Around the world...

Just about a week back, someone asked me how many countries have you visited till date?
It was only after that I started counting and here I list them all in order.
Jan 2004, Bangkok- This was my first visit abroad and whats amazing abt this is that long back, maybe 10 years ago, I met mom's friend who apparently saw me for the first time that in Jan 2004, I will travel out of India for the first time and that I should remember her words when it actually happens.....It was only when I was waiting to board, that I suddenly remembered her words and till date, I keep wondering how accurately she had told me abt the first trip.
Oct 2005 - First trip to Europe, Amsterdam. Same time halted in Zurich, Switzerland for a brief period.
March 2006 - Amsterdam, Hilversum, Naarden, Netherlands
April 2006 - Paris, France
May 2006 - Bangkok, Thailand
Oct 2006 - Antwerpen, Belgium
Nov 2006 - Cologne, Germany
Jan 2007 - Liverpool, Manchester, London, UK
Feb 2007 - Barcelona, Spain
May 2007 - Berlin, Germany
June 2007 - Brussels, Belgium
Oct 2007 - Luxembourg
Nov 2007 - Paris - France, Rome - Italy, Vienna - Austria. Also halted in Zurich, Switzerland
Aug 2008 - Singapore
Oct 2008 - Shanghai, China and Hongkong.
These are the places visited till date. Look fwd to explore more countries in the future. Btw, to answer my friend's Q, I have visited 15 countries till date. Still pending in my wishlist are US, Dubai, Japan and Australia.

MCC (Malnad Cuisine and Culture)

This Oct, my brother-in-law got married in coastal Karnataka, place called Kumta that is close to Gokarna and Murudeshwar. It was a welcome break for both of us to get rid of busy schedules for atleast a week.
The girl’s family had organized a Yakshagaana show the previous evening for all of us. The hall was completely packed with people and I was watching the show for the first time in my life. It was abt “Jambhavati Kalyana”, how Krishna loses Shamantaka mani and goes in search of it and encounters “Jaambhavanta”, teaches him a lesson while recovering the Mani and end up getting married to his daughter, Jambhavati. Three people were stationed on the stage – one for singing and explaining, one for beating drums for female character and one beating the drum for male character. The beat used for female characters is very gentle, slow and mild while the beats used for men are more loud and fast. Eyes are the most important feature for describing various emotions and the artists gave full justice to the characters they portrayed using the right expressions.

It was worth watching each and every move displayed. It was much more entertaining than watching any bollywood movie. I sincerely appreciate the talent of these people and I hope to get more chance to see such kind of programmes.
Another unforgettable thing abt this wedding would be the food prepared at the groom’s place during reception. The entire food was prepared using firewood in a traditional way and I must say that the taste of the food is definitely tastier, than the food prepared using LPG. Being a flavourist, I can vouch for it and can give a detailed explanation to it.
Some of the delicacies from this region includes – an appetizer prepared using buttermilk, with tempering of cumin seeds and ajwain leaves, mango pickle (prepared using small whole green mangoes), kashaaya ( prepared by boiling coriander seeds, cumin powder with water and jaggery and added milk before serving) – truly gives a refreshing experience, green mango rasam and saasve – prepared using grated cucumber, coconut and yoghurt and tempered with mustard seeds and red chilli are just a few examples.
After enjoying all desi cuisines and culture, I had to pack off immediately to go to Shanghai – to experience a totally different culture and cuisine.. I will soon find time to update the blog.

Hello Singapore

Recently I got a chance to visit Singapore for 10 days for a training workshop. I wasn’t really in my usual enthusiastic mode, due to work pressure.. I had to complete some line trials in our factory before departing to S’pore and barely got 2 days to pack off. Three of us were to go to S’pore in the same flight. On Sunday- 27th July, it was a bloomy day and was raining slightly. Fearing that there would be heavy rains, I left home quite early and my spouse was kind enough to drop me at the airport. The whole process got finished so fast that I reached the gate almost 2 hrs before time. I got a chance to roam around the renovated airport and started reading a book. We landed in S’pore by 7.30 pm and reached hotel by about 8.30 pm. We were too tired to go out for dinner. So I ordered food in my room only. I got a first hands experience on the vegetarian food. It smelt a little different than normal- probably the food was cooked in sesame oil..
Next day after a sumptuous breakfast, met up with old colleagues from Australia, Thailand and China – started chatting about the recent happenings in our company. The conversation lasted till the time we reached office in Woodlands, almost an hour’s drive from the hotel.After the training, I planned to extend my stay for a project and met a college friend over the weekend. The thought of meeting her kept me motivated and charged throughout the training. Over the weekend, we covered almost all places in S’pore except Sentosa. Singaporeans have a distinct English accent one cannot miss… Ok la, I go with you.. The taxi drivers are very helpful and it is very easy to go around places..I did manage to do a lot of shopping, that on the day of departure, I wasn’t sure if I had exceeded my luggage limit, but somehow managed to squeeze in everything in one bag. Not that Singapore is the best place for shopping, but I required retail therapy to get rid of my stress and chill out..During my next visit, I hope to discover some more interesting things abt this place..

