We loaded the bus out of Koper early the morning of the 23rd and headed across the border, where there was an actual border checkpoint, unlike in much of the rest of the EU. Don't know why - Croatia has a different currency, and apparently stamps passports when crossing the border, but is also definitely a full-fledged EU member. Maybe they're just extra cautious? Still a little gun-shy from their Yugoslavian days? Could be anything.
Speaking of currency, we did make a stop at a convenience store to retrieve some kuna, which runs at about 6-to-1 against the dollar, quite similar to the exchange rate in China. Things didn't end up being much cheaper in Croatia, though, but in the right shops you could get meals for less than $2 US.
Anyway, we reached Zadar by early afternoon, and spread out to find our living spaces. For this stop on the trip, we rented apartments all around the city, rather than stay at a hotel. This was pretty cool, and it meant putting us in the heart of old town within walking distance of everything. This was the view from my group's apartment, just one block or so from the coast:
And the apartment itself:
And this was a street nearby:
It reminded me a lot of Venice, just without the canals. Very much the classic old-town European city by the sea.
We got lunch at a place just outside our apartment:
Where for some reason the waiter seemed to have a grudge against Phill.
That was about all the time we had before we were on to our next thing - a concert in a completely different town. We set this up to give us more performance opportunities and to make sure we were ready to compete, but it really made the evening feel rushed. We loaded up the bus and headed to Šibenik, which was about an hour away.
We had a warm-up time in the church:
Before being let free for a bit more than an hour break. A few of us headed across the street to a coffee/dessert place, which we reached just as a torrential downpour broke outside:
Luckily, I had my rain jacket, and we hadn't yet changed into concert black.
We headed back to the church, changed, and performed the concert. Then, the...priest, or maybe monk, took us all into the back room and gave us beer, wine, and various snacks to eat, which was great, as well as unexpected.
Getting back to Zadar, we all realized that this would be the one real chance we'd have to go out, since most of the rest of the Zadar leg of the trip had something competition-related going on, and as much fun as the trip was, it had to be remembered that the true purpose of our being here was this set of performances. So despite it already being fairly late, off into the night we went.
My first stop was at this very blue bar:
Where the beer was like, 17kn, or near $3 per bottle. Which is not a bad price.
Walking around some more, we accidentally (I think) stumbled upon the Sea Organ and the Greeting to the Sun.
The former you may have heard of; it's essentially a staircase that goes into the water, but with openings that let the water in and push air out through holes, making sounds essentially the same way a pipe organ does. It kind of sounded like whales singing.
Here is a video of it made by someone other than me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n86pF-wQKrw
The Greeting to the Sun is a colorful solar panel. Despite its name, it is way cooler to see at night, so I'm glad that's when we happened upon it. We did some more walking around, but bars began to close up and the town began to deaden, so eventually we went back to the apartment.
The next morning, I enjoyed an espresso with milk in a picturesque setting:
And then took a morning stroll down the waterfront to the Sea Organ again:
Along the way, I passed some Cardinals on their way to the beach and told them I'd be joining them soon. I returned to the apartment, rallied my roommates, and set out for the beach, grabbing a cheap sandwich at our nearby grocery/convenience store first. I didn't take my phone to the water, so no pictures, but it was a pebble beach, which I'm not sure I've ever been to before. This meant no sand everywhere, which was nice, but also that walking around, including in the water, was very painful without shoes.
We spent most of the morning and afternoon on the beach, occasionally grabbing a drink from the stand just up the hill, and despite applying and re-applying sunscreen like a madman, I did end up very burnt at the end of the day - but only in specific areas. Let's just say I have a very clear idea of how far my arm can reach down my back now.
After the beach, I got lunch at, of all things, a burger stand near the apartment. I got one called the "Oh My Sweet Cheesus" burger, and it was as good as it sounds. A brief late afternoon nap then followed before heading to our one obligation for the day, the opening concert of the competition, given by the Slovenian Philharmonic Choir at the St. Anastasia church just a block or two over.
Before attending the concert, however, we met our guide, Martina, and then press-ganged her into being our diction coach on the one Croatian piece we were singing in the competition. Dr. Hatteberg had her read the text over and over, then listen to us sing and give us pointers. Singing that piece for Croatian audiences later on during the week was always a trip; you'd see eyebrows raise and faces light up as they realized this American choir was singing something in their native tongue, and I guess Martina did a good job as our coach, because everyone seemed to think our pronunciation was at least up to par.
Then, the concert, which was very well done. You could tell this was a professional group.
After that was back to the apartment and off to bed. The next day was the big day. We needed rest.
After a breakfast at one of the street restaurants on our block, we returned to the church to then set out to find a usable rehearsal space - the church itself was unavailable, as were apparently any rooms around town. The competition had set up for us a classroom later in the afternoon to sing, but nowhere that morning. So we eventually settled on a nice shady grove by the water:
Which, as it usually does, garnered us an ad-hoc audience that clapped every time we stopped.
After the morning rehearsal, we had a break until the afternoon, so I decided to walk around on my own to see as much of Zadar as I could. While I initially planned to just circumnavigate the peninsula, I took a different route once I reached this big bridge:
Which, if we were in Old Town, led to what I have to assume is New Town.
