the Alsace/Lorraine area of France, including the cities of Saint Avold, Strasbourg, Metz, and others. During this trip, I learned some new things and re-learned some old things, listed here in no particular order:

Europe is still my favorite place to visit for architecture and organs. To go somewhere and be able to gain access to organs in a group and not have to deal with making contacts myself is the best way to travel, hands down.

Speaking of hands, I got to lay hands on some beautiful instruments. See the photos here.

You can stand in virtually any spot in Europe and point in any direction, and you'd probably be pointing at a church, wherein will probably be a pipe organ. It is perfectly thrilling to be in a land where the pipe organ is such a normal part of life.

Issues in church music are similar all over the world, apparently. While Americans deal with tyrannical clergy, bad music, dwindling congregations, terrible acoustics, mediocre pay, and shameful architecture, Europeans deal with governmental red tape, tyrannical clergy, lousy pay, dwindling congregations, and unheated churches.

For some Americans, doing church music in Europe is as rewarding as doing academia in America. Only without the need for a higher degree. So more power to them.

European church musicians are not as exhausted after Holy Week and Easter as Americans are. I can't think of any American church musician who would have the time or energy to do something like this tour during the five days after Easter.

Europe is getting fat. McDonald's, KFC, Burger King, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, and Domino's are shamefully ubiquitous, and the Americans aren't the only ones partaking of the bounty therein, apparently. And "normal" restaurants now rarely serve anything that isn't fried or sautéed. Produce is not to be had except in grocery stores, but that's kind of true here, too.

The dollar stinks against the euro. Again.

AirFrance and Delta are in bed together, but AirFrance has more legroom. When faced with the choice between space and service, take the space.

While TSA is obsessed with shoes, belt buckles, and liquids, Europe is obsessed with carryon weight. For the first time, I was pulled out of line in Paris and "asked" to weigh my carryons, which were over the limit. And so off to baggage check I went. There's a first time for everything. Lessons: a) show up early; b) don't take too much pride in your ability to pack in exclusively carryon bags; c) weigh it -- twelve kilos is the total limit.

There is a veritable smorgasbord of lines to choose from at Charles de Gaulle. Few are marked well, and none is correctly referred to by airport personnel when giving directions, in any language. And most lines split into multiple lanes, then re-converge into one. It's worse than a highway tollbooth.

But the memories that linger the longest are always the pleasant ones. Mine will be about the new friends that now abound. It was a pleasure to meet and spend time with everyone in our 40-person group. I am especially keen to visit with a few of them again in Boston in a few weeks for the AGO convention. And I hope I can go to many more European chapter meetings. It's always worth those interminable flights.