Driving in Mumbai

Learning to drive in Mumbai is not that difficult and even getting a license is not that difficult if it gets done through a driving school. All it takes is spending half an hour each day for learning the lessons, half day to get LLR and one full day in the RTO office to get DL. This is considering that the driving school persons will help you skip the massive queue lined up to sign in front of the officer before and after taking the driving test. The driving test depends on the mood of the officer taking the test. The officer has a really challenging job to do. The test is conducted for a group by one officer and each group consists of at least 8 – 10 people. The officer is supposed to ask each person ion the group to drive for at least half a km while testing the person on his driving skills. If the officer-in charge is tired or stressed out only 2-3 people in the group gets the test and rest are given license without even a test. Generally it’s the girls who are chosen to get the actual test and I was happy I got to drive for at least 100 metres, else I would have felt the guilt of getting license without driving.

Glimpse of Mumbai Traffic

The real challenge starts after getting the license and when one has to drive on potholed roads, with the never declining traffic amidst autos, trucks, buses and other vehicles. Its even worse, when there is a sudden bottle neck, raining profusely or when one has drive through elevated roads and curves. Imagine the situation when one has to pass through more than 3 or 4 hurdles mentioned above while driving. Some of them don’t even have the patience to wait for the green light at a traffic signal. It’s only after practicing hard for at least a year, one can become comfortable driving in the city… As for me I am still in the learning and practicing stage though I have got my DL almost 6 months back. I hope I can practice more and get adjusted to driving independently here soon.

A small update

Nothing exciting is happening right now to blog... I'm looking fwd to update my blog on the following topics

• Driving experience in Amchi Mumbai (thinking of it makes me tired)
• Singapore trip
• Ratnagiri visit with friends

Watch out for these in a few week's time.

Adieu Bangalore

I have been staying in Garden city for more than a month now and now when i have got used to the culture, weather, traffic culture (bling!!) the time has come to go back to my city.
The first 2-3 weeks was aweful from all angles - work pressure, work place, city traffic and even weather - I hate to get drenched in rain. . At workplace some people treated my like an alien, some didnt want to co-operate because they were not used to doing anything other than routine job. I hated to get cheated by Rickshaw drivers who would simply charge me 50 bucks for a 5 minute ride. Motorists on mg road gave me a weird look, because i was walking on the pedestrian lane.... coz' its supposed to be a motorist lane. To add to my woo- the bus driver didnt pick me up one day and I had to take a vehicle from another office and reached office 2 hrs late.... Phew!!
Most of my time was gone in wondering, how am I going to spend 6 weeks here.

Two colleagues came to assist me in a project after 2 weeks and thats when I started venturing out in the city. Lalbagh was amazingly beautiful, mango exhibition was quite interesting. I would wonder how people simply gobble up gobi manchurian at Udipi restaurants. I too tried this "manchuri" and it tastes superb!! We went around to different malls - none of them crowded like in M'bai. Two days off from my work place gave me time to breathe and admire the city. The city was so much green, so many gardens and pleasant weather. It was nice to wake up to the call of cuckoo early in the morning, observe squirrels and monkeys playing around with a hot cup of tea.
Slowly people in my office started smiling at me like I was a human being. Soon, I had learnt the tactic of handling people if I need to get my work done.
Colleagues would call me up in the morning to make sure I didnt miss the bus, driver in the evening wouldnt mind waiting for 10 - 15 minutes to drop me home.
On the last day of working in office, I was amazed when a person gave me a pack of biscuits and offered a cup of coffee, coz he knew I had skipped lunch to complete a lot of work.
I am not sure if I had changed or people had changed, but both of us had certainly changed the way of looking at each other and this helped me in getting used to the place and culture. I will surely miss working in this place, more than that I am super excited to get back home to my family.
Moving to B'lore will no longer be a challenge for me......
Maybe I should explore moving to another new city after some time (definetely not before one year atleast) to learn new culture, food and behaviour of people

Mumbai to Satara...

