More photos!

Here are some of our group pics from the recent cities!

Brussels!

Paris!

Adams factory with Frans! 

Adams Factory/Thorn!

We went on a day trip to Thorn, Holland and visited the Adams Percussion factory. We got a full tour of their facilities and it was rather incredible. We saw and learned how all the instruments were made!!! This included watching a sheet of copper be pressed into a timpani bowl, seeing marimba bars hand tuned, watching resonators get welded, and saw a machine wrap a marimba mallet in 30 seconds!  Its amazing to see how all the raw material becomes an Adams instrument! They make about 10,000 instruments a year!  At the factory, they also have a showroom/drum and percussion shop. This shop is one of the largest in all of europe- it was fun to see and explore the hundreds of drum sets, timpani, marimbas, and everything else all in one place.  The president and owner of the company, Frans Swinkles, gave us our whole tour of the factory. He picked us up from the train station and bought us all lunch at a fantastic pancake restaurant in Thorn- he's extremely nice, and taught us so much answering all of questions about the instruments and factory.  

Here's some photos from our completely enlightening trip to the factory! 

Frans, thank you so much!!!! 

TIMPANI!!! :D 

Gigantic timpani mallets in showroom

Pancakes!!!

Showroom!

More Showroom!

CIRCLE OF TIMPANI IN SHOWROOM!

Drumworld!!

Brussels!

 Brussels is a fantastic and friendly city!  Brussels has great chocolate, waffles, statues, buildings, history, and people. When we visit city's we do tons of walking- we don't always have a destination, we just find places to go and see. Usually this type of exploring/visiting works very well! Brussels was great for this as it is a very walk-able town, with very friendly locals always willing to help with directions! Brussels has one of the most gorgeous city centers we have ever seen- it's hundreds of years old, and filled with great restaurants, chocolate, and waffles!  We also went to a musical instrument museum and got a full tour of the worlds history of instruments which was great too.  Our two days in Brussels will be one we'll never forget! Enjoy the photos! 

Chocolate hippo!!!

Chocolate Statue!!!

City Center

City Center

City Center

City Center

Cool block by Musical instrument museum

city center at night

city center at night

WAFFLES!

Nice cathedral by the Petite and Grand Sablon

Nice fountain in little park!

Great view from a higher part of city!

one of many statues!

Amsterdam!!

Amsterdam has been just an absolutely great time over the past two days as the city has so much culture and history to explore!

We went on a Canal boat tour, and learned about much of the history in the city- we even passed by the house that Ann Frank hid in during WWII. 

We also visited the Amsterdam Van Gogh museum- they have an extensive collection of Van Gogh originals from every part of his life. We did some extensive walking exploration throughout the city's beautiful canals, and enjoyed waving to the people in the boats that passed by. We traveled mostly by foot, but took taxi's once in a while to save the precious short time we had in the city. We also visited the Amsterdam Conservatory, which is right on one of the biggest main canals of the city- the conservator has 9 floors, and at the top the view of Amsterdam and the canals are incredible. The conservatory building was made in 2006 and has top of the line facilities. It is also right next door to the biggest library in Amsterdam, which has a huge floor devoted entirely to music and art in it. The resources at the conservatory and the next door library are amazing.  

The biggest highlight of our trip in Amsterdam was seeing the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. The concert was truly incredible, especially since Mr. Benard Haitink conducted, and they played Bruckner's 5th Symphony!!!! The audience gave a full standing ovation to the Concertgebouw- the first full standing ovation we have experienced in our europe concert tour! It was surely a special moment. 

Our Eurotrip has certainly turned around for us with our visit in Amsterdam! 

Canal Cruise

Exploring the city

Amsterdam Conservatory

Percussion Rehearsal room in Conservatory

View from Conservatory/Library right next door to conservatory.

Concertgebouw!!!!!

Inside Concertgebouw!!

Nick Woud's Timpani!!!!

Far away view of Concertgebouw in a greenspace/park

Inside the hall

In a park

Bruckner!!!!

