HERFORST, Germany -- It was much like home for several members of the Advocate Brass Band who stayed with families while attending the music festival recently in this small village. In fact, many of the band members said the countryside and German families were much like those back home in Kentucky.
While the older people did not speak much English, the younger ones took care of the language barrier. They learn English in school at an early age.
"The parents of our family didn't speak much English, but we got along," said Jane Brantley. They were guests of Hans and Wahraud Diederichs and their children, Kristina, 15, and Michael, 12.
The father had practiced a parting speech in English, she said. Many times, the communication was done by sign language. But when Kristina was around, she was the interpreter. She has taken five years of English in school.
Brantley and her husband, J.P., who plays a horn in the band, enjoyed their stay and were treated like family.
When the Brantleys inquired about doing some laundry before they left, the family said fine. But when Mrs. Brantley started to the do the clothes the next morning, the woman of the house had done the laundry during the early morning hours after everyone else was asleep.
Dudley Spoonamore, a charter member of the band, was sad when the visit was over.
"They were wonderful people and had adorable children that really touched my heart," said Spoonamore, who has children about the ages of his host family.
"I couldn't have been paired with a more wonderful family," he said. "It scares me to think I won't get to see them (the children) grow up."
The mother and father bent over backwards to make us feel welcome, he said. "They wouldn't let us fill our teacups."
Spoonamore, a trombone player, said it was an emotional last day when the band left town. "The hospitality, I couldn't measure it, it was so great."
It was a special time for James and Betty Ramey of Danville while they stayed with kinfolks, whom they called a family of "huggers."
The Rameys met Michael and Ann Remmy, members of the Musikverein Herforst 1933 community band, in June while they were in Danville for the Great American Brass Band Festival. However, they did not know the parents, who invited them to their home for the weekend.
"We cried when we left," said Mrs. Ramey. "They were a family of huggers," she said.
Ramey said the two families compared their genealogy and discovered they shared the same ancestors that originated in France 300 years ago.
A few days after the troupe left Herforst to continue its European Tour 2000, Andy Alexander of Harrodsburg expressed sadness for having to leave Herforst.
"I'm homesick for Herforst," he said. "It looks like Kentucky."
The family he and his wife stayed with had three grown children and the wife spoke fairly good English because she worked for an American couple from the nearby Spangdahlem Air Force Base.
"We had the entire upstairs to ourselves," he said.
While in Herforst, the Alexanders attended services at the Catholic church but the minister did not speak English, he said.
There were many tears of joy and sadness as the bus left Herforst where the German and American band members and friends had gotten reacquainted. The tears flowed freely by members of both bands after the final night of the Herforst band festival, which was termed as one of the best performances of the tour. It was dubbed as German-American Friendship Night and featured the Advocate band.