View of Satara city from Ajinkyataara Hill
I am blogging after a long time..…. blame my busy work schedule , or my laziness or both, nevertheless here is another trip overview… On Jan 26th our small group of friends decided to spend a weekend in one of our friend’s place in Satara.
A small intro abt Satara – It’s a district abt 4 hrs away from Mumbai and though not as popular as the other cities like Pune, Nagpur, it has got its own charm and we realized it after visiting this place.
Our journey started a day earlier in the evening straight from office. We met at Vashi, parked out vehicle there and started the journey in a TT, after breaking coconut and offering a small prayer. On the way, we picked up a few more friends from Poona, who were kind enough to get us all home-made food for dinner. After polishing away every bit of it – the fun part started.
Mr and Mrs VK had prepared some interesting games and they started off with a game called Telepathy. This involves a unique telepathy between two people A and B. The group decides to tell A a word – can be anything from air, water, space etc and person B recognizes the correct word without any doubts, however complex the word is…. It was interesting to solve the technique…I will not write it here, cos I will need it perhaps somewhere else..
It was past midnight when we reached our friend’s place. His family was very hospitable and they were kind enough to keep the beds ready for all of us and all we had to do was just crash down… Early next morning, my spouse volunteered to warm some water by lighting firewood. One group had the privilege to take bath in this water, while some had to manage with water from geyser. By 9.00 we were all ready and started off in the bus to a place called Ajinkyataara.

The TT stopped at the foot of the hillock and our friend recommended us all to trek all the way up the hillock. What looked like a 30 minute hike took us almost 2 hrs to go up and we enjoyed Misal Pav there on top of the Ajinkyataara hill. The view of city was beautiful from that point and the weather was absolutely perfect. From there we went to a place near a stream, found a suitable place to cook food. The lunch menu comprised of Bhakri ( rotis made from Jowar) Baingan Bharta (Coal roasted Egg plant mashed with added selective spices), rice, kadhi (prepared from buttermilk and chickpea flour) and some yummy fresh jalebis. The guys took care of heating firewood and somebit of cooking, while the girls completed the cutting, cooking and finishing the cooking… While food was being prepared we played some group games – hitting the ball, badminton. The food prepared on charcoal wood tasted great… The flavour of the eggplant after cooked on firewood was something really intesting. The Papad prepared on the hot charcoal simply tasted superb…

From there we started off to another plave to take a look at 100’s of windmills. After taking pictures there, we went to a place called Sajjangad fort to enjoy the sunset. We had to climb abt 300 steps to reach the top of the fort and spent good time there.

In the evening we had a campfire on the terrace and got good chance to interact with the entire family of our friend and also played some interesting games…The next day too we ventured out in a different direction and stopped by a water body to warm the food.. The josh to prepare the entire course of meal on firewood had diminished. We’d rather spend time in playing games… There was a game on ‘ how well do you know ur partner and we managed to win the game marginally beating our nearest competitor… What made us lose points was a Q on my favourite fruit and I said Orange ( it was actually water-melon) My spouse guessed it right, but I messed up.I don’t know how it skipped out of my mind, inspite of this we were able to win the game.
From there we went back to our friend's place packed up and started back to Mumbai. On the way back, we shared good memories of the trip. Overall the trip was excellently managed.
We were almost 10 people, with a small girl. There was no messing up on anything - time of food, planning of places and even games - everything was executed to perfection. I would attribute this successful trip to good planning, good team work, excellent co-ordination between all members... Kudos to us all and hope to have more excursions in this way!!

Glimpse of Europe - Vienna

After visiting Paris and Rome, we had sort of become experts in reading maps, making itineraries and also finding good restaurants. We thought it wouldn’t be a difficult task to explore Vienna (Wien) in 2 days. We didn’t bother much to plan anything. Soon after we reached Vienna, we bought a map and a city guide book. Then we started searching for the train stations. We had to reach this place called Landsstraβe-wien-mitte, from where our hotel was abt 600 m. There are two ways to reach there one is by taking the CAT trains – express trains that runs every 20 minutes from airport to Wien Mitte and the other is to take the local train (either S-bahn or U-bahn) It took us almost 30 minutes to figure out the entrance to the train station and another 15-20 minutes to find out which train we have to take to reach Wien Mitte. There are different zones of train present in U-bahn and S-bahn metro services – S1, S2 till S15. There are also lines that are numbered as S60, S 80. We didn’t dare to find out details of each of them. There was a train ready to leave and suddenly someone told us that the train would go to Floridsdorf and it would go through Wien Mitte. We didn’t have tickets, but the TC told us not to worry and signaled the train to stop till we had boarded. After ensuring that we and our luggage’s was safe inside, he gave the green signal. We got tickets in the train and soon the train stopped at a station. I tried to read the name of the station and tried to locate in the metro map, but it was of no use. My spouse was sitting 4-5 seats ahead and I was a little scared as I couldn’t find any station in the metro map. Looking at my restlessness, a passenger sitting next to me enquired where I wanted to go. When I told him the name, he said it was the right train and also told me that it would take abt half an hr to reach there. He also told me to get off at the station that comes 4th after he gets down. Though he was telling me in german, I could follow what he was trying to say. After abt 15 minutes, I saw a station name that was mentioned in the metro map.. What a relief!! We had to be very attentive to see the board outside as the next station was not announced in the train, nor was there any display of the arriving station. We stood at the door with all our luggage 3 stations before Wien Mitte and finally got down. We started walking towards the exit and the so called Central place was completely deserted. It was abt 11.00 pm. There was nobody around and barely some light. We got sort of scared in the dark and we started looking out for this street called Linke Bahngasse. From the map it was clear it was very nearby, but we could figure out which direction we were standing and which way to proceed.. We started walking in a direction where there were some light and then finally enquired abt this place from a Falafel vendor. He told us to go straight and our street was there… I had a feeling that it might not be wise to go straight, but we just thought of following what he said. After walking for a couple of minutes, we realized it was the wrong way. We decided to take a right turn and keep walking straight. The map suggested that this road would end at Linke Bahngasse and from there we could find out the number and decide to take left or right. The road was dark and we continued walking in the street. It was sort of scary, but we continued walking. Finally when we reached that place, we were able to locate the hotel. Actually this place is nearby the station, but we took the wrong street, hence ended up walking in small dark streets. The hotel was quite good and our room was inbetween 2nd and 3rd Floor. The room was much bigger and better that we had expected. That night we planned our itinerary and went to bed peacefully. By the time we woke up next day, it was almost closing time for breakfast. Somehow, V reached there first and then called me. We were the last ones to have breakfast. The time was just abt 9.30, but Austrians (or Germans, as it’s the national language) prefer to have breakfast by 7.30am. When we started exploring Vienna by train, it was not that bad at all….

