Living The dream: SWITZERLAND

I had always heard of the place viz movies and people going there for honeymoons and stuff like that, and after spending some 15-16 years in the Dev Bhumi Himachal, i was a bit skeptical before this tour, thinking if i would find anything new, or will it be yet another Manali or something. Hell i was proven wrong.. today i understand all the hype around Swiss and its natural beauty. Its not that i haven't seen lakes or snow before, i have seen plenty
of that but one cannot just visualize how beautiful it was without being there..
The first destination Zurich wasn't something we were much interested in.. we have had plenty of museums and big cities by now, so the three musketeers were soon headed towards Schloss Laufen, for the rine falls. To put it blatantly.. from top it looked a nice huge waterfall, then we moved closer, down its trail and about a few inches away from the actual flow, which mind you was terrifying, Rhine is the Ganges of Europe and the river falling down from the alpes to enter mainland Swiss.. its like you have to hold your breath for a second or two before being bold enough to go that close. And finally at the bottom of the cliff, with the water flowing underneath you at that speed, if you stare at the flow for sometime time,, it feels like there is some attraction force and you are gonna fall into the water if you dont look away!!
I have to admit it was scary..
Next destination was Interlaken, but before i mention that place the amazing journey to the lake locked city has to be spoken about... Moving from the alpes to the valleys of swiss
the entire trail has numerous lakes and decorated fields, cows munching there stuff,horses running around and the snow capped mountains in the background, i have never seen this face of natures beauty ever before, its like you are in the song sequence of soe bollywood flick.
The trains are awsome ofcourse and expensive as hell, Thanx to the eurail pass we avoided paying for about 350 euros of train tickets with that pass which costs 240 euros :)
Well interlaken is a place where you would want to come and stay for a atleast 4 days have enough money in your pockets to enjoy the paragliding, helicopter/ craft jump (i dont knw what that is called ;)) the hikings, the awesome view, fishing, camping and what not..... Please dont get carried away, everything is "expensive" so jyada senti nhi hona hai!! We had planned to go upto the top of Europe, thats Mt. Jungfraujoch but as i have been mentioning, budget thoda tight tha,, n we couldn't afford to spend some 10000 rupees for that cliff...My long time dream of owning a swiss knife came true. The thing that was a bit annoying was that, we could see more Indians then foreigners around..
The man at chocolate store even joked that, during the month of may, we call this place "INDIANLAKEN". :)The cozy hostel and the lip smacking pizza summed up the day.
Next morning, we set sail towards Mt. Titlis. Its something you can't dream of missing. Firstly going up to more than 10000 feet on the GONDOLA was an amazing experience.. then the glacier cave was okaaay types, and then out in the snow, falling, playing, clicking was the order of the day.
Previous night someone had suggested that to save some bucks we could avoid taking the ice flier ride.... but fortunately we decided to go for it... that was the best part of titlis
Skating in the snow, at times falling on your face and sliding or even rolling deep down.. it was at that moment i told myself.... alryt its decided.. i am coming back again here and i'll atleast a week in this paradise.
Luckily noone got hurt coz falling on ice is fun only intill you don't get hurt, it can even break a few bones on your unlucky day :)
The weekends last two days only, what a pity, we had to leave, though resisting the temptaion of staying on for another day was difficult, we delayed our departure as long as possible and finally ended up missing the last train by what at max, 2 seconds.
I wa there at the platform and the train was there in front of me,, but these automatic doors had just shut me out and i couldn't anything about it... as result we had to spend the night at a station in Hamm and back to Paderborn in the morning..
but if you ask me, staying up there for that extra half an hour is worth waiting on the platform for a few hours :)
Getting back to that honeymoon part.... my verdict.... yes this is the place you need to be at!!! and like sharan would say.......... peace!! sb

