Guten Tag, everyone! Sorry this post is so late -- we had some problems.
We left Colby right on time on Friday morning; the bus ride was uneventful. Our first flight was long and boring, and few of us got much sleep -- just your typical trans-Atlantic flight. We were delayed for an hour or so in Frankfurt due to air traffic, or something like that, and our gate was changed several times. The second, shorter flight featured beautiful clouds and some breathtaking landscapes, but also unfortunately a loudly complaining baby in the back row. Oh well -- one can't have everything.
When we finally arrived in a rather cold and rainy Vienna, we were met by our tour coordinator Andreas Brecht and our driver Willie (who never gave his last name) and his gigantic double-decker bus.
Our first excursion was to a graveyard. I probably don't have to say that most of us were a little skeptical about this at first, but it turned out to be fantastic: we saw the graves (or gravestones) of Mozart, Brahms, Schubert, Beethoven, and many others. It was incredible! Although it lead to some unfortunate puns.
John: So how many of these composers do you think are actually decomposing here?
Claire: Well, I dunno. A lot of them have been moved here from elsewhere.
John: You mean transposed?
. . . ba-dum chh.
We also saw a small but rather tall and very pretty church, in which about a third of us, at Paul's direction, sang our gradual chant, Haec Dies. Wow. That piece makes much more sense in a live environment!
We had lunch at a buffet-style restaurant called Die Rosenberger -- a wide selection of good food, for very reasonable prices. On the way back from lunch, we stopped under a large domed archway, and we sang some more: our Bohemian marching song,
Ay, Lucka Lucka; the Rachmaninoff
Ave Maria; and one of our spirituals,
Walk Together, Children. We drew quite a crowd, and several requests for encores in various languages. We then settled in at the hotel, and had three hours of free time during which some of us explored the neighborhood, and some of us slept.
Dinner was at a little place quite literally just down the street from the hotel, whose name is escaping me at the moment. The food was good, but not fantastic: a tomato-beef-noodle soup, wiener schnizel (of course) and fruit cocktail for dessert. After the meal, some of us went out on the town, while the rest tried out the little gelato shop next to the restaurant. I've been told that the gelato is not quite up to Italian standards, but it sure beats American ice cream!
So that's what we did on Saturday. Stay tuned this evening for a (more timely) report on today's adventures!
