Ay-aye-aye

Well, the first day of classes is done for me. I had my piano lesson at 9:30. My teacher is wonderful and, oy vay, she assigned a lot of pieces:
Tango by Albanez
Papillion by Grieg
Haydn Sonata in C Maj (all 3 movements)
Mendelssohn Song without Words in E-flat Maj
Bach 2-part invention in D min
We only had a half-hour but she worked with me on posture, wrist movement, pedaling, eye focus (yes), relaxed shoulders, individual note emphasis within a chord and octave scales. (The rumor is that she was an Olympic competitor in rhythmic dance.)
Next class was a biggie – solfege/music theory. 10:30-12:50 (I have it for 5 hours every week) The teacher is very nice, very demanding and wins the award for the most homework I’ve ever been assigned for one class. For Thursday’s class I have a huge laundry list of things I have to learn, practice and review. We sang solfege (do, re, mi…) some Bach examples, a madrigal, a 3-part Mozart and an Italian art song. We did two dictation pieces and we did a bunch of diatonic theory (triads, scale degrees…). One fun thing we did that I’ve never done was solfege-repeating a cannon. My teacher, Klara, played a melody on the piano. We had to repeat back the first two measures on solfege while she continued on to the next two measures and on and on through the cannon. It was really a lot of fun. My brain was working on two almost completely different tasks simultaneously – singing/solfeging and listening/memorizing. My homework includes several pieces that I have to solfege one part and play on the piano the other two parts – ee, gads.
Next, I accompanied a singer’s lesson. She was doing Faure’s Pie Jesu so that was nothing new; I could zone out a bit.
Then it was one of my scheduled practice times so I went and played through my new piano pieces and worked on my solfege.
I’m back in my room listening to the Gypsy Kings and chilling out. If I work up the energy again I’ll make dinner and do some more homework and practicing. More tomorrow!

Movie Time!

Here are a few movies from my trip....

The first is of an Irish castle with the tower bells ringing....



The second is from a wine tasting.....



The third shows our very "musical" walking tour guide.

The Beautiful Blue Danube, paprika, salami and St. Stephen

This past week, Sept 3 – Sept 7, we’ve had orientation. It’s been a week of traveling around Hungary by way of introducing us to our new country. Here’s the run-down:



Mon – Budapest. Opera House, St. Stephen’s Basilica (we’ve heard about a million-trillion times this week that St. Stephen was the first king of Hungary. We saw his right hand in the basilica!), lunch in Central Kavehaz & Etterem, castle district and general sightseeing






Tue – North-Western Part of Hungary. Archabbey of Pannonhalma, Eszterhazy Castle, Szechenyi Castle, Herend Porcelanium factory and museum including a cup of tea in their famous porcelain, stay the night in a hotel in Sopron.

Wed – North-Western Part of Hungary. Sopron sightseeing, Lake Balaton (nicknamed the Hungarian Sea. It was so cold, windy and rainy! Apparently a lot of the lake is really shallow so it’s fun for the kids), dinner in a csarda (fish soup – a bit too fishy even for me- & traditional music)

Thur – Southern Part of Hungary at the River Tisza. Opusztaszer National Historical Memorial Park (horse show. Hmm, I don’t know the appropriate historical terms but it was like a barbarian Hun jousting show. There were 4 people in their nomadic-looking attire and they were shooting arrows and waving swords while riding horses; bit insane really – kind of like the Renaissance reinactors who really get into their roles. The main guy, let’s call him Atilla, picked me to come up and learn to shoot an arrow [I had not volunteered byt]) I turned my camera to take a picture of Atilla and that's him aiming his arrow at me...scary especially since I saw him shoot a stray dog with an arrow before the show started, sightseeing in Szeged, Szeged synagogue (second largest in Hungary – considered the most beautiful by the Hungarians and me), salami museum ☺, paprika museum

Fri – Southern Part of Hungary. Visit to traditional Hungarian home & embroidery exhibition, sightseeing in the archbishopric town of Kalocsa, mini organ concert in the church (Liszt was the first to play the organ), the church treasury (including one of the three copies of the Hungarian crown. The pope has another one of the three and the third is also in Kalocsa.), library of Kalocsa (including one of Martin Luther’s personal bibles with his handwritten notes in it and a 30 year old model of the city church made of sugar), another paprika museum, wine tasting afternoon in Hajos.





