On the last days of June I traveled to Canterbury, England, with the Orchestra of Koper (my hometown's orchestra) to preform at a competition. There is nothing better than traveling with close friends and enjoying playing music.
The competition was held at the University of Kent and we stayed at these beautiful little houses on the university's campus, which is really big (I got lost, no kidding, even though I have really good orientation). So days passed by very quickly and soon it was time to go home, we woke up in the early hours (early for me, at least) and then we heard the news:
»The ferries from Dover to Calais are on hold, so we'll have to wait«.
We waited for two more hours (aah I could have slept more) and then departed to Dover. As we came to the port we got in line as usual to embark a ferry, but we never embarked. As it turns out workers, of the company we were supposed to travel with, were striking in Calais. So we were sent out of the port. We actually had nowhere to go and as we were driving around Dover to find a place to stop and get out of the bus, we found this little park in a little village on Dover cliffs. We set up blankets and brought out all of the food we had left and waited for more news. And so they came, they said the strike was going to last until Thursday and on that day it was Tuesday.
We were in big trouble, we had no place to sleep as (what are the odds) every hotel was booked because of Wimbledon. We had to feed almost 80 people and we had no bathroom. Also, many people still had exams waiting.
Our conductor tried to find any possible way to get us to the mainland, with another ferry, Eurotunnel or with a plane, but everything was booked.
As the day was passing we became more and more obvious to the locals, because what do musicians do when they are stuck on a cliff?
They play music.
The locals were very nice people, ready to help as much as they could. They drove some of the parents, that were with us, to the store to buy food for the orchestra and also a nun suggested that if we do not find anything else, we can sleep in a church. As I look back we were not in a bad mood, fellow musicians played different sports games, played instruments and forgot about their worries for at least a couple of hours.
In the evening we decided to try again to embark a ferry. And we got so lucky! We got a ferry on the next day at 5 in the morning. We left our bus in front of a visitors buliding and went in for an almost proper cooked meal.
As we thought we could not get any more lucky, someone came into the buliding at 11:30 pm yeling:
»We got a ferry! We need to embark now!«.
So everyone ran out of the building onto the bus. And an hour later we were on a ferry to Dunkirk. So in the end we arrived home just in time for exams.
