I heard in Paris and around.....

"Ca Va?"
"You know....the the the.....you know"
"Baith ke khaunga"
"What nansense"
"Just update"
"Sabji lane ja raha hai"
"Kaam to yaar tum kuch karte nahi ho"
"Bokhduuuuuuu" read this as Bordeaux
"Man-madrasa"
"Who is Suganya talking to?"
"Oh ji thand hai na woh haddiyon mein ghus jati hai.....badi kharab hai ji"
"Moniqueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.......Pascallllllllllllllllllllllllllll"
"Wolfgang"
"Sayeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.......Swamiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii"
"Haan woh sab to thik hai but tell me one thing"

The inspiration comes from Saadibhasad (http://saadibhasad.blogspot.com/)

The new year as we welcomed it.......

And if you thought that the end of 2007 was joyous and filled with mega and gala plans to set the dance floor on fire since I am in the city of romance and fashion, think again. As far as I remember 31st december 2007 was spent infront of the computer at office with most of my French clients on extended vacations, while I was handling the query of one Pierre fellow who was atrocious because of some stupid issue. He first asked, then ordered, then threatened and finally abused me as morning became afternoon and finally evening and his issue was still not solved. Not my fault buddy if someday the connection of the ERP system of the entire company decides to fail. So finally Pierre was a happy man when his issue was solved. I think he had some kind of self imposed targets of getting over all work headaches before the new year sets in maybe also because the year-ending is on the 31st of December in these parts of the world. But when you consider that 90% of the population is outside the office enjoying vacations, you just ask why?

So after a torturous day at office, I headed home asking one and all to call me when they would be ready to leave office. Since given an option I always leave office the first, I was out of office as the clock struck 6 P.M. Later on the office guys decided to drop in at our place for a mini alcohol session and then as they say, what happened is history. It is also youtubed and as I write it the video has been viewed 51 times. Have a look here

The one trying to fly is the one and only Aby Paul, and the one behind him in the monkey cap, dancing just like an overgrown monkey is Sabya (the French among us Indians). And considering the fact that someone was trying to fly when it was almost yet another 3 hours to midnight and 2008, things really were creepy. By 9:45 Aby was history, he was sprawled on the dance floor from which he was trying to fly 45 minutes ago. And picking him up and trying to get him to drink butter milk with litres of lemon juice was really a Dard-e-disco experience. When Aby did not revive even after litres of buttermilk and lime juice we decided to let him be senseless and we headed outside for Champs de Elysee. The sight at Champs de Elysee was just like a Brigade Road of Bangalore or Park Street of Kolkata or C G Road of Ahmedabad. Things were just the same. There were people everywhere waiting for the new year to come along. Those who have the money or the contacts go to the gala parties, while others crowd the best known road expecting something( I do not know what till now) as the clock approaches 12. Since Champs de Elysee was way too crowded we decided to walk towards Eiffel. The temperature was dripping all the time and the weatherman had not been able to ward off the rain with his voodoo power. And when we reached the bridge on Porta Alma, the Eiffel lights started twinkling brightly and it was new year. We had expected some kind of firework spectacle, but the only ones visible were a few tarabatis (sparkles) and a few rockets that would have been hopeless competition when compared to Diwali. Anyway people were very happy about 2008 coming into their life, as Anirban became more grumpy because he had to go home. 2007 became 2008 but grumpy Anirban was still the same. Though, we had no such intentions of going back home, we finally realised that staying on Champ de Elysee was out of the question. By the time we had came back there, the riot police was all ready to use the baton. People had broken every kind of bottle on the street and it was utter chaos. Risking that 1st January 2008 could well have seen us nursing beatings from the riot police, we also headed back home.

Happy new year to one and all.....

