The main purpose of this particular trip was to meet Anu in Frankfurt. But this was possible only on a Sunday and we had a full Saturday to be planned for. After going through a list of possible points of interest, we zeroed in on Trier. This particular German city, located right at the border with Luxembourg was quite different from other places in the country. I don’t know how to explain, but let me just say it felt different :)

Trier claims to be the oldest German city and is famous for its ancient roman architecture mostly in ruins now. It was once the capital of roman prefecture of Gaul (remember Asterix anyone?). We started off with Porta Nigra a large city gate now also standing in as the office of the Trier tourism department. It is a nice old building with a good view of the city. After exploring this old structure we walked through the Marktplatz where a friendly German lady offered us some tips and directions to the worth-seeing attractions in the area. Our first stop was Constantine Basilica adjoining the grand Trier palace. Nothing special of note here, except for the sight of some young kids showing off their skateboarding skills in the area around the church.

Our next stops really had that Roman touch. The “Roman Bath” was amazing. An underground network of tunnels which the romans supposedly used as their spas. Hmm.. Why they would ever want to have a bath in a dark spooky place like that is beyond me! Well.. the things the Romans do! ;) We did have our fun though, playing a bit of hide-and-seek & peek-a-boo like little kids and also scaring the hell out of Renu! Next after a long winding walk up some street we reached the ruins of the Amphitheater. It totally reminded me of Russel Crowe and Gladiator and they did indeed have events like that held over heremthousands of years ago. In ruins and still so magnificent! I stayed wondering, how it would have been with the crowds cheering the gladiators along… hmmm.. that would have been an experience indeed! :D We came back to Marktplatz and the whole area was filled with people now. There was another huge Christmas market here, the countless ones I have seen already, but still filled with wonder for me.

After that, we drove in Luxembourg. In 15 minutes we were in a different country! I guess this one is so small that we could have driven through all the roads in the country in a day if we wanted to! Instead we parked in a side street and walked around, seeing what we could. It was all over in an hour and a half. Well that was the shortest visit to any country I have ever done :) We drove back into Frankfurt before night fell and then had the fun of our lives finding a parking spot. Unfortunately our hostel was located right next to the busiest railway station in Germany and had no parking facilities. We drove round and round, until we found a little bit of space just enough to fit a Mercedes C220. With precise instructions from Ginu and Sandeep I somehow managed to fit in the car in that space. The proudest moment in my “parking” career especially after a gang of Germans in a smaller car taunted us shouting that we will never be able to fit the car in there.. ha.. take that!! :D

Next day we left to a quiet suburb to meet Anu in her cousins home. After a while of chit-chatting and a delicious desi-lunch, we set off with Anu to drop her off at the Frankfurt station. Dropping her and the others off there, I thought I would try my luck with finding a parking spot again. Hmmm.. Lets just say I know the surrounding area of the Frankfurt station pretty well now. Who wouldn’t after driving around the same area 5 times!!

Anyway this was my last day before my driving license became invalid in Germany and I decided to enjoy it to the last bit. We skipped the autobahn and decided to take the country roads. Oh boy! This was great… empty winding roads on a Mercedes C class… well it was a dream come true.. :)

Last but not the least the trip in which I touched my personal land speed record… 243 Km/Hr.. yeah, you have seen the videos! :)

Multitasking can be a good thing, but not always… :D

A few days ago me and this girl I know were having a discussion about her singing, over email. I had sent a not so positive review of her skills, and the poor thing was drafting a “spicy” reply to me. Suddenly she receives a phone call from her colleague. The colleague asks her to inform their Project Manager (a German) that she would not be coming to office. You see Microsoft Outlook is a great app, you can type someone’s name on the CC field and you are able to view their office extension from this. So this resourceful friend of mine uses this shortcut to get her PMs number. All is well till now. But the poor thing presses Ctrl-Enter on the keyboard. Another great thing about Outlook is that the mail is sent instantaneously using this shortcut key combination. So this mail comes to me, with a cc to her PM. Unfortunately, the first line in the email read something like this – “@$##!@#!$%^%$^#$#@%@^@#$!@$#%”. I can only imagine that chilling feeling that went through her mind. But yeah he was a sport and didn’t mind too much getting this as his first mail for the day :D and luckily all other expletives used were in Malayalam a language I am pretty sure he doesn’t understand hehe.

Why did I put this up here? Well I was bored… and wanted to beware you of Outlook, it plays tricks on you, especially when you are multitasking :D

Oh and by the way : Happy new year folks! :)

Names of people involved purposefully removed to avoid vandalism to poor old rusty ;)

This was my second trip into Austria. Driving again and for the first time while it was snowing. The temperatures outside were really down the scale during our onward journey, reaching -8 to -10 at places. But salutes to German engineering, there was not one trace of snow on the Autobahns even the though the area around it was covered in a think white blanket of snow.

