8. Of Spiders and Wild Colours

By the time I was up today, Bhansu and she had left. Caught my breakfast just in time and I was back online.

Then a whole lot of stuff happened over the net, which I dont really want to write about. Just about the bookings for paris and the train reservations and the Eurail passes and what not! Reserved accommodation for us in paris for the 1st and 2nd but we cant reserve for Amsterdam from here and also all the places there are booked full. It was pretty irritating, looking at the options, comparing with the others, looking at the paris metro map and stuff. :(

Anyway it was done finally and I wanted to leave, My whole morning had gone off in doing this stuff. I went to Wilhelma, wiki says 'It is Europe's only large combined zoological and botanical garden and is home to over 8,000 animals from over 1,000 different species and countless exotic plants from over 5,000 species.'

So I, being an animal lover, was pretty damn excited about it. It took me a while but I reached and it was marvelous. It was so unlike the zoos in India and very very beautiful. You cannot beat the Germans' attention to detail.





I had seen on the map that there was an insectarium here. And everyone knows how i get when I see spiders. Well this is dedicated to my bro, Antony and friend, Ashwin. I gathered my courage and I walked into that air-locked place. And from the moment i entered it was creepy. There were huge pics of Insects, spiders. There were glass cages on both my sides, leading the way further into the dark corridor. I walked in the perfect center, never getting too close to the glass cages.Had my hands and camera close to my body and my jacket wrapped tightly so that there are no openings through which they could crawl in... EuWW#W!! just the thought!

Anyway, i kept looking at the spiders. How I miss my non existent Cat! I will call my cat Isis, decided that! And finally I saw a cage on my right. Couldnt see anything in there, but i knew it was a spider. I had a feeling about this cage. I mean I knew it was the worst, I could just feel it. I stood there wondering if I should take a closer look to spot it. Finally, I tip toed to the cage, people were looking at me funny, but i guess they figured out :). I came close to the cage, about elbow length but i still couldn't see it. And there, I saw it, it was next to the inside edge, just sitting there, waiting, waiting, for a chance to get out and crawl on to me. The moment I saw it and I realised what it was, I was like back in the middle the corridor in like under a micro second. It was a Tarantula. just writing the word itself is icky. I was jittery man! Shit! It was some amazonian variety. And there was just a flimsy pane of glass between me and it. I stretched my arm out with the cam and took a pic. heh heh. cant help it, it came out badly but here it is. How I faced my fears!!

Can you see it?


Anyway I was out of there as quick as I can. So here it is, Ant & Ashwin! To Facing our fears!.. with a pane of glass in between. :)

I headed to this crazy Seal(The animal!) show. It was in German but I dont think you needed to know it as it wasnt that hard to understand. They had trained the seals and got them to do pattern jumps and dives and stuff with some play acting. Some of it was plain hilarious :) .

Thats Lucy!


Soon after, I was clicking away to glory at the other places and managed some that I think are really nice pics. Thanks here to Janki for letting me borrow the lens from her :D. Wouldnt have got these if it werent for that!

This bird should have been an Indian! :D






There was a point when I was walking when I heard a screech and a peacock just flew across, just in front of my face. It was too quick to get on my camera, but it landed a few meters from me, next to another one and as I was watching it turned around and spread his feathers. It was stunning. I was so freaking Excited!!! I stumbled with the cam but managed to get a few shots. But there is nothing like being here to see it.

Wish the background was better... but hey, you cant argue with nature :)


I wish the others could have joined me it would have been much more fun :) but hey! I didnt waste a day :D

I met up with the other two and finally got our eurail passes after shelling out loads of cash. :) Now we are set to go on our euro trip!

ciao

7. Of Lazy Sundays and Late lunches

I wrote the last blog at 4.30 Am, can you believe that? Pretty much knocked out after that. We slept over at our friends' place, yeah! they are turning out to be nicer and nicer :P.

Woke up and out of the room by 11 am and off to the 10th floor where the ladies where doing their thing and making lunch for us!! :D :D (im gonna get kicked for that!) well atleast my dearest dear friend was only cutting vegetables this time :D heh heh..

