Places we sang

Since the main purpose for our trip was singing with our choir, I need to devote one entry solely in honor of the utterly fabulous places that we were able to sing as a group.

Prague: St. Vitus Cathedral. With it's towering spires that you can see from almost everywhere in town, it has an tremendous presence whether you're standing outside or inside. I was so struck by emotion walking into the cathedral that I nearly dropped down to my knees to pray just inside the door. Singing there and being able to partake of the eucharist during mass is one of the most holy moments of my life. And I'm really not exaggerating - it was that amazing of an experience.

This picture shows the side of the cathedral with the choir loft and the organ. If you look carefully just under the organ, you can see our group in the choir loft singing.

Vienna: Karlskirche (St Charles Church). In the historic city center, directly on the Ringstrasse. It was an interesting experience all around. I didn't see the front outside of the church that evening - it wasn't until the next day that I saw the splendid architechture of the building itself. We were late for our arrival at the concert because of the awful traffic in the city that evening. We were taken to the back of the church, directly to the back entrance and rushed in to begin our quick rehearsal. We found ourselves ushered onto the main altar area of the church and suddenly surrounded by a lavish, ornate and beautiful church. Very much Baroque in style - white marble, gold accents, rounded archways and domes. The pictures of the inside is actually a picture of us singing.

Stift Melk: A Benedictine abbey in Austria. The monastery was founded in the 11th century, and the Abbey church that we had the priviledge of singing in was built in the 18th century. I thought Karlskirche was impressive? The Melk Abbey church was more incredible. Not in size, but in design and decoration. And out of all the places we sang, it had the best sound.

Traunkirchen: The beautiful little village in the Salzkammergut region of Austria of the Lake Traunsee. I still need to tell the full story of this visit, but the church in the town dates back to 1022 and it is a quaint little church. We sang a quick song there for the experience, as our visit was unfortunately under a time constraint.

Salzburg: Kollegienkirche (University Church) and Salzburger Dom (Salzburg Cathedral). Quite honestly, the University Chuch wasn't entirely impressive. It was difficult to judge it because of what we had to compare it to. We had already sung in much more amazing sites. But it was the central point of the festival that we were taking part in. The Dom Cathedral, however, was incredible. Historically interesting because of it's many rebuilds and renovations. It originated back to the 8th century, and was even bombed during WWII. Also, Mozart was baptized there, which was relevant especially to our performance because we sang Mozart's Credo Mass with the resident choir and orchestra. Very cool.