Oompah Band, Venice, St. Johann

I am blogging from my room in St. Johann at 1pm (4am US time) following an amazing ballet class the girls took with Petra, a former principal dancer with the Paris Opera. It has been a whirlwind the past 24 -36 hours for us. After dinner on the balcony of our hotel in Lienz overlooking the town square where music was being played by a live oompah band , we all headed for bed early.

Alarm clocks went off at 4am for a crack-of-dawn flurry of luggage-loading and grabbing seats on the buses to get situated for a 5 hour ride to Venice. Most of us slept (see photos suitable for blackmail below ;D) on the bus, awakened by Reiner announcing over the microphone: " We are now in Italy, it's time to wake up....we are taking a rest stop."

Dancers, doctors and parents piled off the busses, and headed straight for the bathrooms...the last FREE WC ("water closet" as they are universally labeled in Europe) we will be able to use today. In Venice, you pay 1.50 Euro to use the facilities. After we all got our first genuine Italian Cappuccino and snacks at the rest stop cafe, we were on our way again. We arrive at the Vaparetto (boat-taxi) by 10:30am, and began the day in Venice that will be remembered forever.

Boarding our Vaparetto

The boat ride over to the island of Venice was picturesque.... Ancient buildings line the waters, boats and ships shared the waterway with us. Our studio sat in the front of the ship outside to get the full effect of the trip over. The day was overcast, but later cleared...it was perfect weather, only reaching about 80 degrees (with about 90% humidity, which made it VERY hot and muggy).

We entered St Mark's square and found ourselves in the midst of droves of tourists, pigeons, and sites that most had only seen in movies prior to today: St Mark's Cathedral, the bell tower, the Duke's Palace, gondolas traversing and gliding through canals, drivers in black striped shirts and hats singing Italian songs for their passengers, etc.

Our Italian guide, Geppetto, took our girls and parents to the Murano Glass Blowing factory where we were given a demonstration of glass blowing by an actual decedent of the original glass blowers that opened the factory some 250 years ago. We were told that glass blowing is an Italian art that must be passed down from generation to generation to qualify as authentic Murano glass. The blower created a beautiful vase in less than one minute while we watched...then, smashed it onto the floor where the "mistakes" were swept up and recycled. It was incredible. We also got to see the famous life size glass horse at the front of the factory. It was created more than a 100 years ago.

Murano Glass Blowing Demonstration

After the Murano tour, we split up in small groups and enjoyed the rest of the day shopping, gondola riding, museum looking, cathedral visiting, and eating authentic Italian pasta, pizza,panninis, and gelato! It's a good thing we are dancing and walking so much or all this amazing European food would not be burned up as quickly. Some of us were fortunate enough to have an accordion player and Italian singer on our gondolas to serenade us as we floated lazily along the Grand Canal and under the " Bridge of Sighs" (named that because it led to the island's prison 500 years ago...and criminals as they passed over the bridge would look out the teeny windows on the bridge and sigh as they realized it was there last look at the world for a very long time).

At 4:30, hot, tired and ready for air conditioning (how American of us!), we took one last picture in front of a statue of Poseidon (with Emily's fan positioned for blog-modesty!), and took the Vaparetto ride back to the busses.

Original Chagall and Picasso Paintings at the P. Guggenheim Museum

Bye bye, Venice :(.....After five hours on the autobahn, we pulled into our hotel in our next city: St. Johann. We were greeted even at that late hour, by joyful traditionally dressed front desk personnel and a banner across the front of the hotel that red "Welcome, Stars of Tomorrow!". Each of our rooms had our names on our doors, and there was candy on our pillows and personal robes in our closets for us. We are told that this city awaits our arrival with great anticipation and the towns kids view us as American celebrities. Everyone here stares (in the good way), and when we pass locals on the street we can hear "ooooohhhh's" and " ahhhhhh's" which is translated the same in any language :}.

Our hotel and St Johann

Our ballet class with Petra was so perfect! The girls loved her, and she was such an inspiration and encouragement. she told us at the start of class " rather than worry about making things perfect, I only want you to enjoy what you are doing.... I like to say: let the music enter through your ears, and flow through your heart, then dance... ". What a beautiful metaphor for dancing with intention and passion.

Ballet class with Petra from the Paris Opera

Tonight we will have two performances for the city in their theater so that as many townspeople as possible can see our show. We were going to perform in their outdoor venue where more than 3000 can watch at a time, but it's raining, and we must move to the indoor venue....that is what happens when you live in an alpine climate, rain one day, sun the next.

Tomorrow is our free day in Salzburg...we will tour Mozart's childhood home and see his first piano and first concerto composition written in his own hand when he was 7 years old! We will also tour many of the sites where the "Sound of Music" was filmed and actually, historically took place. It's funny, but although it is a famous movie/story in .America, most Austrians have never seen it nor do they know any of the music from the movie. They do, however, remember the plight of most Austrians during the war as they'd tried as hard as possible to resist the Nazi take-over of their country...and in that light, many have a similar Von Trapp story in their own family histories.

Good news! We just found out from our lighting technician that there are black lights at the St Johann theater, so we will be able to close our last two performances in Austria with our black light dance after all! It's been a crowd-pleaser across the country, so the Tanzsommer producers really wanted us to be able to dance it here.

Thanks again for following the blog...feel free to share this link on facebook or in emails so that all of your family and friends can read about our adventures.