Our Last Full Day

We left our last group of host families this morning and headed for Nurnberg, a bigger city in the area. They wanted us to sightsee, but since it was our last day, we were tired and worn out from sightseeing every other day. Needless to say, many of us would have rather slept longer.

Saul is being positive here, none of us actually felt the way his face looks.

The whole group

Lois at McDonald's in Germany!

Once we were on the road again, we stopped for a few minutes at a stadium-like wall structure that Hitler built for his officers to use to assess the Nazi troops.

Apparently, there has been some controversy as to whether the structure should have been destroyed or not, but it still stands in Nurnberg.

The wall

It was eerie standing there, imagining what went on at that spot just over six decades ago. It made me feel physically sick. And if that is what only a wall could do, I can’t imagine what visiting the site of a concentration camp would be like.

We left then to go to Wolfratshausen, a town south of Munich—also called Munchen, I found out today. I prefer Munchen. It’s also near the Alps.

The sign! On the corner, near the church

This is the town where they performed their last concert on the tour. For this one, Duffy cut some of the songs, citing blending problems for their voices and also lack of piano. We were also on a kind of time crunch. The concert began at 5 p.m. and we had to leave for the hotel by 6:30.

The church was very small, but the group did well. Before the concert, Duffy gave her choir one last pep talk, stating, “It’s been a wonderful trip. I know you’re tired, but this is our last night to do this thing.”

And they did. The Danish song with the trio was cut, which made me very sad, of course. But it was a very good last concert. There were some flat notes that I heard, but not many.

The audience seemed to love “Singet Dem Herrn,” probably because they could understand it the easiest. That piece has come a long way since the concert in Agaard, Denmark.

Some of the beginning notes for “Lamb of God” were a little off, like some of the women weren’t quite sure of their entrances. I think it’s probably because of the order change; it threw them off a little.

Audrey Swanson’s solo in “The Earth Adorned” was the best tonight that I’ve ever heard it.

The group singing an encore for the last concert

In the midst of it all, I was able to meet a German journalist, taking photos for the local paper. We didn’t have time to exchange names, but she said a review of it could be found at this Web site http://www.merkur-online.de/. No guarantees about an English version.

Immediately after the concert, we drove to Munich where we had dinner and some last remarks about the tour. Everyone stood up and shared a favorite memory from the last two weeks.

In other news, Keyla got all of the signatures for her entire deck of cards today. The challenge was to get one European to sign his or her name to 54 playing cards. She finished it with the signatures of some people running a shop in Nurnberg.

Also, Jena Butenhoff has sort of been dealing with a cold all week. But it seemed to be at its worst today. She sat out of the last concert and slept most of the time we were on the bus. But by dinner time, she seemed to be doing better.

Here’s our schedule for tomorrow’s trip back to the states:

We’ll get up around 6:30 a.m. and drive to the Munich International Airport, which isn’t too far from the hotel we’re staying in tonight. Our plane to Atlanta, Georgia, takes off from Munich at 8:45 a.m. We fly for…forever, and make it to Atlanta by 2:50 p.m., which will feel like 9 p.m. to us. We take off from Atlanta at 6:35 p.m. and make it back to Minneapolis by 8:15 p.m. From there, we’ll drive back to Des Moines. Yay! We’re all pretty excited to get back…

**Also, posting this blog cost me 10 euro, so maybe you should go back and read it again...