Alle Menschen werden Brüder

70% of Oxford voters in last year’s referendum chose to remain in the EU. Nationally we were outvoted but that seems only to have given our European links more poignancy. This week we are celebrating having been twinned with Bonn for 70 years, a link, formed only two years after the end of WW2, that pre-dates the EU but which is now supported by it.
 
100 young people from the two schools that our choir is twinned with arrived yesterday for a joint rehearsal of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony which we have been practising separately. This evening we sang it together in German in the Town Hall to a sell-out crowd. 200 loud, joyous and determined singers with a local orchestra.
 
At lunchtime those of us who could get away from other commitments sang an excerpt, the Ode to Joy, now the European anthem, unaccompanied in the centre of Oxford to a good and appreciative crowd.


Edit: While we were singing, a group of respectable-looking men emerged from this building and listened to us. I've since heard that the man at their head was the University Chancellor, Chris Patten, who came out when he heard us to see what was going on.