Greetings to all in Sunny Buck from Prague, Czech Republic. We all arrived safely, albeit 12 arriving two days late! Our tour agency put 16 of us on one plane – they arrived here Saturday morning, on May 8. Twelve of us, myself included, were stranded in Pittsburgh. The plane that we were to take to Newark, N.J., to meet our overseas connection, was hit by lightning. This happened on Friday night, so we wound up staying at the local La Quinta for four hours while our 16 other members of the Ensemble were on their way to Prague.

The next day, we were ferried to Newark, where we waited 12 hours for a flight. There were no flights to Prague, so we were sent to Paris where we slept on the floor and connected after 10 hours with a plane to Prague. We joined the first part of our group two days late, and just in time to finally go to bed after 48 hours on the road and no musical horns or luggage.

We awoke to play a morning concert on Monday, May 10, with only a promise that our horns and luggage might arrive. They finally did arrive in time to be jettisoned from a delivering truck, to our bus, and then to our concert.

We played in a concert with the Czech Conservatory Big Band. Whew!!! They were terrific! The theater was a 300-year-old, beautifully maintained structure with a crowd of 500 students from the nearby high school. Their response was very gratifying.

On Tuesday, we had a discussion session at the Conservatory, where we exchanged ideas with young Czech professionals. We found that if they qualify to enter the school (by audition), they may go free. As you might imagine, they were stunned at the prices of an education in America.

We were also tourists, seeing the home of Anton Dvorak (New World Symphony) and Mozart’s Prague residence. The Prague Castle is incredible. That night, we took a boat tour on the Vltava, after which we had a wonderful festival dinner and then went to our hotel Kristas to pack.