One can get thoroughly confused while trying to pronounce the name of the street or plavce in Vienna. Here are some jhalaks – Zwischenbrucken, Klostergrβfelsielung. The best way is to ask someone is by showing the name to the person. The names of streets in Autraia is the same as in Germany, like a name ending with ___Straβe means big streets and names ending with __gasse means smaller streets. In Nederlands, the road names mostly end with __eweg for small streets like Konningineweg, lorentseweg. The bigger streets end with _____straat like langestraat, havenstraat etc.

Schonbrunn Palace view from Neptune fountain.
Vienna was indeed a very beautiful city, with lots of historical monuments here and there. There are tons of places to visit, lots of restaurants around. Our first destination was Schonbrunn Palace. This place is one of the most popular attractions of Vienna and there are lots of interesting places to explore and visit nearby this place. We took a direct train from Wien Mitte and reached the station by abt 30 minutes. It took us abt 15 – 20 minutes to reach the palace gate. The temperature was quite cold there and we saw heaps of snow nearby the gate and also near the palace. We didn’t want to go inside the palace as we wanted to see something different and started walking in the garden. One can visit Palace Chappel, Gloriette, Neptune fountain, Palm house, Sundial house, Maze Park, Schonbrunn Zoo, Tyrolean garden and others.
Just outside the front side of the palace, there was an open market kind of place where there were lots of stalls selling different things – candles, small toys, bread and pastries and even spices. After taking a few pics there, we walked till the Neptune fountain and from there we were sort of disappointed by the fact that the Maze house was closed due to winter.

View of Neptune fountain and Gloriette from Schonbrunn

From there we went to Schonbrunn Zoo- the oldest zoo in the world. This was apparently found in 1752. This was the third zoo, I visited in Europe after Berlin and Amsterdam. Each zoo had its own uniquenss and this one too was quite unique. Its not a very bog zoo compared to the others, but the way the animals have been maintained is really worth appreciating. There was a rain forest section, where the temperature and humidity was maintained like those found in our forests. There were lots of birds and small animals that were left free inside and we could see different varieties of birds, bats and plants in side the place. After looking at a few more animals, we decided to have lunch there inside the Palace restaurant. The restaurant seemed like an expensive one and we didn’t expect to get good food there either. The place had only 4 vegeratian recipes and we decided to have the creamy pumpkin soup and Rissoto. To our pleasant surprise, the restaurant was not very expensive and the food was very good..awesome!! We were quite happy and from there after loitering around here and there, we went to Palm house.

Handsome tigers and playful bears at the oldest Zoo in Vienna.