Below: Achieving something!


It was awesome, we once again pretty useless and watched while they cooked. But needless to mention, the food was awesome and Bhansu was in his own land enjoying it. We stayed till late afternoon too lazy to go anywhere and constantly imposing on their hospitality :)

Having tea after a long time... German Tea Sucks!


Finally they had to go, so we had to go ;) So with heavy hearts we left their comfy room, their tall building, their kukuk pub, their Tubingen and got back to our Reutlingen :) and straight to bed and TPing :)

Leaving...


We didnt do much that day, although there was a point when we almost almost decided to go fro a salsa party courtesy of our friends in Tubingen (All they do is party and cook food and eat and sleep! Hmph! Phd students, it seems!). Anyway we didnt, coz we were too lazy and wanted to get our three nights of partying!. :( It would have been cool though to make it a four day affair!

Anyway... Prost! To the weekend that was!


Ciao

6. Of Mishaps, Strange Parties and Deutschland

Ten o clock. Still sleeping. Hochenzollern Castle still waiting for us. Freiburg(Black Forest) waiting for us. Buses waiting for us. Trains waiting for us. Still sleeping. Ten thirty.

If someone had told me how today would turn out, I would have just turned around and walked away and never attempted anything. But fortunately nobody did and things just took a flow of their own.

Our plan was of course to go to Hochenzollern castle and then go to black forest and stay there and come back the next night. It soon took on so many forms that it started giving us a damn headache. Finally we decided we will go to Stuttgart, which is in the opposite direction of the castle, and pick up our eurail passes for the upcoming travels. And with this plan in mind we went to the station still unsure about a lot of things, only to find the train leaving just as we were buying the tickets. The next train was an hour later and we found ourselves back at home...again. Now the plans changed again and we found out that the castle closes at five thirty and we are not going to make it there. So now, frustrated and irritated we changed our plans to just Black Forest next day and to go to Stuttgart this evening.

And so we were in the bus, atleast happy that we are doing something instead of having wasted the entire day. And so the bus went, along the narrow lanes Pfufflingen, along the fields of the german countryside and as we chit chatted away Bhansu in all his glory asked us a question. Do we need passports to get the eurail pass? And that was that. We had no passports with us and we just spend 30 min in the bus travelling to Stuttgart. And in that moment of bitter realisation, we also realised that the place where we rent the cars also closes at 5.30PM and that we would not make it back in time. So now we were heading to Stuttgart airport for absolutely nothing. When we reached we told the bus driver that we wanted to go back and he nicely said something sarcastic and called us crazy. Now that this was done we decided we’ll go into the airport and look for the info on tickets to france and also general info on eurail pass. We went in and after running up and down for sometime found that there was not even a provision to buy the eurail pass and also that the tickets from France to Amsterdam cannot be booked from here.

Now we found ourselves with a whole day wasted, no passport, no eurail pass, delay in booking france tickets, no car for the next day, and to make things worse there dark clouds gathering in the sky and heavy winds and we were standing outside the airport freexing to death waiting for a bus that would take half an hour to come.

I guess thats when it kinda broke. We laughed and laughed at the turn of events, of how careless we were and about how things are gonna turn out now. :) it was nuts, we were literally shivering in the wind and laughing our ass off. Sometimes murphy’s law hits you with full force, everything that you do goes wrong. And after a point you just give up trying to correct the course of events. I guess we were at that point. Just letting things take its course and laughing about it.

Outside the airport

Anyway we took the bus to Reutlingen train station to catch a train to Tubingen where we planned to meet a friend of bhansu’s. And like everything else today, our 5 min wait for the train turned out to be a half an hour one with pouring rain with us trying to seek shelter behind a wall. We made it to Tubingen with barely any daylight left to see the town. We walked to the town centre to find that the big church was mostly closed.

Just after the freezing rain

When things get worse, how much more worse could it get?

I like to think that things started taking a turn for the better from the time we found a german playing his cello inside the big church. It was beautiful.

