For the first ten days in July, Sophie traveled with the Philadelphia Girls Choir for a tour of Budapest and Hungary. Each year the choir picks an international location and plans for a series of concerts and workshops as well as sightseeing and other tourist activities. This is the first year that Sophie went.

Parents got daily email updates from the tour leaders, which was great, because we got much more sporadic updates from Sophie. Rather than recap what I think happened, here are some pics that we got and the daily updates we received.

While she was a little homesick, I know she had fun and she certainly had experiences to remember forever.

Updates from the choir tour leaders from July 1-10:

Today was an awesome day with our choir!  We started the day with a delicious breakfast in our hotel and quickly departed Kecskemet for a workshop at the Kodaly Institute. Our local tour guide showed us Catholic and Calvinist churches, as well as the town’s beautiful gardens and Baroque architecture. We then visited the University where the girls sang in their concert hall and had an incredible workshop with a Kodaly expert. The choir polished their Hungarian pronunciation in preparation for our performance tomorrow and eventual competition.  

We returned to Budapest to take a river cruise on the Danube, where the singers serenaded all of Budapest with selections from their repertoire. We finished the day with dinner at Frida, a Mediterranean restaurant where we had gnocchi and apple strudel. Tomorrow will be a big day of touring, and a joint concert with a local choir. It has been so pleasant getting to know your children. They are all having a great time and bonding with each other more and more each day!

What a day we had today! We started with a tour of Budapest with our guide Levi. He showed us the castle district and Mattias Church, where the girls got to test the acoustics with a song. Tourists gathered all around! We then tasted some Hungarian specialties and got to shop at the market.  

Later, we met with our hosts, the Rutafa Choir, to rehearse for our joint concert. It was a stunning performance filled with beautiful music! The girls got a chance to get to know their Hungarian hosts, make new friends, and even go to one of the oldest cafes in Budapest for dinner together. The atmosphere was filled with joy and new-found friendship, all made possible by the universal language of music. The Rutafa Choir surprised us with a performance of Hungarian songs, which our girls loved!  We felt so welcomed and special.

 It was a truly beautiful moment. We leave for Vienna in the morning to start the Summa Cum Laude Festival!

We left Budapest today for Vienna. On our way there we stopped in a charming Hungarian town called Gyor. The girls got to explore with their chaperones and spend some time in some local cafes.  We finished our trip and arrived in Vienna and were wowed by the beautiful buildings and gardens! Today was the opening ceremony of the Summa Cum Laude Music Festival and the girls were treated to performances by “coro siamo” and heard the Summa Cum Laude Anthem for the first time. We are all checked into our hotel, despite some hiccups during the check-in process!  This hotel is brand new and has very high-tech elevators. We have all now learned how to work some fancy new tech! Tomorrow is the competition and we are excited!

We are so excited to announce that PGC placed second in our category with “excellent success” at the Summa Cum Laude Youth Music Festival. The festival has 38 participating groups from 13 countries including choirs, orchestras, and bands. We are so proud of how well the girls performed and how beautifully they have bonded as a group. Today they performed at the Welt Museum, which is in part of the Hofberg Palace, spent some time getting to know each other better in a royal park for lunch and ice cream, and had a great time in the interactive Haus der Musik.  I am writing this to you from our second workshop with experts from the festival. It is such a special thing to be surrounded by their beautiful voices and see them communicate through music. The girls are making memories that will last forever. Now they can all say they have sung on the same stage where the Vienna Philharmonic plays!  

As we are winding down our tour, the girls are filled with joy for the awesome experiences they have had, as well as some sadness that it is soon coming to an end. Today was our last concert as a tour group, but there is still one more day of the festival. Tomorrow we will participate in a yodeling workshop and see the closing gala concert. We are so honored that one of our girls were chosen to perform the first solo Summa Cum Laude Anthem at the end of the Gala Concert!

Today we had an extensive tour of the city and had Viennese specialties for lunch at the Schönbrunn Palace. We saw the old city, the Hundertwasser Haus, and the stunning gardens of the palace, among many other stunning sites in the city. Tomorrow we will celebrate the end of the festival with a special party on the Rathaus Terrace (City Hall). It is an absolutely stunning site! We will be heading home early the next morning.

I am sure by now, you are brimming with excitement to see your children again!  Today we ended the Summa Cum Laude music festival with a yodeling workshop and big party with dancing, food, and even a marimba band. The girls all had an amazing time and made new friends.  

Tomorrow is a day full of travel as we make our way back home to the US.  Nathan will be in touch as we make our way back to the states with arrival updates as he gets them. We will arrive in Newark at 7:30pm on British Airways #189. Some of the girls are being picked up at Newark International Airport, and others will be brought back to the choir building. Please make sure to check email and texts for updates as we make our way back home. Thank you so much for trusting us with your incredible children. Tour is a truly magical time where our kids learn and grow, both musically and personally. We hope that you will hear all about the exciting times they had and about the world they have seen.