It was already time to say goodbye to Vienna so after breakfast we loaded our luggage into a trailer attached to our double decker bus.

It was only about halfway to our destination that the Hawaii Masterworks Chorus director, Tim Carney, came to tell me that the Abbey had given me permission to play the organ.

Now you tell me?!

After we arrived, the bus driver unlocked the trailer and began pulling out all the suitcases, one by one, in search of my suitcase with my organ music, and especially my organ shoes! He only had to take out about 20 bags to find mine! Thanks to Marcus Fikse who located my suitcase on the far side.

After a visit to the gardens, a docent led us on a tour of the Abbey, a working Benedictine Abbey since 1089. In addition to the monks, there is a day school here with 900 students. The library reminded me of the one shown in the Harry Potter movies, with over 100,000 books.

However, it was the chapel which was so impressive—I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much gold on one place. The docent said the use of so much gold was to glorify God.

One of the staff members came with the organ key and we walked up the spiral staircase to the organ balcony. The organ was completely restored by Hradetsky in 1970.

The choir began its portion of the program, then I joined them on Mozart’s Ave verum corpus. Of course I only had a few seconds to find the appropriate stops, and there was no way to see the director downstairs. As Tim Carney said, “the choir will follow Kathy!”

After the choir finished its program, I took a few minutes to play three selections from Bach’s Orgelbüchlein: “Heut triumphiret Gottes sohn,” “Ich ruf zu Dir”, and “Wer nur den lieben Gott.” I guess people were really wowed by the organ as many people commented to me how much they liked it.

I wanted to show you pictures of more friends I have run across in this tour. What has been fun is getting to visit with them away from Hawaii, and getting to know them better.

Of course, the other nice aspect of going on tour is making new friends. You have plenty of time for interesting conversation while riding the bus. Today’s total journey from Vienna to Salzburg was 184 miles, which we broke up with the stop at Melk. Here is my new friend, Christel Yount.

When en route to Salzburg we also stopped at a truck stop and I was astounded at the food displays in the store. See if you don’t agree! This is a truck stop like no other!