We went to bhansu's friend's place. Met quite a few of her friends, including a palestinian who is studying medicine and is a little crazy :). From then on it was a whole lot of fun. We all cooked food, had lots of conversation and laughed about how things turned out. And then we decided to chuck the next days plan coz of a lot of reasons. And then we went to a pub nearby only to find that there was a children's part going on there. heh heh... Man! it was hilarious! We then found ourselves at a party on the next floor. You are never gonna guess what the party was about! We were at a party for Kurdistanians( Inhabitants of the Kurdish region of Turkey) and they were celbrating their new year calle Nowruz.

The Band :)

And so we were there at probably the only Kurdish new year party in this region, partying with people elaborately dressed in their Kurdish clothes dancing to the live music from a Kurdish band and laughing away to glory. We were welcomed whole heartedly to their midst and we danced with them celebrating their new year. It was one hell of an experience. We joined them in dancing their traditional group dance, it was kinda hard to follow the steps but I think we managed pretty well. It was crazy. Just plain crazy.

We then went down to the pub and found that it was back to normal and that people were flocking in. Soon enough we were in there dancing a different sort of dance this time and enjoying ourselves to the core.

Phew! It was 2.50 am when we made it back to our friend’s place and decided to crash there.

And day light saving had just set in so effectively it was 3.50 am. And soon enough 4.17 am.

So here I am, in Deutschland, three nights of unprecedented fun, having some of the most awesome times of my life. I cant see how things could have turned out better than this, all I know is that it was brilliant, today and the two days before that.

Ich liebe Deutschland.

Aufwiedersehen.

5. Of Disturbed Cooking and Drunken Dancing

Pics for the following blog will only be up on wednesday :(

Woke up late, Bhansali woke up latererererer. Much much laterererer.

Great expectations we had about a certain lady friend of ours who landed just the day before. And they were fully and completely satisfied beyond our wildest imagination as we waited for our lunch. The smell of Poha being cooked in the kitchen wafted in and our hunger just doubled in strength just as our noses picked it up. And we waited, unperturbed by her constant disclaimers about her cooking skills. It was finally there and as our eyes reached into the smoking vessel we were presented with a view that we would never ever forget in our entire lives. As we looked into the bowl our stare was returned by a sub gelatinous form with alien like features, with small bubbles bursting out of the deformed mass sending drops of unknown yet possibly toxic particles shooting at our faces. Toxic or not, we were not hungry anymore. It was heartbreaking to see it go into the trash over our friend’s tears and heart rendering cries. But what could we do. We had to survive somehow and if that means chucking unknown alien food particles into the trash then thats what we’ll do. Friend or not.

After almost losing our lives, we started planning our euro trips. And about 4 hours, a trip to the station and an Ankarian Shawarma later we realised how important travel agents are in our life. What they do is remarkable and efficient, and we really wished we had had one by evening. We had made no progress really, managed to chalk up a plan for Black forest and a small French town which was quickly shot down in favour of us splitting into two groups. So basically, five of us decided to leave to Switzerland in the morning and Bhansu,me and Kanchi will stay back and do the black forest plan.

Anyway, Chris and Bora came to pick us up for a student party, actually a welcome party for the first semester students here. Few of us stayed back, Kanchi was lazy and refused to come at first but then we had to convince how she would never ever get this chance in her life and blah blah blah. She was up and ready in five minutes! :D . So five of us along with the three who came to pick us up, drove for about 20 kms before reaching a place called Sonnenbull and then up a hill at a nice cozy little place. It was beautiful and it was freakin cold. We almost ran inside, into the middle of the party coz we werent dressed for the cold and we were freezing to death. It was a lot of fun as people were getting introduced to each other from the different semester and they had a game going to facilitate that. We got into the groove pretty fast, after a couple of a new kind of beer (locally made, strong, I think its a variation of Bavarian Beer :) ) and with bhansu in the lead with some Bhangra moves. Hanoz was around executing some salsa moves. We made sure the essence of india cast was far and wide and that we were especially very liberal about it. But hey, everyone joined in and dancing was a lot of fun with all of them together.

