I arrived in NYC on Thursday afternoon 26 April. I would be subletting, and Marty who gave me the room also gave me transit instructions to get to it. The transit was easy for me to use and I got to my neighborhood and everything was much nicer and more convenient than I was expecting. My place is as close as possible to the 1 transit line on 225th and the Metro North Transit line. My neighborhood is Marble Hill.
I was let in by Marty’s neighbor (my neighbor now) Nancy, who gave me advice about the neighborhood and invited me to an upcoming German opera production of Beauty and the Beast – Zemire und Azor. I explored the neighborhood and later when my house mate Ed returned home and I talked with him and we determined that we had more in common than we expected, so I am happy in my home.
Friday and Saturday I took the train into the city and walked around. It was a lot to take in. I walked though some parks and walked into some stores and tried to watch people in the different neighborhoods to see what they were doing. I looked for coffee and was really surprised that there seemed to be no coffeehouses anywhere.
On Saturday night I went to that opera. It was in the Liederkranz on East 87th on a small stage with an audience of about 40. The actors were so close and I had never appreciated what opera singing was before this. It made me realize that for every opera singer who performs professionally there are many equally talented singers who perform as amateurs and enthusiasts and who may or may not someday become professionals themselves. I do not have vocabulary to describe the show, but it had me entranced and I had never before heard voices do what they were doing with their voices.