Pretty slow day. It is still quite rainy and cold, which doesn’t really motivate one to be active and do a lot of sightseeing. German class was cancelled for the morning and so we didn’t have class until 2:00. In the morning I went to the institute and basically hung out there until class. I did some reading, finished some homework for history class and caught up on the latest college football happenings. After history class I finally was able to catch Mom online and we chatted for about 20-30 minutes. That was nice. We didn’t get the audio working but that’s ok. I was in a public room and I’m not sure they would have appreciated the conversation anyhow. (of course, in a similar situation I was able to listen to a girl talk mushy-talk with her fiancée for about 20 minutes…wanted to stab myself with my pencil to end the madness. Seriously, they spent 5 minutes arguing about who missed the others’ voice more. Bleh!)
Last night the big plan was for a group to get together and go to the Opera to see Carmen. We are, of course, cheapo students, and opt for the standing room tickets in the nether regions of the opera hall. Do grab these hot pieces of real estate you basically just have to get in line 2-3 hours early. So, we jumped in line at 4:30. I was assured that we could just get through the line quickly, grab some tickets, mark our spots and then head back out into town until the opera started at 7. Good thing, too, because I was getting pretty hungry. Well, it wasn’t until I read the opera ticket manual that I found out that the standing room (stehplatz) tickets wouldn’t even start selling until 5:45. Egad. So, over an hour later, the line started to move slowly and sometime around 6 we finally got our tickets. I was absolutely famished and excited to get out and find some food but…nope. Turns out once you get your tickets you have to show them to get your standing room spot and then there’s no turning back. “The point of no return”, to quote an operatic tale. So I just slowly starved to death in my spot for an hour until the show started. Beautiful building, by the way.
Anyhow, the performance started and it was indeed marvelous. We enjoyed the first two acts immensely. We found some of the other kids from our program across the hall from us and talked to them for a bit. Amusingly, they thought Carmen only had two acts and left after the second. Whoops. It has four. We stayed for the whole thing (3.5 hours of standing got a bit old after all that time in line…). Really quite enjoyable, especially towards the end when people start going insane and there are stabbings. There were several famous songs that I had no idea were in Carmen. Having just been to southern spain, which is the setting for the Opera, I especially enjoyed watching it with my background experience on Flamenco, bullfighting and Spanish culture. Good stuff. Oh, and did I mention that the performance only cost 2 euros ($2.70)? Pretty good bargain!
1 comment:
Not naming any initials, but I think that Christina's the engaged girl you're talking about.
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