We started off from Plochingen in the evening and reached Vienna by midnight. We were hosted again by Sandeep’s cousin Soumya chechi (of Chicken Bonn fame ;)). It was tough finding her house because our navi was not working outside Germany and the signs in Vienna were poor even compared to Indian standards!

Next day morning, we drove to the Schloss Schonbrunn. The city roads of Vienna were not ice-free as the autobahns and handling the car on ice was a pretty scary experience in the traffic of Vienna! The schloss was quite good and I was impressed by the Princess ‘Sissi’ who once lived there – for once a European princess was actually beautiful :)

After a brief stay there, we drove towards the city center. There we walked around the quite charming city and somewhere in the city we found the desi ‘Cafe Coffee Day’! It cost us a lot, but the welcome we got was pretty cool. They even gave us a bag of coffee as we left. The place seems to be pretty popular in Vienna too.. way to go India! After the CCD experience, we went to a huge Christmas market right outside the ‘Rathaus’. The Christmas market had a brilliant atmosphere with the numerous stalls selling a variety of curios, hordes of people chirping away, children riding ponies, a live band playing and even a glimpse of the Vienna mayor! We ended our day with a visit to the parliament building which has some beautiful Greek sculptures adoring its front yard.

The next day was mostly spent at home cooking away. After another nice meal we bid farewell to Soumya chechi…

It was an odd time to visit this much hyped about place. It was already November and winter had already started showing up its head even up in Stuttgart. But we had 3 days to ourselves and with no other long breaks likely any time in the near future, we set out on a Thursday morning on an Audi A3.

Our first destination was Zürich. We crossed the border (not before revving up the Audi to 230 on the autobahns, off course) at Schaffhausen. The contrast with Germany was only gradual, the scenery did not change dramatically but the roads did – they had speed limits :) . Zürich was a pretty nice city, we intended it to be just a short stopover and walked a little bit on the city streets. The rest of the city we saw from the car. Nothing of note, except that I got a little scared when I found myself across the tram track with two trams heading towards me!

We headed towards Flüelen, a nice small town alongside a lake. The drive was just brilliant through the winding mountain roads alongside a lake. You know, after that I started thinking maybe speed limits in Switzerland is probably a good thing. You can see a lot more and take in the beauty and appreciate it much better. At Flüelen we parked alongside the lake and took a stroll. It was really beautiful. The mountains and lakes presented a view as if it was right out of a picture postcard. After a few hours we moved towards Luzern our halt for the night. We had difficulty finding the youth hostel, so we got to see a lot of the city in the car thanks to a very crappy navigation system (which I heard was manufactured by Bosch). Finally after we managed to reach the hostel, we did explore the city a little bit on foot in the night. The ‘flower bridge’ was really good, maybe even better if we had seen it during day. The whole city had a nice classical touch to it. Great!

Early morning on Friday we dragged our lazy selfs towards our nächster halt – Engelberg. Again located in a very rural part of Switzerland the drive was fun all the way, especially the long tunnels and Ginu driving for the first time in Europe ;) (just kidding, he did drive great for a first timer). Our navi enabled us to see some probably unexplored areas of Engelberg, including a nice wooden bridge across a small brook with no civilization around. It was a good experience. We finally reached our actual point of interest, the cable car station to Mt. Titlis. We were expecting high costs and bad weather, but it turned out to be just the opposite. We were going in off season, so prices were nearly half and you couldn’t really ask for better weather at this time of the year. What luck! Mt. Titlis was an amazing experience, first time really up close with so much snow. We had our fun, playing like little kids with the snow. Too bad we couldn’t take any souveniers (you see, snow melts). Needless to say, the view was breathtaking. And as customary, I did fall stepping on some hard and slippery ice, and that too while encouraging Renu to be not scared and keep going up a small snow slope. Well embarrassing, but I am getting used to it as the falls are now getting fairly regular :D .

Another thing I noticed about Mt. Titlis (and generally Switzerland), I saw a lot of boards in Hindi. I was a bit surprised at first, but seeing the number of Indians there, well… The Swiss people are really smart, they have made very good use of Bollywood! Indians seem to be flocking to every corner of this beautiful country. It doesn’t end there either.. we even got some delicious Samosas from a very European restaurant at a rather cheap (by swiss standards) price!

Our stopover for the night was Grindelwald. I feel like I am repeating this too often (ah! guess who works for Bosch navigation systems.. hehe.. Anu.. no offense :D) but the navi, this time both the machine and the human variant (Sandeep) led us to a different hostel up a very scary hill only to find out that it is closed from October! I switched to a slight panic mode, but soon we realized that it was *not* the youth hostel we were supposed to reach! Hmmph.. what a relief! The youth hostel at Grindelwald was a good one – the Downtown Lodge – I would recommend this if you are on a visit. The city (or rather village) was a sleepy little place with a nice park (meant for children I think, but who cared, we all played! :D ).

