Tour Log 3: On Route to Leipzig
Sunday 13 April 2008
It’s been a couple of busy days, which is why I am only now getting back to this log, but we are now cruising up the Autobahn towards the German border, on our way to Leipzig via an afternoon concert at Thalbürgel Monastery Church (Klosterkirche).
All our luggage finally arrived, with poor Rachel Carter being the last person to see her suitcase after a day and a half without it – phew!
So, going back to our guided walk through Prague the day before yesterday, we piled into the double-decker coach and drove down to Prague Castle. This was our first coach journey, and immediately we established what look like becoming three 2008 Tour traditions.
The first was that the kids took over the top deck of the coach, and the staff and parents were relegated to the lower deck. The second tradition was to commence each coach journey with a recorded rendition of an appalling piece of musical doggerel beloved of Mrs Belshaw, which starts with a cock crowing and then launches into “Good Morning! Good Morning! It’s time to rise and shine...!” The third tradition to be established was live in-flight entertainment from Huw Belling, beginning with his famous impersonations of past and present staff members, and moving on to constant three-way Laurel and Hardy-like bickering with Jem Harding and Emily Irvine, which had other staff falling about in their seats.
Our tour started off at Prague Castle with our two lovely tour guides. Our first guide was our full-time tour liaison for the duration of the trip, Sophie. Sophie is a young German medical student from Leipzig with a part-time job with our tour company. She is pretty, smiling, very bright, and endlessly patient with demanding Australians like me.
Our second guide was our local Czech guide for the day, Jarmila. Jarmila informed us that her name meant “loving springtime”, which she said was odd because she had been born in the autumn. I loved her accent. We passed some colourfully dressed Czech chocolate soldiers marching out of the Castle gates with brass instruments under their arms and Jarmila saying “they go to gardens to make fun farce”. I had an image of some light comedy tableau being performed en plein air, much the way Louis XIV used to sponsor such events at Versailles, but then I realised that she meant “fanfares”... o-o-h-h, right!
We walked past the President’s Palace and St Vitus’ Cathedral (where we performed this morning – more about that later), and then down through the Castle complex, which sprawls along the ridge line. Then we walked across to the wonderful Charles Bridge, one of the great tourist attractions of central Prague – a purely pedestrian bridge across the Vltava River flanked by the statues of saints including one Jarmila liked to call “Five Star Man”. Then we plunged into the crowded streets of the Stare Mesto (the old town) until we ended up in the Staromĕstské (Old Town) Square with the astronomical clock and the Týn Church.
After a break in the Old Town Square, it was time to set out for Lýsa nad Labem.
Lýsa is a little town of about 8,600, approximately 40 km northeast of Prague, which is really not a tourist destination at all. There is some farming, a little bit of industry making spare parts for Volkswagen, and a lot of people commute into Prague each day. Because tourism is not part of the scene in Lýsa, they were grateful to have a group of musicians come all the way from Australia to perform in their beautiful old church of St John the Baptist. After we had set up the instruments and done a sound check, we strolled down the road to the town hall and a small civic reception hosted by the Deputy Mayoress, where they plied us with afternoon tea and made welcoming speeches. The Deputy Mayoress told us we were the first Australian musicians to visit Lýsa, and then added, as she thought about it, that in fact we were probably the first Australians of any description to visit Lýsa.
By concert time, the Church was full of 200 local people eager to hear some music from the antipodes. Jo Ladd and I were well set up to record the event with our two high-definition video cameras positioned on both sides of the church, and portable sound recorder capturing CD-quality sound in the middle. For those of you who saw the DVD I made of the 2006 tour from footage with one little low-end standard definition camcorder, I promise that this year’s DVD will be much more high-tech and classy! I even plan to give you the option of a widescreen high definition Blu-ray tour DVD, if you want to order it.
After the concert, we got ourselves packed up and then walked down the road to a rustic inn, where we had a god dinner and relaxed for a while before the hour or so journey back into Prague. A long day, but a good one!
