This is kind of old news by now, but yeah, I went to Switzerland. It was my first time to “the Continent.” Actually, the entire MIT Concert Choir went to Lausanne, which is on the north shore of Lake Geneva, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, in order to sing Brahms’ Ein Deutsche Requiem together with the University Choir of Lausanne.
We had two performances, both in the Cathedral of Lausanne. It was my first time singing in a cathedral — in fact, one of the few times I’ve gotten to sing in a venue with really nice acoustics (ok, Dabney Lounge at Caltech was pretty good).
When we weren’t performing or rehearsing, we played tourist. I toured Lausanne, Montreux (which has a nice 12th-century château), Evian, and Geneva. Yussanne came out from London to visit! Here are pictures.
It was cool to actually have time to hang out and socialize with kids in the choir. Some of them are pretty cool. Even though we spend 5 hours a week together, we spend most of it singing and there isn’t much time to get to know people, especially outside your section. Plus, I’m usually hungry and grumpy from a long work day. :)
Oh, and I gave an astronomy talk too. When my advisor heard that I was going to Switzerland, he set me up with some of his buddies at the Observatory of Geneva, and I presented a little talk about our current research. It went pretty well, I thought.