Day 7 - Tuesday 8 May

The boys had an early start this morning, with a wake-up call at 06:00am, and breakfast at 06:45am.  We started packing the bus at 07:15am, as we had to depart for Basel, Switzerland at 08:00am.  We had a long drive ahead of us, about 7 hours to be precise.  At breakfast, many boys (and staff) were complaining of sore muscles and aching calves from our hike into the ice cave yesterday - but luckily Mrs. Louw was ever ready with some Arnica gel..

After singing a goodbye song to our wonderful hosts in Wagrain, we set off for Basel at 08:00am.  At 13:00pm, we stopped in Bregenz, Austria to have lunch at a restaurant called Pier69.  Bregenz was about halfway to Basel. Bregenz is the capital of Vorarlberg, the westernmost federal state of Austria.  The city is on the eastern shores of Lake Constance, the third-largest freshwater lake in Central Europe, between Switzerland in the west and Germany in the northwest.  The city is a junction of the arterial roads from the Rhine valley to the German Alpine foothills, with cruise ship services on Lake Constance.  Our restaurant had wonderful views of Lake Constance, and the boys enjoyed a lovely meal of potato gnocchi with mushroom goulash, and desert of pancakes with ice cream and chocolate sauce, all generously organised for us at a heavy discounted rate.

Pier 69, Bregenz

After lunch, the boys had to sing for the lunch again :), and then we got back onto the bus for the final three hours to Basel.  We hit the afternoon traffic between Zurich and Basel, and eventually only arrived in Basel at about 19:30pm.  As Switzerland is further west than Austria, the sun goes down later (it was still light at 21:00pm), and it is also warmer here than in Austria and Germany.

We were received by the organisers of the festival and then the boys were sent off with their hosts (parents of the Basel Knaben Kantorei, or the Basel Boys Choir), who had already been waiting for us for almost an hour.

The boys were to have supper with their hosts and were also reminded to hand in their dirty laundry for the hosts to wash.  We wait in eager anticipation to see, or rather smell, if this did in fact happen...:)

Tomorrow is the opening of the European Youth Choir Festival, which is the whole reason for us being in Basel, as we were invited to participate in this festival, along with many other esteemed youth choirs from around the world.