Tour: The Last Days of Hungary

We've spent the last couple of days in Budapest and its surrounding areas. Budapest is a massive city! And very beautiful. This, for example, is the parliament building. Amazing!



On Sunday morning, we sang mass in a church in downtown Budapest and made the priest cry (twice!). I can't get over how wonderful it is to share our music with all these people! After mass, we toured the city a little bit. Aside from all the mosquitos, everyone is really enjoying themselves.



We've been performing pretty much every day in all sorts of different venues, including a few impromptu numbers here and there, like when we sang with our gypsy band at dinner the other night. We're definitely being kept on our toes and I don't think we've ever sounded better as a group. We're all coming together in a way that is very special and unique to tour.

Today, Monday, we went to a little town called Esztergom to perform in a church there. On the way there, we stopped in the Esztergom cathedral, which is the third largest cathedral in Europe, falling behind only St. Paul's in London (2), and St. Peter's Basilica in Rome (1). We were ecstatic when our tour guide said we could sing there. Seven second reverb is pretty incredible.



Tomorrow we leave Hungary for Croatia and start some intensive rehearsal to really polish and get us ready for the Marktoberdorf competition. We've come a long way and we've got a lot further to go, and I'm excited for everything that waits ahead for us! Much more fun is coming!

Tour: Hungary

Here we are in beautiful Pomaz, which is just outside of Budapest, Hungary. We're staying at the Choral Castle.



At the Choral Castle, there are performance halls, one of which we used last night. We drew a crowd to our concert and encored about a million times. We actually left the building and got called back in to encore again. It was a really wonderful experience, even if we were all exhausted after arriving at the Castle 2 hours behind schedule, lugging all our luggage up many, many flights of stairs, and changing clothes as fast as humanly possible. The audiences here are so incredibly appreciative! It is a joy to sing for them.

The Castle also has many rehearsal halls, one of which we utilized this morning. For part of our rehearsal, we got to work with Gyorgy Orban. We have learned two of his pieces this year and he workshopped with us a little bit. It was really fun and he is a very nice person!



We went to a nearby town called Szentendre for lunch and a small shopping excursion. The beautiful blue Danube runs right through this town. And of course they sell gelato. What could be more important? Not much.



We also went into Budapest itself for just a short time today. The view of the city from the citadel is breathtaking. We could all hardly believe what we were seeing. What an opportunity!



Finally, tonight we performed in the town of Telki to a standing-room-only crowd. People were jammed in every spare spot and even flooded out the door. We sang our hearts out to a wonderful crowd and had a great time. Telki is having their annual Spring Festival, and we got to go enjoy some local music and food afterwards. We work very hard, but we also play hard!



Hungary is great! The food is wonderful, the audiences are fantastic, the weather is beautiful, and the people are friendly. It's treating us well, and I think we're giving back in kind.