Old Monk et Old Memories.....sponsored by Mohan Meakin

Finally after a long hiatus the login page of blogger suddenly did not turn into arcane french when I logged in to post this. But anyway, these days my french has improved drastically. Though I have no idea about what they pronounce and why on earth they eat up half the consonants while they speak but still if people write to me in French, I get a gist of what they are trying to communicate. The French's love for their language has a lot many times landed us lesser English speaking mortals into deep merde situations. So much so that my boss (happens to be an Australian) who learnt French the hard way by leaving Australia and settling in France for the sake of his French girlfriend fully empathised with us and made our signature in official emails read out that, All correspondance with us lesser mortal english speaking group should be in English (the template is in french and english). Ocassionally the mails are one line long but the signature is usally 5 lines long to accomodate all such instructions. Yet people prefer sending us a hell lot of communication in arcane french that I have finally managed to pick up helped by another spectacular tool from the house of google, their translation tool. I tell you one day in the near future, they will surely be the China of the virtual world. As in today's world any product that you pick out of a shelf in your nearby retail store has a tiny weeny microscopic "Made in China" label, in a similar way every tool that we use in the virtual world would soon have a Made by Google label. Now can anyone of you at Gartner or Forrester who ever manages to pass through my blog and read uptil this point please offer me a job of some kind for giving such a wonderful analysis on the prospects of Google? And yah hey if you guys out at google are reading this, VP HR types, senior manager HR, manager HR, trainee HR or for that matter even the admin guy or the guy who cleans the floor of Google.....anybody.....just inform me if there is some job for writing such wonderful things. Now starts the long wait for a flashy career ahead ;-)

Speaking of other inane and mundane things in life, that Saturday night/Sunday early morning post was under the effect of a deep intoxication caused by the burnt variant of malt whiskey, namely black rum. The person responsible for this deep source of intoxication was the one and only Chintu Parikh. The person had somehow procured maybe even smuggled a bottle of Old Monk from India to London and was bragging about the same by putting up a status message on his Gtalk (see I told you how Google is solowly ruling the virtual world) which read like "Khub jamega rang jab mil baithenge teen yaar....aap main aur old monk". Alas that aap could have been me had UK not been seperated from mainland Europe by the cold and wild English Channel and the very petulant immigration officers at the border. The last time they actually checked my schengen visa with all sorts of magnifying glasses that watch repairers wear to see the anatomy of watches. So Chintu Parikh sitting there in some remote part of London made me nostalgic about the precious black rum. The magic of black rum has never failed to smite any soul who has ever stayed in a hostel during the formative years of life. The advantages of black rum leaves its charm on every soul dying for some alcohol in their blood stream. Firstly it is one of the cheapest varities of alcohol available in the local daru ki dukaan. In terms of alcohol it has a high 40% content and hence you dont feel cheated to spend some penny on alcohol. It helps in getting the body warm in the cold and of course you never get a hangover the next day, so even if you have a presentation or an exam the next day, its not screwed at all. Before IMT, drinking used to be a one off incident in the dry state of Gujarat. Bootleggers never made it easy for us to procure it with their exhorbitant premium pricing models. So rum was not the thing that was ever favoured. The choice was more obvioulsy whisky. I still remember the one time in ahmedabad at a friend's place, someone got so drunk that he slept a considerable amount of the night on the bathroom floor. The charm of drinking black rum especially the one christened Old Monk started for me in Ghaziabad during the IMT days. Coupled with the fact that Mohan Meakin had its manufacturing base in Ghaziabad and that any other brand in the market not bottled in UP was exhorbitantly priced made Old Monk an obvious choice for us not so rich kids. I never was a regular smoker in college, but the once in a while factor made the crow of the college give me a new name called Page 3 smoker. A smoke in hand with a glass of old monk mixed with Coke in the other, singing away to glory on the terrace of the canteen block are the vivid memories that are left of the last few days at IMT. After the college days the next time black rum flowed like water was in Hyderabad during the induction programme of the company I got placed. Alas since the company thinks that drinking is almost equivalent to sin the scene was shifted to the hotel where we had been put up, a shady hotel with a faulty AC system that had not worked for almost decades. Incidentally Chintu Parikh was a part of this drinking group and as is his specialty, he had invited the whole world to drink. It was over here that I got acquainted with a guy Abhishek Deb. At first look he looked like a complete football but as time passed we became good friends. After that the black rum story in my life drew to a complete halt with more amount of disposable income at hand with thanks to a good package made the preference curve shift from the black to the white variety. It had more to do with Sumit Baheti's re-entry in my life. We had been friends since class 11 and had gone to the same physics tuition, the teacher was a bearded guy who was morbidly scared of his fat wife. The kid they had was a total brat. And last but not the least the bearded man had predicted that our future would be doomed had we not given him enough moolah to secure a seat in BIT Mesra where he apparently went to teach. So sharing the same doomed future over two years we had celebrated every such occasion in those olden long lost days by creating world records in gobbling up fuchkas. For the lesser informed its the same as gol gappa of Delhi and the pani puri of Mumbai sans the pudina minced water. We in Eastern India prefer the tamarind minced water. But all these records came with a lot of effort and our stomachs did have to go on an overdrive trying to digest some 40 fuchkas at one go. In Bangalore the fuchkas gave way to more dangerous things like white rum. And as predicted we were still celebrating a doomed career as was predicted by the wife fearing bearded guy. While Sumit had landed himself up in a competing IT services company as compared to mine, he was confused as to why on earth even his onsite location was Bangalore and why he slogged all weekends. While I was confused about what I was doing in an IT company. My only sojourn with IT was restricted to flunking a few basic papers way back in school followed by copying out of notes in the diploma exam and getting mass laddoos in assignments for the two IT subjects that we studied in our MBA course. Drinking was as regular a feature in Bangalore as washing clothes (once every weekend). The inclusion of Banner (oh boy he would surely kill me if he saw this) saw the per capita beer consumption of Bangalore reaching record highs. The presence of Banner in the pub hopping gang always ensured that me and Sumit set up self imposed curfews on our intake. Banner would reach new highs every time, and it is a known fact that a drunk Banner is more dangerous than an insane military dictator who has suddenly declared emergency. So whenever Banner was not there to accompany us to the usual hangout on Church Street called New Night Watchman(thanks to its cheaper prices) me and Sumit used to nurse a hangover over our doomed careers on the next day. Well it is a separate story that an intoxicated state coupled with some petulant neighbors had resulted in memories worth keeping for a lifetime. The outcome was that three souls had landed up in the lockup of the nearby police station for no apparent reason. Back now in the present day Paris, Chintu's status message had brought back memories of the charm of black rum and a dying need to get drunk with rum. Me and Aravind had to rush to the nearest store to see if we could get our hands on a bottle of the same. We apparently realised that the mini shop that we visit for emergencies (supplies) doesnt even store alcohol. It was quite a shocker and so we had to run to an almost shut down Monoprix and come out with a 10 euro bottle of exquisite black rum ( a brand that I have completely no idea of at the present moment) . What followed afterwards are mere figments of imagination and reality coupled and intertwined. After 5 drinks the old man of the house was no more singing, he was rather shouting songs. The guy who will any day give a competition to Dagwood of Blondies for being flat on the couch for 24 hours had opened the glass shutters and was romancing the nipping, below zero temperatures of Paris and I was busy writing the stupid blog below this and throwing up some words of emotional support to a friend on gtalk who had suddenly had a major breakup. Though it all sounded so bull and I was not even sure what I was doing, I guess I did a great advice session under alcohol. And then everything went black and as I drifted away to sleep I could just hear a voice saying arey bho..... ke....u r sleeping on the floor between the two sofas. Then everything turned into a kaleidoscope for a split second and it was all dark after that.

