BISQC Blog:

Notes from the road

Posted by Caitlyn Boyle, Cecilia String Quartet
Wednesday, 30 March 2011

Well we have been “on the road” for almost two weeks now. We started our tour in the Holland country-side by the sea, near Goedereede. (The name of the town I still cannot pronounce. It requires a lot of gutteral oomph to do it properly.) We stayed in the guest-house of a lovely couple – Hans and Annaleise. We were free to rehearse and rest as much as we pleased, and at the end of our stay there we played a concert in the Kleinste Zaal – the smallest hall in Holland (a pun on the Kleinezaal of the Concertgebouw). Where we played one week later! It was a wonderful hall to play string quartet in, as is its reputation, and we had a lot of fun playing there, on a sunny Sunday afternoon – and it was still three-quarters full. Thank you Holland!

We finished our tour of Holland, playing six concerts in total, and one in Belgium. The audiences have been fantastic. We can hear them listening to us, which inspires and heightens our own listening skills. We have also received beautiful flowers from every single venue so far!

At the moment, we are on the train to Munich, on our way to start the German portion of our tour. We were just in Meran (auf Deutsch) or Merano (Italiano), where we played two concerts, and an outreach. The city reminded me of a cross between Banff and California. The food was delicious, as is Italy’s reputation, and Min managed to eat five gelatos while we were there!

Schedules — Daily and sleeping schedules are pretty wacked while on tour. We catch winks of sleep when we can, riding in buses/trains/planes/and automobiles (which are taxis mostly). We live largely on a diet of sandwiches, except when we are invited to delectable dinners by presenters, and then we eat our dinners at 10:30 p.m., which is the proper Italian time to do so!

Visitors — There have been quite a few visitors traveling with us on our trip! It is wonderful to have guests coming along, as it feels like we are a band of traveling Canadians together.

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