Well, it's almost unbelievable that we've been on this tour for 7 days. We left Chicago a week ago tonight and since we left we've visited 3 countries and have been pretty busy.
Today was a little bit easier on us than yesterday. There was absolutely no schedule for us until 12:45 pm when we were to meet for lunch. A few of us slept, others walked on their own or on prescribed tours and others took a tour on the canals. Personally, the canal tour was a really good way to see a lot of the city in one hour without expending tons of energy. I even got to see the back side of the little mermaid statue. I didn't expect to see her at all. I'd read that she was going on loan to an exhibition in China but apparently that isn't until 2010. Erik Silfverberg was right when he told me she's not much to look at. I'm glad that I did get to see her but more glad that I didn't go to extra effort to see her.
Once our free morning concluded we proceeded to the Copenhagen Temple Corps for a traditional Danish smörgåsbord. OK... since smörgåsbord is actually a Swedish word maybe it wasn't a traditional Danish meal. But it was good.
We then had ample time to set up the Temple for the evening concert before heading to a plaza for an outdoor afternoon concert. The afternoon concert was held right outside Royal Copenhagen, the purveyor to Her Majesty the Queen of Denmark since 1775. The building we were in front of was not quite that old but I believe it was built in the late 1800s. In a city that was chartered in 1254 that building is almost "a baby".
There were literally hundreds of people passing by the spot where we were playing. Many stopped to listen. It was actually a beautiful day for an outside concert. The wind was blowing but the sun was shining and the temperature was pleasant. Our Executive Officer spoke to one American couple who asked if we had just been in Sweden? When he replied yes, they said they'd heard us at our outdoor concert in Stockholm and were now hearing us in Copenhagen. They wouldn't really qualify as groupies since their next stop is Rome and ours is Dresden.
During the concert Erik Silfverberg honored us by conducting two of his march compositions.
After a short break we had dinner with much of the territorial staff and then proceeded back to the Temple Corps for our concert. All but the "cheap seats" on the far sides of the balcony were full and the audience was very generous in their appreciation of our efforts.
This marks the end of the road for us and Mike Dickens from Sweden. Mike has been hauling our equipment in his truck for us since we arrived in Oslo, Norway. Not only has he taken care of transporting our equipment he has been handling the borrowed percussion equipment we've been using. He's been a big help to us in a lot of other ways as well since he knows Scandinavia very well. We'll miss Mike as we head to Germany and he returns to his regular full time job.
This marks the end of our time in Denmark and we were truly blessed to be here. Stay tuned for more tomorrow.
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