6/18/2009 - Thursday night wrap-up

Today was the busiest day so for for the choir kids. After checking into the Parkhotel Schönbrun the kids paused briefly to take a breath and headed to their second mass rehearsal. However, checkin was slightly complicated by the size & layout of our hotel. Can you find your room on this chart? Quick!
It took many of us more than a few minutes to do that, especially since the 600 numbered rooms are on the ground floor, the 700's and some of the 100's on floor 1, 800's on floor 2, etc. This is the second building in the hotel complex, where the first building is 5 stories tall, so they apparently didn't want to repeat any numbers. Everybody worked it out...eventually.

It's much warmer here than it was in Prague. I don't know if it's a difference between locations, or if the weather just warmed up while we were traveling (and I'm too tired to check weather.com to find out) but we were sweating in our light summer clothes, and the kids were pretty warm in the rehearsal.

After the rehearsal was finished the kids had a quick opportunity to grab a bite and head to St. Stephen's Church:
This is located near the center of Vienna's city center (map here)

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They performed a sound check, and began their concert at 8PM. This was a similar concert to Monday's, with the same other two choirs performing: first the Turlock Madrigals, followed by the community singers from Missouri, then the Gunn Choir for the grand slam home-run hit. There were lots of people in the church, some tourists or passers-by and some members of the congregation. It's a small but beautiful space:
The light was very low, so my pictures didn't come out too well; but Don's pictures will be up shortly and are sure to be better. Still, you can get an idea of the church.

The Gunn performance was, of course, amazing and especially so considering that by this time they had been up and on the go since 5AM! The concert ended at about 9, and we had dinner at a local restaurant in old town, followed by a coach ride back to our hotel where almost every head hit its pillow simultaneously.

Tomorrow is a more relaxed day, with a trip to nearby Melk to visit the abbey:

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First we'll have a guided tour, followed by a brief recital from the choir, then a river boat ride down the Danube to Durnstein for dinner:


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I won't be able to update the blog until tomorrow night, but I should have a lot to talk about!

Later!