After a few pegs of rum......

I havent done this for a long long time. The last time as far as I remember, it was the one and only famous party that we had at IMT after the disgusting financial services paper in the 4th semester that turned out to be the most disgraceful performance in my life. It was one of those papers which was an open book paper and we had no clues what we were supposed to reproduce in our papers. Apart from our lesser mortals who had the audacity of taking up finance as our majors in a college like IMT, there were others who thought that the financial services was one paper that could give them a well deserved placement in the financial services thanks to the boom in the banking and insurance sector. Alas they never expected that the whole end term exam would just consist of one question with a 100 twists and turns. Man it was worth a sight when we all came out of the exam hall with a big question mark written stark on their face. Though it was an open book exam people had this one question all over their worried face, was it a pass or fail? Alas we all knew the outcome, even if it was an open book exams which we long craved for. The toppers were obviously trying to find out the %age difference in their scores while us lesser mortals had headed towards Noida to celebrate the disgusting performance in the FS paper. And lo in the middle of these celebrations I did get some 5-6 calls from the topper of our claass threatening me to complete the strategy project. Poor thing she never had any idea that I wanted to get so very drunk that strategic management seemed as arcane as nuclear physics. Today I am as drunk as that day in the hostels of IMT, when we drank and Arti shopped to feel better. Today she is married and enjoying a life away from financial services and neither do I care about financial services in this world of Interface monitoring in the SAP world. It seems to be a far off world than where we wanted to land ourselves at. But still everyone has survived with a little bit of gloom here and there. But at the end we are what we are. MBA seems to be a far off dream that we managed to indulge in. Alas no more of it survives in real, it is what survives in our sweet nice dreams. But what really remains is this sense of intoxication that makes u ponder about the way your life is taking. After all that perspective changes with time. When u consider that Sumit Baheti was drinking vodka yesterday, I must say that life has chaned a lot. There were times when we had resolved never to drink vodka. And today things have changed. Even six moths is a long time. Today Baheti is indulging himself in litres of vodka. Alas there were days when even 250 ml of vodka would have made us puke. Alas things change, we change, preference change. Time changes every soul in us. If only we could have made time stand still....life might have been a better place to live.......alas never would happen.....

