Day 9: Tirolean music and dance

For our next challenge we went to a place that puts on a Tirolean (or Tyrolean) music and dance show for bus loads of foreign tourists each night. But we showed up hours before the show and had to try playing Tirolean musical instruments (singing saw, Tirolean horn - the really long one, and cow bells) and we also had to try yodeling and learn a "simple" foot slapping dance.

After we tried all the instruments and the yodeling and performed our dance for the judges, we got to eat a traditional dinner of weiner schnitzel and watch how good a job the professionals could do.

Here is the video of our dance performance. Despite what it looks like, I was NOT having a mini-stroke at the finale!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c7QxtmXXJ4&amp…

The dancing reminded me a lot of the Morris dancers we saw in England: kind of silly looking to the untrained eye, even though it takes a huge amount of skill and coordination. One of my favorite dances they did was the millers dance, which was a couples dance where the men and women formed interlocking spinning circles that were reminiscent of milling wheels.

The audience consisted of us (the only ones actually eating dinner) and hundreds of tourists, from all over the world, who had been transported to Innsbruck and then disgorged from buses.Read more