Tour Log 4: Ramada Hotel, Leipzig
Monday 14 April 2008
We arrived in Leipzig last night and checked into the luxury Ramada Hotel, which is great! But back to the story so far...!
On Saturday, we had our first real free time in Prague. The coach dropped us off on the edge of the river and we walked down the elegant up-market shopping street of Pariszká back to the Old Town Square, where both the kids and adults had the opportunity to peel off in their own little groups and get lost in the maze of cobblestone streets for a while. My little group, including Phillip Heath, Chris Belshaw and the other senior staff, took in the markets and then ended up in the classy café of the Municipal House for coffee and cake, before threading our way back to the Old Town Square for the rendezvous with the rest of the group.
Then it was off to Ústí nad Labem, a much bigger city than Lýsa, tucked up against the Elbe near the German border. There was a minor disappointment in Ústí when our expected early dinner in the Vétruše chateau up on the hill turned out instead to be in a local cellar restaurant serving food reminiscent of the Wienerwald chain that those on the 2006 tour will shudder to remember. Ah well, it was but a minor glitch.
The concert that night was held in the grand Ústí Theatre, as part of the 15th Ústï International Choir Festival, consisting of two concerts over the weekend, featuring choral ensembles from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Scotland and ourselves representing Australia. Our ensemble performed on the second day with two other choirs, the Zoltán Kodály Children’s Choir from Hungary and the Ústí Children’s Choir. One hates to be competitive, of course, and the other choirs were tight and well-disciplined (more than us, it must be said!), but I think the addition of dijiridus and drums and string players, and our distinctive music, made our kids the highlight of the night for the 200 or so attendees of the concert.
Then it was an hour and a half drive back to Prague and very late to bed.
The next morning, I had the opportunity to catch up with Rohan, who had arrived the night before (with our last missing piece of kit, the snare drum that was left in Sydney), but there was no rest for the wicked. We had to be completely packed and loaded into the coach and truck (expertly managed by our intrepid transportation captains, Darren and Tammy Heath) to go down to Prague Castle for the 9.30am Service in the magnificent St Vitus’ Cathedral, which is part of the Castle complex, and dominates Prague’s skyline. Our young musicians were all squeezed into the organ loft, which provided a stunning view of the inside of the Cathedral, with the morning light streaming through the massive stained glass windows. They sang some of the liturgical items in the repertoire during the Service while I recorded it on both video and separate audio from down below.
Once that was over, it was back into the coach for the journey to Leipzig. I had hoped we would be able to take the scenic route through the Erzgebirge (the Ore Mountains), but it was decided that due to time constraints and weight limits on the mountain road, meant that the coach should stick to the Autobahns. But Darren and Tammy took advantage of my suggestion and drove the truck over the scenic route, and gave it the thumbs up. The rest of us in the coach headed back north past Ústí nad Labem to the German border, and then on to Dresden, before swinging west to Chemnitz, Gera and finally to the little village of Bürgel.
Just outside Bürgel is the monastery church of Thalbürgel, which was the venue for last night’s concert. When we arrived, time was tight, so we quickly set up and had a short rehearsal, before joining the priest and some of the local people for afternoon tea in the church hall down the road.
Thalbürgel is quite a centre for music performance in the State of Thuringia, and we had a full audience, approximately 300 people, for our concert. It was a fabulous location, large and airy and well-lit with spotlights and large candles, so the video taken by Jo and I from our two cameras should look fantastic. The boys and girls turned on a spectacular performance and the audience loved it, judging by the applause at the end. Then it was pack up the truck again, pile back in the coach and drive for 90 minutes on to Leipzig. While we did that, I put on my assistant tour guide hat and filled in some of the time with a brief meander through the last 100 years of German history.
Once we got back to the hotel, there was time for a late buffet dinner in the Ramada’s restaurant, accompanied in my case by half a litre of the fine Leipzig pilsener. O joy, good German cooking at last!
And now it is Monday, and finally we have a lazy morning to sleep in, do some washing and catch up on the blog, before we have our guided tour of Leipzig this afternoon. History buffs like Mr Heath and I have already ensured that the coach will swing by the Battle of the Nations Monument on its way into the city centre. The Monument commemorates the largest and bloodiest battle of the Napoleonic Wars fought outside Leipzig in 1813. Indeed, it was the largest battle fought in Europe before World War I, and resulted in Napoleon being (temporarily) defeated and exiled to Elba.
Until the next tour log in a couple of days, auf Wiedersehen von Leipzig!
