June 22, 2017
Stockholm, Sweden

The sun is currently setting around 10:00pm and rising around 3:30am but it doesn’t ever get really truly dark here. The staff jokes that it’s about how dark it is when your mom would yell out the door “come inside- it’s dark!”

We may have packed as much into one day as we possibly could. Our morning began with rehearsal with some of our Swedish friends from Uppenbarelskyrken Hagers kyrken, who joined us later for our concert that evening. It’s just a little helpful to have some native Swedish speakers in the group to help us with the text- so many vowels!

A little schedule mixup led us to the park just down the street where our friends taught us some body percussion to accompany a song. Singing was followed by DANCING, learning the traditional Midsommar dances. They’re quite fun and silly!

After a quick fika (sweet baked good) on the grass we returned to rehearsal before enjoying lunch together at the church.

Our hosts have been so lovely and accommodating. The hospitality has been overwhelming. We, again, had fika following lunch! We love fika!

We trekked back to our nearby metro station to head out Lake Mälaren for a boat ride past Drottningholm Palace, the home of the Swedish royal family. Our new word is idyllic- everywhere so far has been idyllic. The boat ride was smooth and picturesque, definitely worth the walk there (which was idyllic, by the way).

Kerstin, our host choir’s conductor, invited us to her home for… more fika! We’re fans of Swedish sweets!

Back the the church we went for another rehearsal plus pizza (and fika).

We had our first concert of tour in their beautiful sanctuary. How lucky we are to sing in beautiful venues all over the world. PG alum Trish Mejilla joined us making our concert even more special.

I don’t think I have to tell you what we ate at the post-concert reception…

Today we have our concert at St Jacob’s Church then off to Rättvik for Midsommar!