This is Europe’s largest green house. There are three sections in this house – tropical, temperate and the desert house. The desert house was closed for renovation. This place gives an impression of the fascinating flora and fauna of different habitats. There are numerous botanical rarities to be admired. Lalbagh in Bangalore can surely take some serious lessons from here and implement the same. Sunsets by 5.00pm at that time and from there we took a train to Prater. This place is little far away from the city. One has to cross the river Danube to reach this place. It took us 20min from Schonbrunn palace to reach the Prater and another 15 min walk from there took us to this Giant Ferris Wheel. This is similar to London Eye, but much smaller than London eye. The giant wheel ride lasts 30 minutes to complete one circle and one can see all important places from inside. Since it was already dark, we couldn’t see a lot, but still managed to get a glimpse of the most important places in Vienna like St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Danube Tower and others. There is an amusement park attached to this place. There are different kinds of entertainment present here like roller coasters, ghost trains, amusement parks and shooting galleries. Since it was winter, this place was not completely operational, but I can imagine, how vibrant this place is during summers. Our next destination was St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the most famous place in Vienna. There are lots of opera theatres closeby this place, but we didn’t have enough time to explore and attend any concert. There are lots of people around this place trying to sell tickets for a concert that lasts anywhere between 30 minutes to 3 hrs. There is also horse chariot available here and one can choose to do a small sight seeing in a royal manner, if interested. This place is full of tourists and ideal for shopping anything. After walking down 2-3 streets, we thought of having dinner at an Indian restaurant. It was called “Nirvana” – strange name though, the food was excellent. We saw a couple of Indians in this restaurant. This place seemed to be a popular destination for Indians, craving to have good authentic food at a fairly reasonable amount. Some of the Indian dishes that are popular with Europeans in Indian restaurants in Europe are mango lassi, Naan bread and chicken tikka. These dishes are available in almost all Indian restaurants in Netherlands, France, Spain, Germany and Austria. By 10.00 pm we reached back our hotel and started packing off for the next day’s departure. We were quite nostalgic, as it was the last day of our beautiful trip. We decided that we had to comeback to Vienna again to explore the beautiful city more extensively. We had managed to see just about 10% in one day…
The next day started early for us and we checked out by 7.30 after a good breakfast and reached airport by 8.30. We happened to meet an old colleague at the airport. The feeling of meeting someone you know outside India is totally different. We wouldn’t have had so much enthusiasm while speaking this person had we met in India, but I guess that’s how it was. I have observed this behavior with many more people and I have no words to explain why this is so. Probably an expert can give a satisfactory answer... Our trip finally got over and it was indeed a very memorable one. Till date we discuss about how much fun and relaxing it was, to have this long pending and well deserved holiday…

Glimpse of Europe - Rome

Our flight to Rome from Paris was for abt 4 hrs.We had decided to take a flight via Zurich. We had reached Charles-de-Gaulle almost 2 hrs before departure. V had a small nap there at the airport and we reached Zurich on time. We barely had time to get down, pass through security check and then board into the next flight.It was 10.00pm by the time we reached Fiumicino airport (Leonardo-da-vinci airport). Rome is a very friendly place for tourists and it was evident soon after we landed in Rome and started walking towards the train station to catch the train to Termini station. Leonardo express train is a special express train service that runs every half an hour from Rome airport to Termini station. The ticket costs abt 11.50 euros per person. We also managed to buy a map at the ticket counter. My spouse was so excited that he started planning for the next 4 days in the train. I was busy trying to look out of the window… The view reminded me of some neat and clean places in India. Our hotel was there in a street called Via Milazzo, that was just abt 2-3 minutes from termini station. Most of the streets in Italy start with “Via” like Via Marsala, Via Milazzo, Via Appia antica etc. One can spot a lot of Piazzas (squares) like Piazza de trevi, Piazza Navona, Piazza Venezia in Rome and each one has a beautiful fountain or a statue of a man riding a horse and lots of coffee shops (bars) and pizza restaurants around. In Paris the name of streets contained the word Rue de la villette, rue des praires. Some of the bigger roads are named as boulevard and avenues.
By the time we reached our hotel it was just abt midnight, but the uncle in the hotel was kind enough to stay awake and get things organized for us. He didn’t know English, but even then we could make out that he was very kind and tried his level best to make us understand what he was trying to say – either in the form of gestures, hand movements or broken English, he was a perfect host.The first thing he told us when he came to know that we were from India was “Sonia Gandhi”. Me and V exchanged a glance at each other before getting back to our room. The hotel where we were staying had only abt 6 rooms, but each room was maintained very neatly and they served good breakfast.

Front View of Colloseum.

