Stranded Bolivian orchestra close to getting home after 79 days in German castle grounds.

Record ID: 1554472

  • Title: Stranded Bolivian orchestra close to getting home after 79 days in German castle grounds.
  • Date: 28th May 2020
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) COMPOSER AND DIRECTOR OF EXPERIMENTAL ORCHESTRA OF NATIVE INSTRUMENTS, CARLOS GUTIERREZ, SAYING: "People of the orchestra managed, and also thanks to our German friends, managed to have a good time despite everything. They went to the woods, they know a lot of lakes, they visited the city. It's funny, I used to joke about that because for most of them
  • Embargoed: 11th June 2020 11:20
  • Keywords: bolivia concert coronavirus orchestra rehearsal rheinsberg castle stranded in germany travel restrictions
  • Location: RHEINSBERG, GERMANY
  • City: RHEINSBERG, GERMANY
  • Country: Germany
  • Topics: Health/Medicine
  • Reuters ID: LVA006CFUFTC7
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: A traditional Bolivian orchestra's bus broke down on the German motorway on the way to their first concert and they wondered if this was a bad omen.
    79 days later and the group is still stranded next to a castle 90 km north of Berlin in the eastern state of Brandenburg after Bolivia closed its borders die to the coronavirus pandemic.
    Finally there is some hope that the young musicians, most of whom have never been abroad before, can return home as early as next Monday (June 1) when Bolivia is expected to lift international flight restrictions.
    Isabel Sanjines Rodriguez from La Paz described how the situation among her peers became "more and more difficult" as it became clear they would not be able to fly home for a long time.
    A while ago, they were already sitting inside the bus supposed to take them to the airport when their flight home via Madrid was cancelled at the last moment.
    And as time went on, the media caught attention of the "stranded Bolivians" and quickly, their modest accommodations at the local Rheinsberg music academy became a "haunted castle" surrounded by wolves.
    Rheinsberg does have a castle and it is within sight of the academy but, as Sanjines Rodriguez clarified, "it's a museum where no one lives."
    Reports about "packs of wolves" roaming the surrounding woods may be true but it's untrue that any of the musicians ever saw one, said another member of the group, composer and musical director Carlos Gutierrez.
    Yet, he said, they had "a good time despite everything."
    Gutierrez said that just the other day, he was thinking that most of his young musicians had never been on a plane before coming to Germany and because of travel restrictions, they spent almost all of their time in a town of 4,350 inhabitants.
    "For most of them, Germany is pretty much this," he said, adding that it will probably stay that way.
    (Production: Oliver Ellrodt, Michele Sani, Tanya Wood)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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