Last Saturday was a good day: I got to sleep in and relax in the morning, then the afternoon was filled with the Chocolate Festival! That's right an entire festival dedicated to my favorite confection - it was amazing. Plus, it was in one of the castle courtyards, so while enjoying some fine chocolate, I got to enjoy the beautiful weather and a lovely view of the city. Some of the booths were even giving out free samples! And at this point the day was just gearing up.
That evening I had planned a trip to the opera, so I was meeting some of the guys early for a fancy dinner. We ate an upscale Hungarian restaurant just a few minutes walk from the Opera. Then it was time for the main event: Don Pasquale (composed by Gaetano Donizetti). We got fairly cheap seats, so we were in the nosebleeds, but we could still see pretty well. The Hungarian State Opera House is absolutely gorgeous, inside and out. We entered in the main entrance, but were informed that we had to use the side entrance to reach the balcony (guess we didn't pay enough to use the grand staircase). The opera itself was very good as well. It was a comic opera, so it was light-hearted and fun. Unfortunately, the supertitles were in Hungarian, but I had looked up the story beforehand so I knew what was going on. I was really impressed by the bass, who played the title character.
Through the marvels of facebook, I got a fair number of people to come along, a good number of whom had never seen an opera, so I feel I have done my duty as a lover of classical music. I also think that many of them even somewhat enjoyed it (at least so they said to my face). Anyway, I am looking forward to going back and enjoying more opera, because tickets are cheap! So, that was my great day on Saturday, and unfortunately I had to pay for it by holing up in my room sick yesterday. I'm feeling better now though, so that's good.
If you're interested, I have settled on most of my schedule. I will be taking Introduction to Abstract Algebra (hereafter Intro to Algebra or just Algebra), Combinatorics 2: Hypergraph Theory, Differential Geometry (from the "Subjects you didn't know could be differentiable" category), intermediate Hungarian language, and a cultural elective (haven't decided which one yet, I have to figure out which one is least bad - this may be a pessimistic view of things, but seems to be well-founded). And all of these classes fit into Tuesday-Friday, meaning I have Mondays free! That will be a great boon to weekend travels!
That's all for now. Thanks for reading!
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