And in honour of the Mexicans among us, came Tequilla. 4 shots on top of the beer. Tipsy. Dancing like nuts. Made friends with a lot of people, strange and crazy and tipsy, friends that you could only hope to make in such times.

The most amazing thing about the whole thing is the diversity of the students here. Khurana has a Khyrgistanian and an Albanian as group mates, I have a Brazilian, Ranjan has a Hungarian and Egyptian, Pranab has two Russians. Its just so amazing. So far everyone has been very nice and welcoming. And its surprising how easily you meet people here. At the Irish pub the day before, we ran into people we met on the first couple of days, we found singing partners, drinking partners, language partners. Its just so crazy and brilliant at the same time.

Anyway I think we were about to leave when a dear friend of mine wanted to smoke and I got inspired and then we shared a cigarette. Anyway my dear friend ditched me after taking two drags and then I had to complete the rest. I was drunk already and everyone knows I have low tolerance (Proud of it too!) and this combined with the cigarette put me in a kind of nauseated state. So before Bhansu tells you anything different, I did not throw up, most definitely did not!. But we did stop the car at one place to catch a breath of fresh air and just to enjoy the landscape in the moonlight and feel the cold wind in our hair. After which we drove with my window open as I loved to feel the strong gusts on my face. I think chris drove his Audi( I didn’t mention that, did I?) really fast, you know, it was late and stuff. Anyway, we were back and I did not throw up. Kanchi had a good time thanks to us convincing her to come :P

Off to sleep as soon as we hit our beds. Simply too exhausted once again.

4. Of Beer Gartens und Mercs

I know I havent been able to keep up with the days in Germany... but tonight i have to write... it is 4.17am, i just lost one hour of sleep bacause of daylight saving, and I'm just back from one of the most fun parties ever... in fact we were at two.. and you wouldn believ what the first one was.. :D.. but before all that let me just try and do a quick recap of the past three days...umm.. actually, past three nights .. This blog is on the first night out.

Kanchana arrived from Bombay....we picked her up at Reutlingen station and quickly dropped her at home and then Amit and me were off to do our project discussion at Stuttgart (I'm not gonna talk about the academics here!). We missed the first bus we wanted to take and the next was an hour later and so we were off wine hunting to the town centre. Thanks to me we had a grand tour of the centre plaza and no wine; and thanks to Amit we ran into a store and found a few bottles of wine, with just five minutes to spare for the bus. Anyway, we safely made it to Stuttgart and met up with our group mate, a Brazillian. She and her husband, really nice people, they had waited for us at the train station for the whole time and still had the patience to take us around stuttgart.

The Stuttgart Opera House






We went to one of the famous Beer Gardens to have the famous German Experience and guys, the Germans have it right, there is just no other way to drink beer than in the afternoon during spring at a Beer Garden in Germany.



We went to the Mercedez Benz Museum after that and that place was huge! There was so much history at the place; They had intertwined the history of their cars with that of their country, and so you just keep listening to your audio guide all the way and get stuck early on leaving yourself hardly anytime to finish the whole museum. There was a series of Photo mishaps with Amit and his natural affinity towards cars. I'm not even going to say it :) .




We got back in the evening and before you knew it, we were at the Irish Pub and they had Karoake night going on! Phew! The whole place was packed and we were all crazy people. I have to make an announcement at this point- Germany Beer beats Irish Beer hands down! I tried Guiness and I didnt even think it was beer :D . Back to the Karoake- Soon enough, we were like our real indian selves, on the stage as a group of 6 or 7 and singing our hearts out, I dont know how many people left the pub at that point but I think we did a good job of making sure that only crazy people remained. We then did an even better job at it by going back on to sing for like two more times later in the night. I think the Pub got used to us coz Hanoz was saying that the whole pub was singing with them for the last round. Meanwhile, few of us had left and went to another student party, I still dont know where that was but hey.. there was a huge dance floor and people were at it till like 4 or something. Someone took us there so we didnt really know the way back but we found it somehow, scaring the hell out of a guy on the street in the process. I mean, think about it. There's this guy who is having nice, lonely, late night walk on a safe German street, he turns around slowly only to see an empty street, and as he kept looking in to the distance enjoyng the silence, there appears horde of Indians around the corner and running towards him :D. I could only imagine what he must have been thinking at that point... heh heh heh.