Living The Dream: The ultimate destination ..AMSTERDAM

Weekend 3
Planning sometimes is just a waste of time... this was one of those cases. Everything was set, and the three musketeers were all set to leave for the "fairyland" by the 8pm train.
We reach back after the days work at 5 and Abhijit had arranged for a surprise that had me in a fix. As per the new 'plans' we were leaving for Amsterdam in half an hours time and guess
what all this was planned at 5pm..... but a better option indeed, we saved one full day by moving just 3 hours early. I never realized when the 7 hour long journey had passed and i am sure neither Abhijit nor Sharan did.
The excitement could be seen all over our faces..... 12:30 at night we step out of the railway station and nothing but one place was open at that time (coz thats the only time it is open)
We went, we saw and we conquered..... for details on that part u'll have to meet me personally :) All i would say is that place is beyond anyones imagination, if you haven't been there then you can never know what it feels like
no matter how well someone describes it... It took me some time to realize what has happening around me aws really not a set from a movie but a real thing.... and ya its wasn't a very sober area so we can't deny that the environment was a bit scary..
i mean what would you do if some well build black guy tries to sell marijuana and cocaine to you, its a bit different than vendors chasing you in Chandani Chowk isn't it :)
All i know is sometime later i'll go back, i definitely will!!!!
Well then moving ahead, the rest of the night or should i saw the twilight was spend firstly sleeping on the benches on a street and then sitting on a corner in the station..... hotels were way beyond what our budget could ever permit.
Next day the important locations visited were the famous "I AMSTERDAM", a beautiful place weel maintained and since we were there early in the morning so we had a lot of privacy so as to
climb up the thing.. i don't know what to call it, and be on our own... it was fun.. Bhook lage to every time McD comes to our rescue, it was when we had started eating that we realized that everyone hunger of a beast.. :)Every museum and park in Amsterdam is very expensive so we decided to pick Madame Taussands museum that was to be invested in...
The museum lived upto its reputation... amazing wax models, great atmosphere, the horror show was sumthing that came up unexpected and had everyone clasping each other... Great pics in that place, i would definitely want to visit the main museum in London sometime..
The return journey seemed to go on for ever... the same seven hours that we had covered without even realizing about it on our way down had each one of us cursing the watch... and worst part was to cook dinner after returning from that tiring journey
...did i ever mention... i am a great cook :)
Okay getting back.... next day we went to be on the Stranger Tides, ya the Pirates 4 (its a rare thing to find a movie being shown in English, so many foreign students at Paderborn had turned up..)
Well what had been planned about 10 months ago had been captured in my memories now for all times to come..... every time i think about the place and i can actually smell the fragerance that was in the air..;)
hhhhhhhhhhh wow!!!!!!!!! :)..............sb

Living the Dream: Weekend 2

Well the weekdays were more or less the routine stuff, go to work n back do some shopping n cook etc[cooking has become very monotonous now.... :(] . Then came Friday evening when
all i did was to plan the weekend.... As it turned out, Sharan wanted to see a football match in Dortmund (for which i was least interested in spending 50 euros) n Abhijit didn't have a
semester ticket yet.. so it was The lone musketeer for this weekend left to explore the beautiful state of North Rhine Westfalia.
Proper planning and internet is all you need to feel at home at any place... so i chalked out the complete itenary and left early in the morning (early by clock, sun rises unusually early here by about 4:30 or something..)
Bonn was the first destination.... city of the musician Ludwig Von Beethoven.... the famous guy about whom i got to know later from Dheeraj that he is actually real famous....
Lots n lots of museums from different eras, the historic house of Beethoven and his astonishing instrument, the immaculate churches...... i had never experienced this feeling before of being a tourist..
I mean everytime i go somewhere either friends or family is with me, n here i am seeing places alone just me n my cam... it was strange but fun, just like the wanderers we see in the movies
Feel hungry and the only tried and tested McDonalds is the joint i can trust(had an encounter earlier this week and almost consumed Beef, so i maintain extra caution these days)
The best part of these tours is that everything to be seen is located at the heart of the city and you don't need to move around in bus or cab or something jsut help urself with the map
the Tourist information centres provides and enjoy as you wish..
Early in the morning Kaku suggested that i should go to Koblenz as it has numerous castle n all, so after clicking a few picks at the shore of Rhine, a peaceful river that cuts bonn into two halves
i boarded the RE for Koblenz......... City was beauiful alright but the journey was awsome.... train goes besides the river, where u can see rafts and small towns located on the river sides, and the hill tops properly maintained
with a castle here and there... it was a new world completely different to what i had perceived of Germany till now... the suburbs of this nation are the same as towns presented in the dragon tales..
It poured down heavily when i was at Koblenz which was a big disappointment but everything can't be perfect,, so... acceptable.
I was lucky enough to get back to paderborn in time ti catch the last bus for my hostel... on the way, as i had mentioned, there was this football match.. it happened to bethe last league match which Dortmund had won and was crowned in front of home croud today
Well trains streets everything was as noisy as it could ever get... evryone was drunk(that includes girls and even quite a few kids) and when i say drunk, they were all tipsy, shoouting slogans and celebrating.... one guy comes up to me and says...man u are my brother and he gave me his seat which i had to accept without choice..

The next day was a trip to Hamm, small industrial place nearby.... not much to see though, the walls weer the main attraction for the three of us(this time all the musketeers made it)
Then on the way back since nobody was in the mood to cook after such an enthralling weekend, we decided to step into a random restraunt, which turned out to be Italian and later i found out that the dish we ordered, DonnerTeller is a Turkish Dish..
But fortunately, the food was mouthwatering, so in the end a nice weekend finally concluded, with the dreary thoughts of going back to work all day the next day waiting for the next weekend...
But trust me.. the weekends are worth the wait if you are travelling around!!!
"Truse" till the next weekend....sb

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!!!!