Much ado about cleaning

I finally had the august opportunity to meet the person for whose welcome our house in Paris saw four well fed, pot bellied persons making war like arrangements for a whole of two days in an attempt to clean up all the mess that the flat in Courbevoie housed apart from the four people in question. It was the day of all days that usually comes once a month but for the last two months I had avoided the D-day by rushing away to neighbouring countries when the day came. Considering the fact, that the D-day beaches are very nearby when you consider my geographical location on the map of the world, I had every plans to rush off to the D-day beaches when these once in a month occassions came, but since it was clear that I would most probably be threatened with dire circumstances if I avoided it another time I finally decided to act and clean the house for the grand arrival of our landlord. It has been months since I shifted from the Indian hostel to this appartment with three of my colleagues, in a vain attempt to save some money. Alas I have spent everything on travelling Europe and presently my bank balance looks very much disbalanced. The day I moved into this appartment the smell of gross neglect welcomed me. A sight of the dining table was enough to give the landlord a massive heart attack. There was everything on the table and it looked like the sight of a mini explosion. Bottles and cans of used pickles and sauces were there. There was even a carboard case that was home to a shoe once upon a time. Now it was home to a whole host of masalas that were last used a decade ago. Though I do like my stuffs to be clean and my room to be tidy, cleaning up a community mess is not something which I am used to. The table was left the way it was lest it again decide to explode on me.