Next day, we got metro ticket valid for 24 hrs (only for 4 euros) and first headed to visit the mighty Colloseum. The colloseum was built in 800 AD and it was worth appreciating the fact that Romans had taken a lot of effort in maintaining the monument. We hired an audio set and it was interesting to hear the significance of each and every small thing. We had to return the headset within 2 hrs, so we listened to the comments of only the most important places. From there we had a quick lunch (cheese and spinach sandwich) and then started walking towards Roman Forum. We visited nearby Palantine hill and walked through the Roman forum. ' V ' was damn excited and took lots and lots of pics.. I was busy admiring practically everything there with my jaws almost dropped down. We walked a long distance. From Roman Forum, we walked till Piazza Venezia and from there decided to take a bus to Trevi Fountain. Unfortunately we couldn’t get a bus for abt 20 min, when someone told us we could walk down there rather than waiting to get into a bus. With the map in our hands, we started walking towards the fountain and simultaneously planning what to do for the next day. When we reached Trevi fountain, it was almost getting dark. There were a lot of people there. Lots of them were throwing a coin into the fountain facing backwards. It is believed that if one throws a coin into the fountain facing behind the fountain, then one definitely comes back to Rome again. From there we walked to a nearby shopping mall and then returned back to termini station in a bus. We walked on the eastern side on the station looking for a restaurant that serves good vegetarian food. We had food at a lavish restaurant and returned back to hotel. The sun set by 5.00 pm and hence we decided to start out day much earlier so that we could enjoy more during sunlight.
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Trevi fountain at Piazza de Trevi.
Next day we were out of the hotel by 7.00 am and we went to visit Cataombs of Domitilla. We got down at a place much earlier and had to walk for almost 1 km to reach the place. Catacombs served as underground cemeteries for Roman Christians in the early years, where Christianity was still not official in Rome. Domitilla is almost spread over 20 kms and 4-5 floors below the ground. It was a bit scary to travel below with just abt 3-4 ppl. But we still managed to complete the tour in 2 hrs time. The same day we also saw a moview based on the history of Rome - how rome was formed etc etc. After taking a few pics outside, we took a bus to see the Pantheon. From there we visited Piazza Navona, Spanish Steps and Borghese garden. We hired a cycle to see the garden and from there went to Piazza del Popolo and from there went to a Chinese restaurant close to our hotel for dinner. It was an eventful day..

View of St. Peter's Cathedral just after sunset.
Next day we headed straight to Vatican city to see the magnificent Square and Basilica of St.Peters (Piazza San Pietro). We climbed up till Michael Angelo’s cupola and thoroughly enjoyed the view there.The view of Vatican gardens was something worth mentioning. We had lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant. We happened to meet the owner of Orange County, a famous resort nearby Mysore in the same restaurant. After lunch, we went to the nearby Post office where we saw lot of people sending postcards to their contries. Vatican city is the smallest independent country in the whole world and apparently they have the most efficient postal service. We too sent 3 post cards from there and then walked down the street and visited Castel St’Angelo. It took us more than 2-3 hrs to complete viewing the palace. From the terrace, we could see a lot of places like Stadio Olympico, Vatican garden, Vatican museu, lots of Piazzas and Borghese gardens. There are a lot of Villas (parks / gardens) in Rome and that too very big ones spread across the city. Villa Borghese is the biggest garden situated right in the middle of the city and is spread over an area more than10 kms. We got our names made from a metal wire nr Castel S Angelo and from there took a bus straight back to Termini. The bus journey was almost for 30 minutes and we sort of got a city tour. I almost fell asleep in the bus. My spouse woke me up soon after reaching Termini. We had dinner at the same Chinese restaurant – hot rice and a vegetable dish and ofcourse Chinese Tea.

View of Vatican garden, parliament house from top of St.Peter's
Next day again we left early in the morning and headed to Vatican city to visit Vatican Museum. During this season, the museum is open only from 10.00 am to 12.30 pm. There is a huge rush to visit the museum. We reached there by 8.45 am and there was already half km queue from the ticket counter. We had breakfast while waiting there and V managed to get some hot coffee for us. We were approached by a lot of “GUIDES” who promised us to take us inside the museum, without having to wait in the queue. We chose not to go as we had planned to hire an audio guide and moreover we wanted to see only certain specific things and move out from there early since we had to fly out of Rome that day. Vatican Museum was amazing!! We saw some original paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci including the famous Magi and The last supper. There was not much light inside the room, probably not to spoil the original paintings, but they were all very huge and wonderful. The line to visit Sistine Chapel was another long one and we started walking through corridors that had paintings on the ceilings and also on the walls. One painting worth mentioning that we saw was Jesus Christ having dinner with two disciples. The painting looks the same when viewed from different directions. Be in from right, left or even straight, the painting looks the same and Jesus appears to be looking at you straight in the eye. This painting depicts Optical illusion in a perfect way. Another painting shows the presence of different famous scientists – Socrates, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Michael Angelo and also Leonardo Da Vinci. We had to pass through different Salle (halls) to reach the chapel. There was a room where secret meeting were held. Finally we reached sistine chapel. The room was full of people and there was absolutely no place to sit down. The room was very silent despite of so many ppl present.

Painting on the ceiling on the way to sistine chapel.

The whole ceiling was painted by Michael Angelo, a genius architect in those days of Rome. The most famous painting there is life and death, which is being predicted all over. The 3-D effect of the painting is so good, that sometimes it is difficult to find out if it is a piece of architecture or a painting. From there we had a quick lunch and went back to Termini. We got the ticket for Leonardo express and went back and checked out from hotel and took the express train to airport. We had to walk for almost 15 minutes from station to terminal. Our next destination was Vienna – Austria

Glimpse of Europe - Paris

Chiang Mai Restaurant in Havenstraat.

