The RV Week with Phil Kates and Friends (May 15 - 21, 2004)

Sunday, May 16 - Day Two: The sacred and profane

It was well past nine o'clock by the time we seriously awoke. Phil had made from the folded dinner table a nice full-sized bed. My bed was a large pull-down contraption over the driving area. Kim and Cory emerged from their back bunk-bed room. It took awhile - but we had lots of cereal for breakfast, and decided to have an outing with the RV to the nearby city of Heidelberg.

Kim had lived there for 10 weeks as a 10-year-old with her music researching father, mother, and family. She was anxious to share the wonderful city with its castle ruins with Cory; so off we went. What continued as a habit, we wound our way around into the old city to a narrow passage where we could proceed with the massive vehicle no further. Again we had to back it up and find a way out! We parked along the river road a few miles out of town and bused back to the old city.

Our first discovery was the old Church of the Holy Spirit (600 years old) which had both some old stained glass, from 300 years back, and some newly installed stained glass (1998), from windows blown out by the end of WW II fighting.

The artist was an Italian stained glass maker, Hella Santarossa. The art in the glass was very different from typical liturgical glass in most churches. Subjects in the five windows included the loss of innocence through violence to the children of the world, a nod to the 600 year anniversary of the famous library of Heidelberg, and effects of history being transformed by spirituality. They were not beautiful in the traditional sense, but had vivid dark colors contrasting with light, and a kind of collage effect with the windows, by use of pictorial type images (stacked books, helmeted children amidst blazes of red, deep blue, and purple - striking stuff.)

The castle - from the sacred to the profane - included the largest cask for wine ever built. About 25 feet long and over two stories high ... wow. That, with the eerie castle ruins, and earlier church visit, made for quite a contrast.

We stopped after that for Wurst (German hot dogs) and eventually hustled back to the RV for a fast trip home to get ready for the concert. Phil had arranged with our tour helpers to park the RV at the hall next to the equipment trucks - we were set for a getaway after the second concert in Frankfurt to head towards Austria, and eventually Vienna. We posed for a picture along with newcomer in traveling, bassist Rob Kesselman. Guitar in hand we strummed and hummed a ragged version of "Edelweiss" from the Sound of Music and headed out ... (all this after a rousing Mahler 1st, and as far as sheer spirit, the best concert yet).

The road at night can be kind of a thrilling way to travel - stars out, everyone still wired from the concert's end. Rob's presence for me was quite a hoot - my wife Gretchen calls Rob, Phil, and me the buffoons. (Our ride through the California desert en route to a Las Vegas concert shortly after 9/11 had been ripe with releasing fun and gigglery. Rob and I had shared some years in the Pittsburgh Symphony back in the 80's. And Phil and Rob knew each other from high school in the 70's in the Abington/Cheltenham area.)

In our traveling reunion we again yucked it up and howled at stupid jokes - I haven't laughed that hard in a long time -and Kim and Cory got a kick out of our shenanigans. After a few hours of stories and songs, Kim put Cory to bed, as we rolled on into southern Germany. An original plan had emerged to try to stop off at Grassau at the home of our dear laureate music director, Wolfgang Sawallisch. We wanted to surprise him with an unusual tour visit - "Ah, Maestro, can we park and sleep in your driveway?" - but he was finishing concerts in Rome prior to an Italian vacation. That plan was gone. From the looks of the map, and some touring book info, Rothemburg, Germany was emerging as a natural stopping place for sleeping and visiting the next day. Rothemburg is an impeccably maintained walled city from the medieval times - its inception as a town began with a church and castle during the 10th century. It sounded intriguing.

We rolled into a rest stop right next to the castle and walled city at 2 a.m. We snacked and made ready for bed, but not before walking into the cold night air to see the clearest blaze of stars I had seen in a long time. The Milky Way was as dense and cloudy as I could ever remember with my naked eye. I strummed some tunes quietly as everyone else drifted off to sleep at around 3:30 a.m.

Don Liuzzi, Principal Timpani