Salzburg

Two summers ago, Napa Valley Youth Symphony went on its first international tour. We traveled to Salzburg, Vienna, and then Prague. Despite the fact that I got sick and refused to eat all the fried food we were served, therefore losing five pounds over the course of ten days, it was the most memorable trip of my life. But don't be alarmed, I gained back all the weight that was lost and more once I went to Taiwan two weeks later when my grandma's only mission in life became to fatten me up.

The first city we visited was the city of Mozart: Salzburg. Right before we left the hotel to go to a nice restaurant, it started POURING. Do not underestimate the word pouring because I had never endured such fierce rain, and this is coming from someone who has endured countless typhoons in Asia. Since the streets are so old downtown, the buses couldn't travel very close to the restaurant and we were forced to walk the rest of the way. It was raining so hard that all of our rain gear, jackets, and umbrellas, became useless. By the time we entered the restaurant's staff was horrified to see that every piece of clothing we had on was DRENCHED. We were literally ringing our hair out on the front porch of the historical building. On the second day in Salzburg the weather cleared up and presented us with the perfect weather to complete a walking tour of Salzburg's castle, cathedral, squares, and gardens.

By that evening all of us were exhausted from jet lag and the afternoon of walking all over the city primarily up the stairs of the grand castle. Lucky for us, we had a performance that night. If the church didn't have so much echo, all of our mistakes due to pure exhaustion would've been all too obvious. Once we finished what seemed like the longest performance of our life, many youth symphony members said they didn't even recall playing parts of piece because they just zoned out. There was even a point in Mendelssohn's Reformation Symphony where I was the only first violin who didn't miss our entrance. Even though it was a performance that people could hardly even stay awake for, it is somehow the performance that nobody can forget.

After a good night of rest, we were off to spend three days in Vienna and another three memorable days in Prague. Below is a picture during our dress rehearsal before our grand performance in Vienna as the finale performance of the International Mahler Music Festival.