*quick pronunciation guide regarding the “s”
an ‘s’ by itself is pronounced like ‘sh’ as in ‘sheep’. For example: Budape-sh-t and Sh-opron.
‘sz’ sounds like a plain ‘s’ as in ‘say’. For example: Szechenyi is pronounced [say-chain-ey].

*quick historical note
By the way, Mr. Szechenyi is a huge hero in Hungary. He was responsible for humungous works projects like the highway system, engineering the path of the rivers through Hungary, the uniting of Buda and Pest, the racing horse-breeding industry and the introduction of the flush toilet into Hungary (thanks for that!). The oldest and most famous bridge across the Danube at Budapest is the Szechenyi Bridge commonly known as the “Chain Bridge”.

Blah, bloo, blah...

I’ve made it to Hungary. Yesterday was my travel day and it was a bit crazy. Gatwick to Budapest was uneventful which is always good when it comes to airline travel. I was supposed to have a car meet me at the airport to drive me to the institute but it never showed. He actually told me today that he was there but there was definitely no one with a sign with my name on it. After a bit of confusion and one futile trip out to the train platform, I bought my ticket (in the airport), walked back out to the dark platform and caught the train to Kecskemet. It was like the Hogwarts Express minus the beautifulness. I half expected someone to come down the aisle selling every-flavor beans and chocolate frogs. I got into a compartment with two Hungarian girls about my age. One of them was going to Kecskemet and she and her mom ended up walking me from the train station to my school. It was a good thing too because it was a short walk but it was overgrown and there were no lights for the first bit and I think it even went through a cemetery – nice for my first night in Hungary…blah, bloo, blah (Mike’s favorite Dracula quote).

Well, I’m sharing a room with Lisa, a nice girl who is a junior undergrad trumpeter at Capitol College in Ohio. The Institute is beautiful – I’ll post pictures.

Today we went sightseeing in Budapest as a group. I think there will be between 30-40 students studying here this semester; lots of undergrad. There seems to be a real difference between the undergrad students who are here for a semester and the grad students who will be here for a year. We have our placement tests/auditions and start classes next week.

Tomorrow we’re off on a two-day excursion through Hungary. I’ll check in when I can!

Groundlings in the Wooden O

I'll start at the end of the evening first, the highlight of our day. Wendy and I got cheap tickets (5GBP) to The Merchant of Venice at Shakespeare's Globe theater. We enjoyed the Elizabethean experience of being "groundlings" a.k.a. tickets so cheap that you don't even get to sit down. The Globe, as you probably know, is a circular building around an open-air courtyard - "the wooden o". 700 people pay to stand in the yard during the show although it was 1,000 in Shakespeare's time and they only paid a penny each back then. Wendy and I queued up early and were nearly the beginning of the line so we had our choice of where to stand when the house opened. We leaned on the stage for the show and had a fabulous 3 hours! I'll never go back to seats again :)

We started the day by running some errands - post office, drug store... Then we walked the few blocks to Harrod's and spend some time among the pets, pianos, perfume, pomegranates and pantyhose that were for sale. We got the tube from Knightsbridge to Chancery Lane and walked the rest of the way to one of my favorite pubs, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. After our panini sandwiches and beverages we crossed the Millenium Bridge to the Tate Modern. We wandered through the art for a bit then settled on a porch overlooking the Thames for lattes and tiramisu. We went next to wait in line outside The Globe and you know the rest.

I'm sure our feet will recover from the abuse...eventually.