Viva's singing bus tour

At pre-arranged locations, we sang some of our favourite and most well known songs. On the occasion of the anniversary year, we also gave out postcards, announcing our new events, with which we intend to celebrate three decades of activity: Viva’s gala dance, which took place on June 24th 2022 and Viva’s annual concert, which will take place on October 22nd 2022 (more details in autumn).

We decorated the postcards with photos from September’s intensive exercises on the coast, October’s annual concert ‘’Out of the Box’’ and the 27th competition of Slovenian choirs ‘’Naša pesem’’, where we performed for the ninth time, and this time took home the gold plaque for the first time.

Since there are quite many of us and we are first and foremost (and at heart) Posavci who sing in a Posavje-based choir, we also planned our tour, as is the custom in our region: on Saturday in Styria, and on Sunday in Carniola.

We started the trip on Saturday morning with a ‘’flash mob’’ at the market in Brežice and continued in Šentlenart in front of the fire station. With our choir bus, we then went to Artiče, where we were joined by the KUD Oton Župančič Artiče Mixed Choir, with whom, in addition to our love of singing, we also share our choirmaster Simona Rožman Strnad. We then went to Sromlje and later to Bizeljsko, to the basement of the Babič family house in Bukovje, where the Bizeljsko Men’s Choir awaited us. Whilst viewing the collection of jugs, we sang their new toast song ‘’Nazdravimo z majoliko’’, whose author is Slavko Mihelin, the president of THE Bizeljsko Men’s Choir and father of Vivika Katja Povše. Then we drove to Dobova, where we were welcomed and addressed by the president of the local community Branka Stergar and the president of KD Franc Bogovič Dobova, Drago Iljaš. There we gained new strength with an excellent lunch so that we could continue to Zdole and then to Senovo. Our penultimate stop that day was Blanca, or the playground at Kladje nad Blanco. We finished our Saturday tour on the Carniola side of the Sava river at Čatež ob Savi, which heralded our journey throughout Carniola for the next day.

On Sunday morning, rested, full of energy and eager for new singing memories, we initiated the Sunday tour in Žejno. There we took photos beside the wall paintings, whose authors were local artists Rajko Baškovč and Darko Oštrbenk, the latter also being the father of two choir members – Lara and Eva Oštrbenk. We continued the tour in Skopice and later in Podbočje. Our tour bus also took us to Drnovo, Žadovinek and to Studenec, where we had lunch under the hayrack of The Janc restaurant. The tour concluded in the castle courtyard of the Posavje Museum Brežice, where we toasted together to our success.

Our choir member Samo Hajtnik compiled various footage from our tour into a video, which you can watch at the bottom of the article, together with photos taken by another member, Amir Tokić.

We are happy that we were able to sing together with our listeners from both sides of the Sava River and socialize with them in a relaxed atmosphere. We would like to thank from the bottom of our hearts all the locals and the many formers singers of Viva, who welcomed us everywhere, prepared pleasant feasts and gave us thunderous applause. Thank you for celebrating with us!

Eva Oštrbenk (English translation by Aljaž Arh)