I didn't take any photos in the quick block I circled in New Town before re-crossing the bridge. It looked fairly unremarkable compared to Old. The disparity between the two made me think of Florida, whose touristy areas have a rustic beauty to them, but once one departs from the beachfront, the town proper is discovered, which isn't as dressed up.
After crossing back into Old Town, I did my circling as planned:
Toward the center:
Then back toward the sea:
Where I once again saw the Greeting to the Sun and Sea Organ:
...before returning to the apartment.
Another rehearsal followed just a few hours later. We first ducked into the competition space to get a feel for it, then journeyed to our classroom. Another break followed, then it was time for the competition at last.
This year's competition was much different than Harmonie Festival had been the summer before. In Zadar, there was really just one performance set of about 20 minutes. That was all. We would later find out that the top 3 choirs had to perform about 10 minutes more at the final round, but I don't know that that was explicitly clear to us that Friday night.
Outside the competition venue, spectators were watching the competing choir on a video monitor:
As the hall itself was too small to fit everyone in. Inside, waiting in line, we saw a familiar sight:
Our old Kentucky home, as it were, right here with us as we prepared to go in.
The competition room was surprisingly small; more like an elementary school auditorium or smaller than a concert hall. We barely fit in left-to-right, and as for front-to-back, we stretched almost to the judges' table halfway back in the room. Still, we made it work, singing through our set: Mendelssohn's Richte mich, Gott; Monteverdi's Sanctus; Matsushita's O Lux Beata Trinitas; Brahms's Nachwache I; the Croatian piece whose title and composer I still don't know, and rounding out with the spiritual, Moses Hogan's My Soul's Been Anchored in the Lord.
There was no time to relax once the competition set was sung, however, since we had less than 30 minutes to get to the seaside Promenade concert, which seemed to be an effort on the part of the Zadarians to promote this festival a bit more to the public. They just had each of the participating choirs do a more informal, outdoor set flash mob-style, and tonight's venue was that good ol' Sea Organ. An iconic spot to be sure, but as the only place in the city guaranteed to have some musical sounds going on at all times, it seems like maybe they could have chosen more wisely. Still, I got to take part in a performance of, among other things, my Shall We Gather setting while watching the sun set over the Adriatic Sea.
Saturday morning we had a second outdoor Promenade concert (in a different location), which this time had to compete briefly with an electric guitarist across the Square. This concert was attended by our new biggest fan, a small baby child who threw his hands in the air on the final chord of Ezekiel Saw de Wheel. That may also qualify him to be our new mascot - I'll have to double check.
In the afternoon a few of us climbed the big tower adjoined to the church where the opening concert had been:
Looking down, we saw another choir taking their spot in the Promenade rotation:
And an overhead view of the church:
The climb down:
A round of afternoon naps and dinner followed before the big finale: the closing ceremony where the top 3, and subsequently the winner, would be announced. We sat in the auditorium along with the other choirs and, I assume, an audience of Zadarian citizens:
The way they structured it was to announce each group from last place to first, as scored by round 1. It was made slightly confusing by the fact that anyone between certain score ranges got a certain medal - e.g. 70-80 points was "bronze medal" regardless of where you placed in the rankings overall - so it was tough to tell in real time how many more groups there were and, thus, if we were in the top 3 or not. With each group announced it ratcheted up the tension and anxiety that much more.
But finally, they got to the end, and when second place was announced as a choir other than us, we excitedly realized we'd gotten first. But! The catch was that the top 3 had to re-compete, meaning the other choirs had a chance to overtake us as the actual grand prize winner. Obviously we couldn't let that happen, and - as the stage announced a brief intermission before the final round - we scurried outside to put together our 10-minute final set.
In the end, we opened with Salvation is Created - not one we'd competed with in round 1 - and repeated Matsushita's O Lux and Hogan's My Soul's Been Anchored, the latter of which, predictably, really wowed the crowd.
Then we returned to the lobby to await the judges' final deliberation, and - as many of you already know - it matched the round 1 rankings, meaning we took home first.
This was a big deal, as not only was it a prestigious award, but it came with a monetary prize as well, in the form of one of those giant cardboard checks:
We passed it around and took pictures with it, in various groups, one of which consisted of people whose last year in Cardinal this was, and so included me.
But the celebrating had only just begun. All of the participating choirs made their way through the city to an outdoor bar, where a party was being thrown in our honor, with one free drink apiece. It had to have been the coolest locale in all of Zadar:
In the middle of this sprawling venue was a mountain with a winding spiral pathway to the top, which gave the best view:
We commingled with a German choir, who knew many of the same works by Mendelssohn that we did, so we had an impromptu inebriated hilltop concert with them. One of those moments.
The next morning, Sunday, we had one last activity in Zadar before leaving: a church service, back at the St. Anastasia church where the opening concert had been, just a few nights earlier. That morning, nothing was open for breakfast early enough to accommodate us, so I grabbed a sandwich from the little convenience store once again, and had yet another seaside coffee to go with it.
And then, with the church service over and the last of our kuna spent, we, the Cardinal Singers, the 2018 winners of the Zadar Choir Competition, loaded up the bus that we hadn't seen since Wednesday, and headed off.
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