We had planned to go to a place called Trümmelbach the next day, but unfortunately it was closed. We had Plan B, Plan C and Plan D and we kind of switched back and forth between which plan to actually take since we were always on an ‘unknown road’ according to the navi. Finally we decided to go to Geneva. We didn’t have much time to see a lot of the city because we had to reach Stuttgart by nightfall. But we did manage to catch quite a good glimpse of it and driving on the streets of Geneva was almost comparable to driving in a less trafficy city in India. I had a lot of good fun.. I could hear cars honk! Where else in Europe!! Felt so much at home <evil grin>.

By midnight, after a splash and dash on the autobahns again, we were back in Stuttgart. It was a great trip, probably a great time to visit Switzerland if our experience is anything to go by. It was incredibly cheap, cost us one-fourth of what it cost most of our friends who went in summer. But luck has to be on your side, we were blessed with brilliant weather… Whatever it is, do visit Switzerland sometime, unlike a lot of other things, it lives up to the hype… :)

1 This was the first time (also the last till date ;) ) I had the chance to travel in Germany’s fastest (and potentially the fastest in the world according to my German collegues atleast) train – the InterCity Express or simply the ‘ICE’. It was a good experience, that much speed on land was new (though not any more). The interior decos were interesting too, I especially loved the bord-bistro, though I chose not to dine since prices weren’t too catchy for my pocket :)

Once in Hildesheim, I was treated to some great Indian food prepared by the one and only Anu, and surprise surprise I got an early birthday party complete with a cake, candles reminding me I’m turning old (grunt!) and even a few Germans ;). It was a major surprise for me and I loved it! After the mini birthday party we went for a fair in closeby Hannover. We were a very unique gang that day, friends representing 4 countries – India, Germany, Turkey and Romania.. truly international. Everybody was discussing our (the Indians’) age and how we can be so young and working.. hehe.. and I thought I was growing old.. That was a relief! It was great fun and we spend a lot of time chit chatting in the banks of Mach see, having been denied access to the ‘Pepermint dome’ because our clothing was too informal. Boo!

2 I had told Anu that next time I will come driving and she was like no way that is possible. Well it was possible and it was done :) This time we had the full troupe for the trip and not just me. Ginu, Renu, Sandeep and I, geared up from in front of Bosch Plochingen on a Friday evening at around 1630hrs for the stated 5 hour drive to Hildesheim. 1.5 hrs of the stated 5 hrs was lost in the traffic of Stuttgart. It was a tense but good experience for me, since I had not driven much ‘on the wrong side’ in the cities of Germany. Anyway the stated 5hrs extended to nearly 8 and we finally managed to reach Hildesheim by midnight after also getting my first speeding ticket ;) It was a long drive, but with undampened spirits we held on till around 3 am in the morning watching some great Mallu comedy clips :)

The highlight of Saturday was a trip to an amusement park – Heide park – in a small town called Soltau some 100 km away from Hildesheim. The rides were brilliant and the best thing was since it was during off-season we did not have to endure the long queues we had to wait in while we had gone to Europa park. There were some great rides I would recommend any day, especially the biggest wooden frame roller coaster in the world. By night fall we were back, but this time there wasn’t enough energy left for the marathon all night film screenings and so we all had a nice good sleep. Sunday was spend experiencing Ms. Ann Mary Philip’s cooking. We were all good food testers I believe and the quality of food meant that we were all filled up by the time it was time to leave. We also made a short visit to the Hildesheim church and spend a few minutes in the serenity of the cathedral.

3 Two weeks later and we were back. Again in the car, with more drivers, with more experience and no speeding ticket this time, but anyhow managed to get a parking ticket – punishment for a slight lapse of memory :( Saturday we went again to Hannover. Mach see was so different this time, I couldn’t count more than 5 people in the whole area. Last time I was there, there was no place to even turn around without bumping on to some one. Anyway we spend some more time there and was back at home by evening. Mach see seems to have some uncanny relationship with birthday surprises. Since even this time there was not one, but two surprise parties – one for our hostess Anu and one for Renu, each being planned by one another and we three being the common factor. We pulled it off fine and I think they were not acting surprised ;) That was good too. Two more surprises well done in Hildesheim.

The highlight of the trip was yet to come. And that would be a surprise even for you, my good friend – Kappa (tappiocca) and beef fry – Kerala style in Germany! Wow.. that was the tastiest food I have had in ages. Serious and I am not writing this because I know Anu will read this sooner or later ;) but it indeed was… incredible!

Three incredible weekends in the quiet sleepy town of Hildesheim. All credits to Frau. Philip aka Anu for making it all so unforgettable. This post is dedicated to you, Anu.. :)