Historically I have been blessed with flatmates or hostel roommates who have had dubious records of being clean. Notable is the wonderful time that I had with the great Banner. Room number B-57 in IMT hostel was one of the smallest rooms that could accomodate two people. To meet the problem of space we had joined our two beds and hence were crowned as the undisputed presidents of some well known society of IMT which is best kept secret in a public forum like this. The space constraint problem saw clothes being heaped on the lonesome chair in the room. The chair seemed to be heaped in the same way as a donkey's back when being taken to the dhobi ghat. Books used to be lying here and there on the bed as were newspapers on which we sometimes slept too. These newspapers were hurriedly disposed under the cot to rest in peace with all the dirt of the world. And then once in a while came a frantic SOS call from the great Banner announcing the arrival of his parents. A call like this meant something much more graver than 9/11 for us because if his parents would have seen the condition of our room, the way we kept it, we would both have been shot dead at point blank for being so unclean. The SOS meant I had to run and push every item of clothing inside the big almirah and lock it up. If they would have opened the almirah once, they would have been buried under debries of fallin clothes of all kinds. The next step was to shove everything under the bed and if still unwanted things remained they would be pushed into the neigbours room. Equally unclean the duo of Bindra and Sohar never minded an intrusion into their room. Bindra's cleanliness record had the whole cleaning staff of IMT prying for his blood. He had happily forgot to clean a bucketfull of clothes that he had soaked in soap for more than a month. When he finally threw them all away, it was anybody's guess how many lesser mortals might have died of the stench. The next phase of room cleaning would be the jharu pocha wala stage with me struggling with the jharu and Banner doing the pocha. The speed at which we cleaned the room would definitely have put a high speed TGV at shame. The finishing touches were provided by lighting up a whole plethora of incensce sticks in an effort to shoo away the smell of stale cigarette smoke that lingered on in our room. The wallpapers of our PCs changed from a raunchy Monica Belluci staring at us to a picture of godess Saraswati in no time. And this is how I had saved my ass for a whole year and had managed reasonably well to portray myself to be a clean person to the outside world. Second year in IMT, was an individual affair, with people getting single rooms. I had managed to keep my room clean for the better part of that year and thanks to a lot of initatives taken at the begging of the year of putting up wall hangings and fancy lamp shades nobody ever raised eyebrows. Though in second year also a mount everest of old newspapers rested under my cot. In the latter part of the second year, we stuffed the mountain in Akshara's car and took it to the local kabadiwala and made a mini fortune of it. The money was enough to sposor a booze party for our group of friends. The next stop which became home for a few months was the guest house of Infosys during the training period at Hyderabad. All our combined efforts of keeping everything out of place proved futile by the constant monitoring of the housekeeping staff of the guest house. Bangalore also saw its share of dirtiness thanks to the laziness of us few souls who stayed in a house at BTM layout. The only saving grace was the cleaning woman who did not understand even one word we spoke and vice versa. It was easier to talk to an alien than the cleaning woman, but she did clean the premises and clothes of ours quite well. And now in Paris, cleaning the home is a ploy to keep the owner happy, lest he throws us out of the house into the cold streets of Paris in a winter month. The regularity of cleaning stays in sync with his regularity of coming to collect the rent. That means once in a month the house gets a full revamp with four hatta gatta naujawan becoming the opressed Cinderella taking up the mop and bucket and going around the house cleaning, mopping, strugling, falling and freeing everything of dust and stains including the table that looked like an explosion site. Finally after hours of fighting with the dust and stain and emptying a bottle of stain remover the house looked habitable and sophisticated including the table which no more looked like a blast site of age old curries. Expecting the owner to go ga-ga over our cleanliness initatives but when he came he talked about complex things his bank was doing in a french accented hindi. Later on he started talking about how he desperately wants to learn SAP, a skill that I havent been able to learn in so many years even after sitting infront of the SAP interface every single day. So if you want a clean up of ur house, u know whom not to invite. I am better at cleaning up entries from database these days.

Chocolate, cheese and a lot of beer....Belgium unlimited...

I have never been a great fan of Himesh or his hat since the day the driver of the Volvo to Ernakulam decided it would be very funny to wake up the sleeping passengers by playing Himesh songs on full volume. Since that day I have gazed suspiciously at people who sport a Himesh beard or wear a Himesh cap lest it turns out to be Himesh himself. So moving thousands of kilometers away from the subcontinent of India, I never expected the spirit of Himesh or his cap to follow me in Europe. After I shifted to Paris, I heard the movie goers were swept out of thier feet by the commendable performance of Himesh in the wonderful movie called "Tera tera tera suroor". The fact that the movie was shot somewhere in Europe did give me creepy feelings, but still I was lucky enough to be quarantined from his disastrous songs till I landed up in the wonderful country of Belgium known for its chocolate, cheese and beer and of course glass. All deadly stuffs when you consider the fact that three of these can make your poor tummy inflate and blast away and the fourth thing can rip off ur belly at one go. So before my trip to Germany I went on this trip to Belgium where the spirit of Himesh and his cap managed to haunt me with a guy called Bhaskar from the hostel. Bhaskar is a been there and done that kind of a guy while I am progressing on his foot steps. So he acts as an inspiration for me coz he is almost bald and I am on the path of balding, majority of hair on his head is grey while mine are growing grey slowly, while he has embarked on the journey of marriage a long time back I am seeking motivation to get married sometimes in the future. So both of us set off on this weekend escape to Belgium thanks to the cheap first class ticket that we got on Thalys. So after much oohs and ouches and ifs and if nots from his side finally we did manage to find each other at the Gare de Nord station in Paris and set out for the land of Belgium. After a hearty breakfast on the Thalys where I was cautioned repeatedly for grabbing more than one of every item on the menu, we reached the city of Brussels. Taking one of those cheap intercity trains that runs every half hour to Bruges we set out again towards one of the bigges tourist destination of Belgium famous for its canals and beer. Passing the city, once you land up in the countryside the average Belgian looks like the cows he rears. He is as fat and as white as his cows. No doubt so much of beer, cheese and chocolate does take its toll on the average Belgian.

