Tour de Europe! (9/6)

On our second day in Olomouc, we were scheduled to perform in the Choir Marathon, which was just some competing choirs performing for each other. Being the smart Asians that we are, we booked the sencond earliest slot in the morning, so we could leave as soon as we can after our show. Not many choirs were there coz it was SO early! Anyway, we sang and got some claps from the audience. Not too proud of ourselves, really. Especially me. Still made the same stupid mistake in my solo. Even my conductor was miffed. NOT good at all, since he suggested that he'd cue me in AND out of my solo. Sigh sigh sigh... I wondered how would we fare in the actual competition?

Unhappy matters aside, that was the day we got to tour Olomouc town center, and it is a really fine town, as you can see from the photos below. First stop: St Maurice's Church. We were led to the choir balcony area to have an organ intro session with the church organ's caretaker. It was mostly interesting, but I could see the jetlag affecting some of my friends. Hey, for once I'm not the first guy to nod off, ok? :P

After the session, we did what we tourists do best: take photos! But my conductor surprised us by asking us to sing our competition piece right there and then! Oh well, couldn't bloody say no, could we? We sang, and it was OK, compared to our usual standard. A guy in the curious audience suddenly walked to my conductor and muttered something, and he seemed pleased. Later, we found out that he's one of the adjudicators of the choral festival, and he was "touched". By what, I shan't ponder. :P :P :P

Once we're outside of the church, it was announced that our castle tour scheduled for the next day shall be cancelled and be replaced by practices in the hotel. I was actually ok with the decision, although I would really like to see a real castle. Well, if you sucked, you sucked. What'cha gonna do about that, punk? You bloody well focus on the main objective and practice even more, that's what. Not everyone shared my sentiments, of coz. Some people already looked pissed off. Sigh, this is what, just our second day in Olomouc? Already things were not so smooth...

We proceeded to the Upper Square, where the most prominent sight of the town is situated: The Holy Trinity Column. The sight of this impressive structure instantly filled us with awe! There were so much to see on this column, you could just snap photos anywhere around it, and they'd all looked gorgeous! I couldn't look away from it, even when it's our last day there. I'm ahead of myself here, so let's resume our tour, eh?

We had some time to kill before lunch time, so me and some friends just snapped MORE photos. However, when we reached the restaurant afterwards, we were FINED by the choir for being 5 mins late! That had really dampened our spirit. Period. You could hear a pin fall while we were eating. And some munching sounds, too. Totally WTF, man...

We returned to the hotel for a short practice, then changed into our costumes to perform in that night's festival opening concert. Apparently, there were 7 Singaporean choirs in this festival, and a number of us had decided to put up a concert featuring only Singapoooor (that's how the locals pronounce it...) choirs. I think perhaps it was due to our mediocre performance during the day, plus the practice we had before the concert, that we actually did quite well in this concert! I could even see the whole row of adjudicators in the audience nodding and smiling. I didn't screw up much this time! HUGE ego boost! For once, I seriously thought that we might have a real shot in this festival. Let's get ready to RRRRRRRRRRRumble! Er, in another 2 days' time, that is...