Friday was the last day of training and all of us were busy trying to organize our consignments to be sent back. I had managed to pack 3-4 box full of things back to India. We all decided to meet up at C’s apartment one last time before saying a final Goodbye. Our trainer also met us there and after chatting for a while, we headed towards Surya, an Indian restaurant in Hilversum. Unfortunately the restaurant was packed and we had not done a booking earlier. From there we went to Chiang Mai, a Thai restaurant in Havenstraat. This place serves awesome food and we all enjoyed a lot. We also read the slam book details and it was nice to know what everyone thought of us etc etc. It was getting cold there and by 12.00 am we all reached back our apartment after giving each other a goodbye hug. It was an emotional moment for me.

Next day we woke up early and headed towards the open market to do some final shopping. We picked up freshly roasted nuts, chocolates and then visited Hooglievet, Yiee Maee, Albert Heijn and other places. Our final destination was a pet shop in Hilvertshof. This shop is one of my favorite and I always admire their collection of pets, especially hampstead and pet accessories – ranging from simple cages to lavish sofa and bed sets for dogs and cats, the Dutch really have a taste for everything.





Garden of our apartment. Church view in the background


After a quick lunch, we finished off with packing and finally checked out from the apartment and sat in the taxi to go to airport. We reached Schipol airpot by 4.30 and after checking in our luggage, we roamed around in the airport. It was nice to look around and after having a generous cup of Coffee in Starbucks, we went to the gate and waited there. We traveled by air france and the flight was not so full. We had the whole row for ourselves and the best part was there was a man who lay down on all the three seats completely….Such things happen in Europe too!! Just abt 10-15 minutes before landing we could a brightly lit Paris from far off. We could even see Eiffel sparkling from the flight. After landing safely at Charles-de-Gaulle, we found our way outside the airport.

We came to know there that the metro system was not functioning due to some strike going on there. From there we walked till a nearby bus stop. We saw a couple of buses moving there, but none of them stopped. We asked a Police man there abt reaching our hotel area. He told us that we could reach there by either a taxi or by taking a special bus service to arc de triumph and getting down at a nearby place. We had to drag our luggages downstairs and walk for some distance before reaching the bus stop place. After waiting for abt 10 minutes, an empty bus arrived there and we got into the bus. The ticket cost us 13 euros each. Our luggage was put into a cabin below the bus by a watchman kind of person. We reached Paris centre quite fast, as the bus took the outer ring road to reach arc de triumph. There was a lot of traffic on the way becos of the absence of metro, but still we managed to reach our stop by 20 minutes. We got down at a place that seemed near to our hotel from the map. We waited to get into a bus from there, nut couldn’t find one. Also we didn’t know which direction to proceed to reach out hotel. We then hopped into a cab and he took us to the right place…inspite of the fact that we couldn’t speak French and the cabbie couldn’t speak English. We just told him montmarte and hotel mercure. We checked in at the hotel and picked up a few brochures and made an itinerary for the next 2 days.




View of Eifel Tower.

Louvre museum view from one of the rooms.

Basilica da sacre front view.

The next day, we started from the hotel by 9.00 am and had our breakfast which was exemplary. We headed to see the mighty Eiffel tower. It was a chilly day and we could feel cold winds at the ground itself. The Eiffel tower was not visible beyond 2nd level. But we were still excited to go till the third level. As the elevator moved, it felt like a plane ride becos everything below looked so tiny. We took some pics at the 2nd level and headed to wards the third level. It was very wind up there and I just managed to stay at one place where there was minimum wind. My spouse got adventurous there and went one round, took some snaps there. Infact we even noticed ice formation on the grills. We couldn’t see anything below becos of poor visibility, but the experience was quite amazing.


Later we realized that the eifel was visible after 1pm when there was bleak sunshine. From there we headed towards a metro station to go to Louvre Museum. After waiting there for more than 20 minutes, we realized it would be wiser to take a bus. We walked for sometime there and finally hopped into a bus, kept track in the map and finally got down at a place, had a quick lunch and then started walking towards the louvre. We had listed down a lot of things to see and the best ones were the paintings of Leonardo da vinci - Mona Lisa. Until I read abt the painting in detail in Da Vinci Code, I thought the Mona Lisa was just another painting and always wondered what was so special in it that it became so famous when there were so many other beautiful paintings in th eLouvre…. Maybe I will have to write another blog to explain the details.. Then we saw Napolean apartments, the Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Roman architecture. There was Hammurabi code and lots more. In the end, we managed to cover just abt 1/3rd of the museum by sprinting from one floor to another with the help of maps.