Once in Bruges, and after purchasing a city map which looked much more like an arcane treasure hunt map than a handy helpful city map we set off towards our hostel on one of the city buses. One small enquiry about the stop of the buses that we needed to get down at got a Belgian totally excited to help us out and then began a walk for 20 long minutes till we reached the hostel. The email from the hostel had promised a 5 minute walk from the city centre. Incidentally later did we realise that the man had taken us through all the wrong lanes and it was almost more than double the distance from the place we had started walking from, that he had taken us on. Once in the reception, the snob receptionist told us to come back at 2 in the afternoon to get our rooms and she gave us a map of the city that was much more readable than the arcane one we managed to get at the station. This map was hilarious in its own ways with suggestions about how one should not pee on the streets of Bruges as the fine amount would amount to some few hundred euros per litre of pee passed, that the best way to peev a Brugeian is to ask him/her where the nearest Mc Donald's is. So off we went with our huge bags exploring the lanes and canals of Bruges clutching the hilarious map which seemed to mock every place in its own way. The first place we entered made us pay 5 euros and it happened to be a church. Now I have never seen a church which charges entry fee since I came to Europe, but the person at the counter convinced us that it had a very beautiful museum and hence the entry fee. Alas the museum turned out to be a museum that had all kinds of lace attires and nothing more. The only good thing was that the church had a very clean and precious toilet that we made full utilisation of. The next stop was the chocolate factory that provided insights into how chocolate beans were used as currency in the olden days in some tribes and how 100 chocolate beans could buy you a strong and sturdy slave in the slave markets. I picked up a handful of chocolates from the complimentary counters irrespective of the muted protests of others and saw how they made chocolates. Overall the entire chocolatey experience in the museum of the chocolate fairy was quite a treat to the senses. Heading ahead we tried climbing the Belfry tower in the market square that has an epic 366 steps, the passage goes on getting narrower as one reaches the top. It was quite a harrowing experience carrying our bags to the top of the tower. Once we reached the top, the clock at the top started ringing horribly with its huge dongs that could have easily made a non susupecting soul go deaf. We came down from the Belfry tower after giving our whole hearted support to the Indian cricket team which was just across the English channel playing a test match against England(we met a British couple who were more interested in discussing cricket than climbing the stairs). After having a lunch of burgers and fattening fries we set off to claim our rightful rooms in the hostel and after struggling with the locks and the sophisticated security system we were finally able to get into our room. The room was cosy yet typically featureless and overlooked the kitchen of the restaurant underneath which had stacked up crates and crates of beer bottles which is yet another Belgian passion. To realise this passion we head next to the famous Bruggian Zot brewery that has guided tours that show how beer was made previously in the olden days. After buying a ticket for the tour that was supposed to culminate in a free glass of beer we realised that the smell of beer was enticing enough for us to buy a few more glasses till the tour started. The tour was conducted by a lady infected with the horrific Belgian sense of humor who took us around the old beer distillery sharing anecdotes with a face as serious as any of our politicians, but spiced with a very strong sense of humor. So the Belgian beer factory lady told us that packing Belgian beer into cans is an insult to the beer and that the Belgian beer should always be served in the right glass to make it taste all the more better. And finally that one should never complaint if the Belgian beer was served with a whole lot of froth. Pouring beer out of bottles or jars with the least amount of froth, was a game that we enjoyed and associated it with some kind of weired macho masculanity ideas, but in Belgium the beer lady proved it to be all wrong. According to her, the initial froth allows people to start up conversations while the froth settles down. She also said that people also start talking to their beer once in a while and it only becomes serious when the beer starts talking back to you. Then you know, that it is the last glass for the night. The customary beer followed the tour and with all the newly gained knowledge I analysed the contents of the beer- barley turned into malt, mixed with water and hoop for the customary smell and then cooled and fermented and bottled to make the golden yellow liquid that has long left me intriguied with its taste. The beer factory tour was followed by a 30 minute ride on a boat on the canals of Bruges. A sign on the boat at the end of the tour again proved the classiness of Belgian humor. The sign read that "Tipping is not a town in China". We followed the boat trip up with a trip to the old windmills on the outer fringes of the town and again wandered back along the canals to reach the city centre. There were roadside shows and a huge saturday night rock concert. By the time we realised that we were hungry, most of the restaurants had already shut down their kitchens. Finally we found this French continental restaurant that had kept its door open till late. As we sipped beer waiting for our fish and chips the music system started playing "Saiyan dil mein aana re". Sitting in a French restaurant on the northern fringes of Belgium and listening to a Bollywood song is nothing you would expect. But Europe seems to be filled with all these surprises and French guy from the restaurant said that his father in law is a big fan of Indian movies and hence he has a collection of Bollywood songs too. He even named Amitabh Bacchan though it did sound like Amitabh Bachpan. After a hearty meal and clicking pictures of the city canals illuminated at night by lights, we headed back to the hostel and slept like logs. The next day, the weather god was all angry and as we left Bruges for Brussels, the sky was pouring rain like cats and dogs. Brussels is a disaster when compared to Bruges. It looks like one of those post World War 2 towns, cold and damp and not so pretty. We took the city tour on top of those open air buses which could not be converted into open air ones thanks to the huge amount of rain that Brussels was subjected to on that very day. We were the only duo who seemed to be getting down at all the sight seeing stops, every one else seemed to be contended seeing Brussels from the bus. Finally at the end of the day, we landed up near the famous Mannekan piss. The small boy's statue that keeps on pissing all day and night in a narrow lane of Brussels. And finally we heard the much horrific music of the soul who had made my sleep on a bus en route to Kerela blaring from one of the shops near Mannekan's piss. No doubt he was a Pakistani who had set up a souvenior shop near the famous statue and Himesh was blaring full volume from the music system saying "Dil se pooch le, jaan se pooch le". Incidentally I did want to ask my dil and jaan that till what time I would have remained sane listening to naam tera tera Himesh. And thus ended our Brussels trip, on the way back the Thalys stopped at least 4 times on the track and was 20 minutes late to Paris. They said it is one of those for the record books. I said lets not talk about the Indian Railways record books.

