Monday, heading home

The giant travel case for Calum's doublebass waits sadly to be stowed under the bus as we leave Flörsheim early Monday morning, and Nurhan takes a last photo with Herr Rolf. Herr Rolf's professionalism was an important part of the tour. He made extra trips several times to change buses, to ensure safety when snowtires were needed and enough space when Calum had to use the travel case in addition to his regular soft case.

Phoebe gets ready to board, while Ani and Mig and Julian wheel on over.
Mary-Beth left long before dawn to catch a flight to Rome instead of Toronto -- her next gig is a performance of the Mozart Requiem in the Vatican, before returning to Toronto for our December concerts. But the rest of us are heading out at 9 am.
Waiting in the airport: Chris, Albina, sweetly-sleeping Christine, Andras, Liza.

Little did we know just how long we'd have to wait... When our plane had been towed away from the terminal and started on towards the takeoff runway on its own, we came to a quick halt. A small flock of trucks with technicians and equipment clustered around, but after a series of updates from the pilot during a long delay, all the baggage and passengers were offloaded back to the terminal to wait for a new plane. Taking off several hours and some sandwich-vouchers later, we arrived back in Toronto about 5 hours after the originally scheduled time. Not a problem for most of us, but a little hard on Xiaohan, who was worried about arriving in time to get a new connection to Montreal.

Now we'll wait to receive the rest of the reviews... The one we have already from Kassel is excellent. But we already know that every concert was a big success. Everyone in the orchestra gave 500% to every note, and all the audiences responded so warmly to each piece! We were really happy that each audience clearly enjoyed our "Can-con" a lot. We're proud to have represented Canadian culture in Europe, and greatly appreciate the support we received from the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council for the tour.