I attended a conference last weekend in Bayreuth connected with my scholarship. It was a great experience interacting with 500-plus students from 89 different countries. Have you ever met someone from Uzbekistan? I hadn’t before last Saturday. There were also a disproportionately large number of students from Brazil (maybe some of them made their academic decisions based on the location of the World Cup?).
For Saturday night the conference organizers rented out a community hall for a dinner/dance.
I had a great time teaching lonely-looking Syrian and Egyptian students the actions to Y-M-C-A.
We also had time for a little sight-seeing including the famous Wagner opera house, open only 5 weeks a year for the Wagner festival and which shows exclusively his works, and the Hermitage, a huge Baroque garden.
Wagner's residence in Bayreuth (1871-1882), where "Wahnfried" roughly translated means freedom from madness.
Hermitage
