Living the Dream: The City

Well all the hardships at the project work left behind, the long awaited weekend was here. One might wonder how can it be long awaited when I arrived on Wednesday only, but I have been waiting for this since I got my confirmation letter.
Plans had been made yesterday evening only and in the morning the three musketeers set out for their first extravaganza. Destination for westerntor to visit the very famous Paderborn Dom (that’s a church). The road through the market was very colorful I must say, there were stalls there were shopping marts, clothing stores and lot more. At the Dom, I must admit it was a bit stupid on our part, we first saw the building from outside, clicked a few pics and moved later when told by others we went back and got inside the Dom to see the beautiful tapestry and the archeology of the Christian era. And then being very wise we decided to go to the tourist information centre which was in the beginning of the market we had just crossed to find out about the museum and the famous chapel just to be told that both these places are situated just behind the Dom so we had to walk all the way back to get to these places. But it was fun. The chapel has a history, post world war II entire Paderborn was bombarded and the only building that survived was not the church or the palace but the chapel where kings crown and sword were placed…..so that was something. Then we got to see the underground spring (it wasn’t actually a spring it was just a small underground pond u could say) .That was followed by the most exciting part where we went to the banks of river Pader also known as pader spring(as it originates from about 200 springs pouring in) and there were young boys and girls enjoying the river bank in clothes that can’t be called very decent  I guess I make my point. Got a few nice clicks there; after a short rest break at bib we again set out for the SPRING FESTIVAL. As it turned out this time we missed the bus and since the next bus was an hour later, we set out on foot. Plan was to shop at furstenweg and then take a bus from there, but furstenweg was half the way down to weterntor and we walked another stop or to look for a bus stop and before we could realize we were already at westertor, small city this is, and still the buses are so expensive… AS it turned out spring fest was more of a beer fest, variety of hard drinks and jam packed streets with people drinking some guys singing and stuff. It was good but we just couldn’t feel like we could be a part of all this, it’s their culture, new for us so after some “greenery seeing” we tracked back… Dinner was fantabulous, I had omlete (and I still don’t know which bird’s egg was that) along with daal chaval, that was followed by Roadies episode…….. felt just like home  sb

Living the Dream: The Dhamaka

Honestly, I am not made for research. I attended a lecture today by Dr. Matthias Richelet on the very controversial optical bloch equations and you know what if I have to write an exam paper on these things well give me three months and I can produce a dream result but to understand root of everything is something……….. Complicated I should say. It was a bit of a relief when Dr. Richelet said that since I don’t have enough time I don’t need to get into the basics of everything and that I can straight way start with the code in C++. But the relief as it turned out was temporary; the code again had me thinking if I had made the right decision by coming here and to top it up there was this book called numerical recipes to refer while I edit the code as per my need. I sat in my office wondering,, kya gh***a edit karun, kuch samajh me aaye tab to edit karun … saala input kya dena hai yehi hi ni pta hai bolta hai edit karo..
It took me a few hours to get back to normal and then I said to myself, Sumeet, today is just the first day, u are bound to find things difficult, whats’ the big fuss about… and worst case scenario, I don’t do well so what, I wanna be in the corporate sector so who cares… But hell no, I have never failed so how can I fail here when I am representing Indian students, kuch to karna hi padega.
Then next up I went to the supermart I ahd to buy another sim card since my first one was a flop show, but this time I got a card that provides cheap calling rates to India so that was a good news. Ya Shubra aunty was right cream and body lotions are cheap here, and becoz papa was insisting so I thought lets’ check out some jackets  and halloooo the beginning range was 99.99euros hehe, so just checked them out and came back. For the second time today I didn’t purchase a ticket on board, roz 5+5 kms jaane ke 300 rupay kon bharega… dekhi jaegi vaise bhi koi check ni karta hai.
Later I and Abhijit went to the lake that’s near our hostel well the surroundings were beautiful but the lake wasn’t. And then the two miser tired Indians (that would be me n Abhijit) walked about 4+4 kms to the nearest shopping mart. And guess what when we finally managed to reach the mart we were not allowed t get in coz the marts closing time was approaching and they wouldn’t entertain new customers. We were like wtf man is bright sunny evening and you are closing down, and then we checked out our watches to find out it was 8:30 at night….. well sun never sets heretill 11 o clock its just a bit dark and in the morning 5o clock its shining again…. Tomorrow probably will be a more happening day…..Sb
P.S. there’s one thing I missed on the first day, i happened to buy a crate of mineral water as advised and when I drink it I find that people here drink soda in place of water……. Gosh these Germans!!!!