Notradame at 5.30 pm
It was dark by about 4.30 pm and then we decided to take a walk along the river Seine. On the way we saw lot of artists busy with their work. We also saw a lot of people traveling with their tricycles or skates. Then we reached Notradame. After spending some time there, I bought a jacket to keep myself warm and then we walked into a street full of restaurants. There were atleast 4-5 streets in that area, that was full of restaurants of all kinds – Greek, Italian, French, Japanese Chinese and more. Finally we went to a Pakistani restaurant and had Veg Falafel. From there we managed to walk till a nearby metro and luckily got into a train till Place-de-clichy. We walked along the road to see Moulin Rouge and found that there was a huge line to get into the opera show. We smiled at each other after looking at the rate per show and coolly walked back to the hotel.




Next day, we started the day by trekking up a small hilly place to reach Basilica da Sacre. This church was behind our hotel and we walked there. We even climbed up till the topmost level top have a look at massive Paris. It was a wonderful view. Basilica is situated a higher level and hence we could view almost complete Paris from there. From there we walked to the metro and found that there was no movement of trains. We decided to walk till La-fayette.




La-Fayette is the best shopping complex I have ever seen. When I saw it for the first time, I was awestruck and my jaws dropped down again when I saw it for the second time. There are 7 levels of shopping for everything- kids, women, formal, sports, accessories, perfumes and lots more. There are 2 more such shopping complex in the same road owned by the same person. One is a 5 storied complex full of house hold accessories and furniture and the other is more for men’s wear, accessories and electronic goods. The most interesting was the window display themes that faced the people walking in that street. We decided to skip lunch and then take a cab to our hotel from there. It cost us abt 12 euros and soon after we reached the hotel, we had some bread , muffins and juice that we had carried from hilversum and then took a cab to reach airport. It cost us abt 40 euros to reach airport.




After checking in at the swiss air terminal, we soon passed the x-ray checkin. V had forgot to pack his deospray in the checkin baggage and the ppl at the terminal threw away the spray. We had reached there almost 2 hrs before the departure of the flight. Unfortunately there was nothing we could do there as there were no shops nor restaurants nearby. So we had to just sit there and wait for our boarding. We reached Zurich and hardly got time to look around there as we had to board into another flight and we were getting quite late. There were lot of Indians there in the airport and just before boarding a swiss air staff lady approached me and started putting a tag on my bag and told me that she will not let me take the bag as hand bag and she will checkin the same. After a small argument with her and telling her that there were laptops inside, she then let us inside the aircraft. Swiss people are tough and we just experienced it. We reached Rome (Fiumicino airport) by 10.00 pm and after taking our luggage we walked towards the train station. The next posting will cover our visit to Rome.

Visit to Luxembourg

On a weekend sometime in October, our group decided to go on a long drive to Luxembourg. The place was decided just about a week earlier. Luxembourg is not a very popular destination in Europe, but when we read abt it on the internet, we thought it was okay to see some places considering the fact that we had just 2 days. The hotel booking was done 4-5 days before through http://www.hrs.com/. We got a good deal for 4 people at Mercure Hotel. The hotel was bang opposite to the Centraal Station and right at the centre of the city. We had some problem in reaching the hotel, because of one-ways and also some repair work going on. After looking at the hotel, we were all quite amused. The car was parked at a parking lot nearby.

The first thing I usually do after reaching a new place is to get as many brochures possible from the hotel and try to make my own itinerary. We didnt have to bother too much in making an itinerary, as there was an information centre closeby and we decided to explore the city on foot. As I started walking along the main street, I was able to admire the real beauty of the city.

Luxembourg is a fort city. The entire city had been protected with the help of a big fort and today there are people living below inside the fort and also outside the fort at a level far higher. Take a look at the picture. There are two such bridges and one can see the beautiful city below the bridges.




I went to a museum based on the national history of luxembourg - to know more on the history and background of the country, then walked below to have a look at the city that has been protected. We also went inside the tunnel like fort. The tunnels were built in such a manner that nobody can imagine that there could be so many roads just by looking at it from far away. It was tiring!! Take a look at the fort and the multilevel tunnels from below.

The rest of the day passed by roaming in the city by foot, a delicious meal at a French restaurant and planning for the next day. Next day we drove to a place called Remich - a valley where the world famous Pino Noir wine is prepared. Thanks to our tom-tom, that took us to all places we wanted to without any hitch. In Remich we all visited a vineyard, also visited St. Martin's wine cellar, tasted some delicious wine. Some of my friends bought pinot noir and after a quick lunch, we started our journey back to Hilversum. Wine was quite cheap there. Some of the best tasting wines cost about 8 euros per bottle. The normal ones cost just about 1.2 euros/bottle of 750ml.

Luxembourg - I would say its truly a hidden treasure in Europe.

Long Time

Its been a long time since I have updated my blog. I will soon update on the following

1. Visit to Luxembourg
2. Visit to Paris, Rome and Vienna
3. Our first long drive to Poona.

Watch out for some interesting stuff !!