Bidi on the streets of Nurnberg

Being 25 and acting like a kid requires a lot of efforts. Specially when you are in a distant land where every word worth its money starts or ends with a Z and has Z in the middle to supplement the effect, it takes a lot of effort to throw out the composure of a mature person and do things that you always wanted to do as a kid(more about it later in the post). The scene was in Deustchland or more commonly Germany which I visited last weekend thanks to the fact that one of my project mates had been sent there much against his wishes of leaving Paris. So his double room in the hotel was the perfect abode that I required for planning such kind of a trip and ensuring that I need not pay much. Well it is a seperate story that the way I am draining out all the money from my BNP Paribas bank account, that I might soon have to sing on the streets and make people pay me money for shutting up the horrible cacaphony. I am pretty sure that if the darconian FERA was still in practice in India, these guys from the law enforcing bodies of India would surely have caught up with me to help me save some euros. So last friday at the holy hour of 1700 I escaped from office with tickets in hand for Germany. The holy hour of 1700 is just another holy hour including the holy hour of 1800 where leaving office is considered a henious crime. If only my manager would have seen me, he would have had a fit. I reassigned work here and there much against the protest of other lesser mortals and headed straight to Paris East to catch my train to Frankfurt with that big bulky bag that one of my roommates Sayee had given to me. It was a seperate story that the bag looked dead bulky if you put in just 3-4 T-shirts. So with the bag and the big fat 7th edition of Harry Potter in hand, I reached the Paris East station not before bumping my bag into some unsuspecting souls and getting to hear a mouthful of obscenities in French. I had a window seat and unlike others who appear real casual about not getting one, its an honest confession that I am really thrilled when I am given a window seat. Incidentally the person beside me, a German with a blonde moustache (man it was damn scary) also had the 7th Harry Potter in his hand. A father of two, he convinced his sons to solve the Sudoku while he glanced through pages of the Harry Potter. The German versions of the super fast trains unlike the Belgian versions or the French versions have a display that gives all kind of nasty informations in four languages and also shows the speed at which the train cruises. Soon we were cruising at close to 307 kmph. I mean imagine the shock of a poor guy who used to do a 12kmph on a standard blue and white bus of a specific company on the mother of all higways Hosur Road way back in Bangalore, being hurled forward towards Germany at 307kmph. The train journey on board the DB(DeustchBahn) ICE(Inter City Express) was worth every euro spent on it. And it did give me a chance to plan the acting like a kid stuff when I saw that the driver's cabin was only one glass partition away from the passenger seats.