Living the Dream: ,The University

One word to describe the university……… Maze. Mitchell and I started on our way to the university, bus services are damn expensive here. Koi na ,getting back to the main my project is to make the electron jump from one atom to another that too in the direction I would want……. Sounds impressive and what’s more impressive is that to do this I shall be writing a code in ‘C’. Today was good as I found out that my knowledge of the mysterious Bloch equations is satisfactory and that I am not very far behind the masters students here . Dr. Mathias Richelet briefed me about the project and tomorrow morning I am supposed to attend his lecture on optical control of nanostructures (Things do sound big don’t they…..)
And then the big surprise, I have an Office for myself with internet connection, two PCs (people use MAC here, ek aur pareshani….) a telephone shelves with books… wow
Next up was the menza, “mess”. Gosh a McD and CCD are no comparison to the menza and the cafeteria, and again this was expensive as hell. Seniors said mess food shall be cheap, a big disappointment here. Newaz I’ll have to figure out something for that. I got my first installment today, so I made an early exit from the university, wait, not so early man I spend 7 and half ours there today doing nothing…. Well that was something huh.
And a new finding for today was that in Germany too, only rich people own a BMW so no need for us to feel inferior (did I mention that the no. of rich people here is huge..)
Westerntor was my next stop, one of the shopping places for the locals; it has a few supermarts, banks branded stores etc. The place didn’t turn out to be much fun and I decided to head back to the apartment early. At Bib I Abhijit and Sharan were already there so it was our first meeting and I am sure we are gonna be gr8 buddies in a few days. It was then time for some stroll. Down the lane there’s a soccer coaching ground where young kids were mastering football, it was followed by tennis courts and then by badminton stadium. So as it turns out, I am situated in a very happening locality.
Sb

Day 1: 4th May,2011 Part 2

On my way to Paderborn I crossed many beautiful towns like Bochum, Kechum, Hamm, Dortmund(that’s the only city in the vicinity).
So as it turned out Paderborn, Sumeet Biswas has arrived at 12:24pm. And how could I miss this, the trains here… if the ticket says that the train would enter at 10:27 at first station and then at 11:03 at the next, it doesn’t even miss the schedule by a minute too,, amazing.
So, where was I , yup Paderborn, I move out of the station and a very beautiful Miss Simone Lange was there to greet me and when I found that I was taller than her I wanted to punch the air(but of course I resisted that). First thing I notice about her…. Her walk is damn swift, I used to thing I am a fast walker, wow I had to literally run behind her (plus I was carrying my two bags too). Next we went shopping. Anything you want you’ll have a variety to choose from. And the same problem, no one to guide you and no one speaks English,, aaaaaahhhhh. This time Miss Simone was there, next up I don’t know.
BiB: The apartment, beautiful place nice cozy room and an Indian living next door, I took a sigh of relief. Not much happened, my neighbor helped me register my SIM card and an hour later I was able call home and wow that was when I was taken a bit aback…. Gosh I am really standing on the streets of Paderborn, this is really happening. Cooked my first meal, it turned out to be a disaster, seems I couldn’t adjust the flame of the electric stove and my cooker leaked and I had to clean the entire slab,, uhh things happen its alright.
Today is gonna be a more professional thing, I go to the university people brief me about the project and to be frank, I expect this one to be a bit hard, let’s see…….. Sb

Living the Dream: The beginning, Day 1: 4th May,2011 Part 1

Delhi: The usual thing, Delhi airport presented nothing new, just the same usual procedures and then the wait and then some more wait and there you go. On-board well first time I saw this type of seating it was 2+4+2 but unfortunately I was seated between two jumbos, one Indian jumbo traveling to Geneva and another gora Jumbo. Food was great and so were the swiss air hostesses. Next morning (European time) at Zurich switch between flights had to be fast as I had only 30 minutes to get to the other terminal, go through immigrations and then the security check and again board for Dusseldorf.
Zurich: from the aerial view that I got, seemed more like a farmland  surely the airport is situated at the outskirts. Well I’ll find out was Zurich has and what not when I travel there sometime. Btw the Zurich airport (terminal 2 that I got to see) was nowhere near the IGI..,,,cheers for that. And to talk about people, amongst males there were 40% humans and 60% GIANTS (huge super huge) and amongst the females, I can’t say everyone was beautiful but ya everyone surely looked just picture perfect (although size was an issue there too)
Dusseldorf: The aerial view again. First top view and the only thing that came into my mind was gosh I can spend my life here. It was BEAUTIFUL. Hut like design of the houses and a well maintained farmland in the backyard of every house and the super cars parked outside the doors, a quite river cutting the city into half, and equally amazing golf course and at the outskirts small mountains(at least they appeared to be small from above). Oh it was lovely, trust me I guess I’ll ask Ralli to fill in some adjectives here coz I just can’t explain how beautiful it looked. As I stepped out of the station Taxi’s were waiting and guess what, the picture that I hang in my room (of the BMW) was being used as a cab. I really shrank a bit at that  Then was the trouble part….. To buy a ticket there’s a machine, to make a call there’s another weird machine, to pass through there’s a machine and there are no people to tell you what to do.. Many thanx to the lovely Indian Lady for her generous help or I felt like this is it stuck on the very first step. Somehow I manage to find a help center and chocolates for guessing this one,,, these guys at the railway stations help desk can’t speak English,, ab kar lo jo karna hai……
Koi ni hum bhi engineer hain jugaad to kahin bhi lga dete hain. After a few this and that I figured out the machine and also made the call to Miss Simone though I still couldn’t make the international call back home. And here I am sitting in the train to Paderborn, have just crossed Bochem, every announcement is being made in German n hum chalen hain RAM BHAROSE…
Cheers n lot more to come…. Sb