Music Head to Austria

On Saturday 6th July the Junior and Senior School Brass Bands set off on their bi-annual concert tour this time to Austria.  Band tours are quite unique as they are the only residential trip in the school that is a whole school tour with pupils from Year 2 up to Year 13 all working together as one big family. 

Anna H was one of the Junior School pupils who went on the trip, do click the button below to read all about her experience.

I really enjoyed our trip to Austria! The coach journey was fun but long.

I loved playing in the concerts and I liked it when the audience danced along to YMCA (the seniors helped with the actions). We did three concerts at Zell am See, Salzburg Mirabell Gardens and Schladming. Arrabella played an amazing solo. The concert at Zell am See was my favourite because we had ice creams while the Seniors played.

I didn’t just play the Euphonium all week we also went on really fun adventures like the dry slope toboggan run. There was a long slide winding its way down the mountain and we took a chairlift right up to the top of the mountain. We went down on a green tray with a handle. If you pushed the handle forwards you went fast and you could pull the handle back to slow down. I was going at max speed the whole way down!

The Water gardens at Saltierhof were amazing! I got soaking wet which was great on such a hot day. There was a table and chairs and water shot out of the seats when you were least expecting it. There were tunnels of fountains and surprise jets everywhere.

One really hot day we went down to the salt mines at Berchtesgarden. We had to put on really hot overalls which felt wrong on such a hot day, but when we went down the tunnels on the train it got really cold and we were pleased to be wearing nice warm clothes! In the salt mines we used the old wooden miner’s slides. It was scary at the top because you couldn’t see the end of the slide and it was dark.  As you went down it felt like you might hit your head on the tunnel but we didn’t and it was really fun! We also went on a boat across the underground lake.  You could see the crystals dancing in the water.

One evening we were asked to go back in to the dining room after dinner and some Austrian musicians came in wearing dirndls and lederhosen. There was lots of Austrian dancing and music. They played the accordion, cowbells and Alphorn. I had a go on the Alphorn and managed to play jingle bells!

At the end of a really hot day in Salzburg Mr Brown asked us all to line up outside the front of the Gasthof to have our photo taken. He then snuck up behind us with a hose and the water fight began!

There were lots of things to do at the Gasthof. I liked talking to the horses and going on the roundabout, seesaw and trampoline. The food was great! There was schnitzel, ice cream sundae and spaghetti bolognaise, but my favourite was apfel strudel.

It was a very fun trip to Austria.  I really enjoyed it despite the long journey home. The Year 3s are starting the free brass scheme this term so hopefully there will be more people from my year group on the 2026 tour!