Serbo-Hungarian nights, part 1

I wouldn’t really be able to say I have gained a sharp insight into choral societies in Austria without having experienced an Austrian choir on a concert tour. The perfect opportunity for such an informative lesson in Central European group trips presented itself at the beginning of this year, when the exceptional chor pro musica graz (non-caps deliberate) invited me to join them for four days in Serbia and Hungary this week. What follows is an abridged version of my extremely accurate travel notes. Enjoy!
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Early on Thursday morning, struggling to keep awake after hosting a spontaneous Finnish-Spanish-Lithuanian-French dinner party the previous evening, I took the tram to meet the friendly singers of the choir. Since the drive to the Serbian city of Subotica was calculated to take eight hours, I expected there would be plenty of time to curl up, close my eyes and shut down for some hours, maybe also listen to some music – however, after just ten minutes of driving, the bus came to an abrupt halt, an over-enthusiastic soprano grabbed the microphone and announced: “I hab’ die Jause mitgbrocht!” (Austrian for “I brought the snacks!”) and everyone delightedly emptied the bus to have breakfast on a parking place in the outskirts of Graz.

Since, as in every socially respectable choir, cpmg also has several couples among its singers, some people had brought their children along for the fun. A 12-year-old girl told me her family had been on holiday in Finland three years ago and she proudly wanted to show me what she remembered of the language. It was with no little surprise that, as we crossed the Hungarian border, I listened to little Natalie list colours, food ingredients, names of countries, dishes and cutlery in Finnish. Her friend got jealous, they frantically dug out their notebooks, and I ended up giving both a crash course in some elementary basics.

We were about to learn how to introduce family members when the first Pinkelpause was announced, everyone once again swarmed out of the bus, and a very heterogenic queue formed at the door of the gas station’s unisex toilet. Once we got back on the road, the general atmosphere started to crisp up as people woke from their slumbers, and of course no choir bus trip would be complete without some impromptu singing – for Austrian choirs read: yodeling. Between highlights from "Heidi" and regular folk song arrangements, I had my hands busy documenting the happy atmosphere with my Sony and Nokia gadgets. Then, finally, the moment everyone had been waiting for: the mighty Lake Balaton showed itself through the bus windows, accompanied by sighs of “Uuuuh!”, “Na geeee schäään” and “Meeeeeei”, and we promptly stopped for lunch at its shores.

Things calmed down again considerably while the food was being allowed to digest, and for about an hour or so, total silence reigned as we sped ever eastward through Hungary’s rather boring scenery. We reached the Serbian border sooner than expected, crossed over, and, almost at once, found ourselves in Subotica’s outskirts. The city, Serbia’s fifth largest with about 100 000 inhabitants, looked somewhat morbid at first glance, but before getting the chance to explore, we were driven straight to the Studentski Centar, where our accommodation had been arranged. Located outside the centre, this student dormitory with its cracked facades and Yugopop blasting from the windows seemed like something out of Moscow’s suburbs, but fortunately the rooms were very comfortable.

After a lukewarm dinner, the trip’s gastronomic lowlight, at the Centar, we headed to the centre to take a look at the city we had just arrived in. The first challenge was to find a)a currency exchange and b)water bottles. With the help of our organist who spoke some of the local language (Serbian, Croatian, Serbo-Croatian, or a mixture of all three – I’m still somewhat in the dark when it comes to the politics involved in the local lingo of the Balkans), we achieved our goal and soon found ourselves at the Trg Republice in front of the impressive town hall. Since there really wasn’t a choice, we had a couple of drinks, checked the city map to get an overview of where we were, and headed back for a good night’s sleep.

To be continued….