Senior Editor Honora Quinn and Assistant Senior Editor Alex Kilani were two (~30) participants on the annual Midwinter Europe trip.

This trip, along with the annual Spring Break trip to Italy, is part of what makes Gibbons so special. We have the chance to grow closer with our fellow students in a different country which has thankfully been able to come back in full swing after stopping due to Covid. This trip filled up in mere hours, exclusively by the class of 2023 and anticipation has been growing since they all applied in 2022. After years of cancellations, standstills, and inventive means of academics the class of ’23 is getting back to the glimmering vision of Gibbons they were promised four years ago so it’s no surprise they wanted to take advantage of this trip.

This past summer, I had the chance to go to Europe with her choir (Mosaic Treble Choir which merged with the Raleigh Youth Choir) and sing in several places that the Gibbons group experienced, however, it was the historical aspects that drew me in last June which made this trip a very different opportunity but one I was equally excited to embark on.

Berlin

We arrived fresh off the plane and had a four-hour layover at the Paris Airport and went straight to mass. This instance of language immersion and the familiar format of a Catholic mass brought us together and connected us with this new country we found ourselves. While every stop on this trip was dripping with history Berlin was the city where we engaged with the history the most. From Ambleman to the remnants of the wall, city tours to walking through the parliament building in Berlin were an amazing and foundational part of the trip. We walked past the memorial for those who had passed while trying to escape the communist part of Berlin.

Prague for a lot of the students was the highlight of the trip.

Our time in this city was spent doing a variety of activities, from a street art workshop to celebrating Ash Wednesday in one of the most atheist countries in the world! We went to the Lennon Wall which will always look different due to the constant additions of (legal) graffiti. Prague was where it actually hit a lot of people we were in a completely different country, a whole new world to explore and explore we did. We had churro cones on Ash Wednesday, went to the top of the astronomical clock, almost trespassed into the Polish Embassy, and did a lot of shopping. Prague was beautiful and one of the most historically insightful places I’ve ever been!

Salzburg was the one stop on the tour I had been to and I had sung in on my previous tour so I got to play ‘Tour Guide’ during our free time. I felt comforted that

despite being so so far away from home I knew exactly where I was and I didn’t feel like a tourist. Salzburg is rich in music history, and movie history (you can go to the nunnery where Maria lived in Sound of Music) and they boast about their clean drinking water so keep an eye out for the public fountains they are everywhere.

Last week the big group of us had a reunion and Mr. Blanton said “This was a trip of a lifetime for a lot of you but I want this to be just the first in a number of trips… God gave us this big beautiful world we should explore as much of it as we can!” And I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. This was an amazing trip that in a lot of fo ways we can never replicate. We can never go back to the same places with the same big group of people, as the same students we are and there is something beautiful about that.