An ICE

The next day after a sleep of less than 4 hours me and Anirban set off on yet another ICE journey (this time sitting in the cafe onboard the train sipping Bavarian beer) to the beautiful city of Nurnberg known for its castel, its famous Nazi parade grounds and the famous Nazi trials is a cute little city with a lot of things to see. The churches are old and really impressive with the typical gothic structures. They looked like the famous Notre Dame church of Paris. The insides of the church were serene and quite and the sunlight created amazing patterns when they passed through the tinted glasses. After going up the stairs and down the escalator and losing track close to 5 times we were finally able to land up at the tourist information centre of Nurnberg. The small old town with all its sceneic attractions finally of its fountains and the weekend markets, the churches and the museums, the town hall and the excise house finally lands you up at the foot of the castle which houses a museum too. It seemed to be a strange place with more museums than public lavatories on the street. The castle was small and typically German. The tour was of no help as it was also in German. There were hardly 5 people including us two who wanted the English version, rest all seem to have a fair idea of how german was spoken. The most impressive feature of the castle was the watch tower from which the whole city was visible and the well that ran down 305 metres deep into the ground. There were candles placed on a plate with the help of a pulley which were hoisted down to show the depth of the well. We had a Thai lunch in a Bavarian restaurant and sipped down Bavarian beer out of those huge glasses which store more than 500 ml of beer at one go. It gave me no doubts as to why Germans looked as big as boulders and had bellies as big as a 15 months pregnant cow. Post lunch we headed off towards the Nazi parade grounds on board a tram not before running into a store that was selling stuffs that looked very much Indian. And I was rather bemused to find the store selling packets of bidis at the exhorbitant price of 3 euros per packet. The guy from the store with his huge blonde eyebrows explained how bidis made in India were hot favourites in these parts of Germany. Considering the margin that one can gain on this kind of a business, I would have to look no further if I want to start a business. I would be happy enough to import crates of Dum Dum biri at around Rs.1 per packet and sell them at a whooping 3 euros per packet in Germany. The Nazi parade grounds were kind of scary and bore witness to the acts of Nazi. The guided tour of the rooms showed the story of the rise and fall of Nazism in Germany. It was a real pity that had ended in the trial and hanging of Nazi leaders in Nurnberg. After having another round of Bavarian beer and the famous sausages from Nurnberg we set sail again for Frankfurt on board another ICE. And this is where I turned into a complete kid much against the muted protests of Anirban. We had landed up seats in the front row right behind the drivers cabin and every bit of me was interested in landing up into the driver's cabin for once and seeing how they ran the ICE at that huge a speed. Suddenly out of nowhere there were two kids accompanied by their father, who had asked for permission from the train manager entering the drivers cabin. And seeing them go inside I felt the compelling need to go inside the cabin all the more taking grip of me. And finally I asked the ICE driver if I could make my way inside the small cabin and he readily agreed. And thus was fulfilled a dream to be inside the drivers cabin of a train, and since the train was running at around 250kmph, it was all the more exciting to be on board. The driver told us how the throttle was handled and which was the brake and the horns etc. It was 15 minutes of pure ecstacy at the end. Later on I realised that even the drivers feel bored and are happy to show people the tricks of their job rather than sit straight for more than 4 hours and gaze ahead on the tracks. After all even they need some entertainment which they get thanks to unsuspecitng souls like us. Sunday was spent in roaming Frankfurt which incidentally has nothing that interesting except for a boat ride on the river Maine and a metro that runs underground before suddenly appearing out of nowhere on the road and even following traffic signs. A metro on the streets is something that I have never encountered in any other city of the world. Monday morning saw me boarding another ICE and as a co passenger I got a very good looking German girl who seemed to know every language in the world. On the way she was seen reading an English fiction, which gave way to a German one before landing up on to a French guide about Paris. Talk about being multi linguistic!!

With a huge Bavarian beer in hand

Inside the driver's cabin of an ICE

The weired Metro of Frankfurt that runs on the road