Well... we were back and they were back and then we were all simply too tired to even have a conversation. Wir haben gut nacht geschlafen or something like that.

The next blog will cover day two.

The pics for the last part would be posted only on Wednesday. :(

3. Eisenmann

Long day today...

We had classes in the morning and then we had to visit the company for the projects.. we'll come to the latter later.. :)

Bhansali wasted a whole plate of raviatoni yesterday. Today he refused to eat lunch at the cafeteria and went back home to cook and eat his favourite dal and kichdi. We had to go to the company to meet with the people regarding our projects here. We received our first pre-reads today and I still havent gotten around to read them.

The projects are really interesting. we need to work on the entry strategy for this company into the Indian market. Its good to know our project maybe actually be used. :)

Rohit and Amit with some auxillary help from me cooked dinner tonight. The rice came out very well and the dal, well it had its moments and i guess we'll all be experts in time. Some papads were roasted and we made Raita as well... And bhansali does not know how to cut a tomato!

well thats about it for now... really tired.

gute nacht!

Nothin else happened today of interest... ;)

2. First day out

Bavarian Beer!!! There’s no other beer like it (Subject to change on discovery). It isnt clear beer, you cant see through it but when it goes down, it does so real smooth. We were at Alexandre, by far the largest bar and restaurant in Reutlingen. Its right at the centre plaza, next to the old town hall and across from an Irish Pub (St. Patrick’s day just got over- doesn’t mean we aren’t headed there asap). The German exchange students joined us there and they invited over few American students from the next table. Anyway coming back to the beer, it was brilliant, we had lots of it and some more and we kept having it until we left the place. All in all it was lots of fun, lots of conversation and laughter over some good Bavarian Beer and lots of fried potatoes. We got back simply too exhausted to do anything else but sleep.



Up at about 6 am, ready by seven forty as per plan and the only person late was Bhansali :D ... we had a long walk to the bus stop and short ride of about 10 min to the University. Its a large sprawling campus, lush green with huge lawns and filled with just the right amount of trees. No pics of the campus yet as I didn’t get a chance to take my camera along. We had one of the German student to guide us with the bus and to find the class and luckily for us we were at the 8.15 class with exactly a minute to spare. Entrepreneurship. I have never heard this word being said as many times as it was said today. And the prof, he had an amazing sense of humour and very sarcastic. His timing is impeccable and he is adept at deadpanning. The class was good, interesting, we had about 8 students from Germany, and few from South America, couple of Russians and Danes. The discussions were very interesting and we always could give an Indian perspective to things although at times I did feel we kept pushing the Indian part a bit too much.

SPJIMR instils in us great qualities. There was of a skilful display SP’s DCP by Hanoz and Ranjan (Sorry boys, I have to write this) and Rohit as usual kept SP’s reputation intact by offering the right points to add value to the discussion. It would be unfair of me not to mention how Hanoz attempted to be Sriram’s counterpart here by offering the prof to take care of a technical glitch with the projector (Man! Now thats keeping the legacy alive here). I did my quota by offering up a point for discussion and Bhansali, out of his fear of being the only one in the class to not have said anything attempted a very desperate shot at CP only to fail spectacularly and be called Greedy by the prof. We are keeping you proud here, SPiites!

It was beautiful in the evening, sunny with strong chill in the air. There were students everywhere, all kinds of them from almost all parts of the world. We got our student cards made and then got back to our place, roamed a bit through the narrow old streets of Reutlingen, tried a kasebrezel(Pretzel), walked into an office building asking for 6 pack beer thinking it was a supermarket got shooed away in the process, Found a gas station and bought an unknown pack of Beer, stood at a crossing for about ten minutes waiting for the signal not knowing we had to press a button at the crossing, walked out of an irish pub coz there were no people in it and ordered a schweinerschnitzel at Alexandre only to be politely told by the beautiful waitress that it is for kids under 12 years old. Phew! what a day.

Sunset from our window..