Hyderabad December 21-23

Back in Hyderabad, I stayed at the HMI campus again. On Tuesday December 21, I went into the city to meet my friend Timothy Marthand, the world-class pianist. He will be performing in his first concert tour in a few months. He, a German piano student who is taking lessons with him and I went to a local restaurant, one of a number of fancy places that have sprung up in recent years in the Banjara Hills neighborhood.

The next morning, Wednesday December 22, I went to the Andhra Pradesh State Department of Archaeology to meet a staff archaeologist there, P. Subramanyam, to discuss the idea of my documenting the 17th century Dutch East India Company settlement at Bhimunipatnam. After that positive meeting, I went again to visit Timothy Marthand and Shanely, the singer with whom he has been performing lieder by Robert Schumann (his favorite is Dein Angesicht, opus 127, no. 2, text by Heinrich Heine).

While in Banjara Hills, I took my iPhone to a local cell phone place to get it unlocked; which was quickly done. I had bought the iPhone as an unlocked phone second hand a couple of years ago from Timothy in India, but it had started to malfunction recently and in an attempt to fix it, I ended up locking it. After visiting Timothy, I went to the Hyderabad book fair, where I ended up buying a lot of books.

The next morning Thursday December 23, I went into the city to do some shopping at Big Bazaar in Abids and in the afternoon I left for the airport for my flight to Dubai that left at 6:40 and arrived at 9:15 and I checked into my hotel at 11:15.