We found a tiny tiny car!

View from outside the window of our hostel room.

Milan

So, when we were starting this trip, we knew no matter how much we planned, some things would go a little wrong- this happened in Milan. Let me start this post saying: WE ARE ALL SAFE AND WELL.
One more time- WE ARE SAFE AND WELL. Please keep this in mind as you read this story!!

 We arrived in Milan at about 7:00pm by train. We had to check into our hotel, currently being ran by a woman who spoke three words of English. Wanyue quickly noticed that she was Chinese, and after a struggle to communicate, it was effortless. She instructed us to get to the city center quickly via metro, as we planned to go to a concert- a solo recital by the famous soprano, Edita Gruberova at 8:00pm, giving us about 30 minutes to purchase subway passes and get to La Scala. Upon our arrival at Duomo, our subway stop, the subway was densely crowded. We unexpectedly exited the subway into the heart of a suffocating crowd of what appeared to be at least 7,500 people, giving quite a poor first impression of Milan. The crowd bled into the stairs exiting the subway, and it took about 20 seconds to take a single step up the stairs. Upon reaching ground level, a rock band began playing from a stage, which explained the crowd. We pushed through to the nearest open space we could find, and received vague directions to La Scala from a police officer (essentially, "go that way then turn left into that big arch"). We fought through the crowd, but Kramer unfortunately got separated from the group as the crowd became dangerously dense. Kramer was able to get out of the crowd, and went to La Scala waiting for the rest of the group to come. Unfortunatly, the rest of the group didn't get out as easily. For them, it really became a fight to simply escape the crowd rather than to get to La Scala. According to Dan and Nonoka, Dan had to wrap his arms around Nonoka and keep her from being crushed by the crowd as he pushed their way through the crowd. In the process, Dan accidentally stepped on a woman's foot, she screamed, and Dan was swiftly punched in the face by an angry Italian man. He kicked him off and continued to push his way out. Once Dan and Nonoka escapeded, Wanyue escaped seconds later, and Dan went through the crowd 3 times to find Kramer. He was harassed by an officer upon hopping a fence to get to the other side of the crowd, and nearly arrested when he was running with his own wallet, which appeared to be stolen, having to pull from it his passport to prove that it was his. Dan could not find Kramer from his searching. So, after seeing that all nearby entrances to the subway had been sealed, the three found a cab back to the hotel, where Kramer luckily showed up minutes later. It was then that Nonoka realized that she lost her phone- most likely pick-pocketed out of her purse. All of that took the duration of an hour, and it was 9:00. So much for the recital.
Our second and last day in Milan was nice and easy going- we gave ourselves the luxury of sleeping in, until about 1:30 pm. We once again took the subway to Duomo, expecting death, to find a lovely courtyard, filled with an acceptable amount of people, and birds. We ate at an outdoor restaurant, waited by an extremely charming Italian man, who coaxed out of us a 48 Euro appetizer, which which turned out to be worth its money.....for tourists (see photo of pasta!). After that, we did about 7 hours of walking around the whole city, and saw as much as we could. We also ate as much delicious gelato as we could, eating the famous Italian dessert three different times, at three different places (It was difficult not to, since it was being sold every 100 yards- also, see photo of Gelato!). The Gelato made us feel much better from the night before too.

 Milan overall is a beautiful and historical city- without crazy rock concerts.

And, for the last time- WE ARE ALL SAFE AND WELL.   :)

Gelato :D

Mozzarella Appetizer! 

Concert Last night (photo from news station)

MORE GELATO!!! :D :D

Daniels Battle Scar from Night before!

Fun Advertisement in Metro!

Beautiful Cathedral in City Center

View of City Center, minus crazy Rock Concert

Grape farms and mountains outside of Milan, photo taken from Train

Park in Milan, by an amazing Arch! Check out reflection of everything in the water, cool photo!

Close up of Arch!

Inside the Church

Nonoka's Pasta!