"The Layman on a Eurotrip" - Vol 2, Berlin - Hamburg - Copenhagen - Malmo - Stockholm - Goteborg - Oslo - Bergen - Myrdal - Flam - Oslo - Rail Jail

This ironically will be a very non travelogical post because, thanks to Eurail and its grossly inaccurate timetable, till we reached Oslo, we were only at railway stations and couldn't actually visit the places I mentioned so proudly in the title of this entry! So much for plans going berserk. From 11.30 am on Monday morning to 7 am Wednesday morning when we finally managed to set foot on a road in Bergen outside the station, we were successfully held to the confines of various railway stations around Scandinavia. I call it "Rail-Jail". But some of the things to come out of 43.5 hours in 9 trains and 9 railway stations were -
1. I can now rattle off prices of the 5 cheapest burgers and fries at Macdonalds and Burger King, and compare the subtle differences in taste between say Sweden and Norway.
2. I successfully erased any trace of the brahmin in me by eating what Burger King (BK) successfully claims in Sweden "We assure you that our hamburger is made of beef and only beef!". What a decline from the namam days not many years back. I hate this fact.
3. I can even pass blind tests in differentiating between Cheese burgers made in Mac and BK. I totally understand the Operations Management case I studied last years which said "Mac is standardisation, BK is customization". My respect for BK and its tagline of "Have it your way" has gone up hazaar, post the "Terminal"ization I underwent.
4. I totally think India rocks when it comes to pay and use toilets. At one point of time in Oslo railway station, I had to give up a burger I planned to have for dinner to urinate. 10 kroner or 75 rupees for pissing! Indian toilets are cleaner maintained for the 1 rupee they charge.
5. Hot dogs and the way Pressbyran (A supermarket chain) runs is another fascination for me now. Hotdogs are yummy, and the supermarket chains like Pressbyran have this fetish for maintaining store alignment. Walk into any store and you know where to go to find a Coke or say a cigarette. Infact, its standardized across supermarket chains if I am not wrong. It was the same in Lidl in Germany too.
6. Norway is NOT the place to live in - if you plan to save money and return to India or Live a life or Both. So too Sweden. They are SO expensive. Scandinavia also closes shutters and goes to sleep at 6 pm. The booking counters were closed, the information centres were closed, and the LOO closed at 6. We were literally stranded the first time we entered Malmo Railway Station in Sweden.
7. Stockholm railway station has these 2 newspaper boys freely distributing copies of a local newspaper early in the morning. Being unfortunate enough to hit the Stockholm railway station on 2 different days and seeing the same thing happen in front of my eyes - I noticed that the styles of achieving max distribution adopted by the 2 guys were very different. One of them was smiling, singing songs that his IPod was playing and murmuring pleasantries to the hundreds who bustled past him, while the other was using sleight of hand and jugglery skills to attract attention. Whatever it is, I was entertained.
8. The card-game of 28. Thanks to being imprisoned in the station at odd hours and while waiting for the next train to god knows where, I can now say that I learnt and mastered this game in these 3 days. I may not be as good as I am in say our good old "4 cards", but I am getting there.

Makki will tell me there is nothing close to a travelog in this entry, but the 3 days being covered had only trains and train stations in offer, and all the trains are prettu much the same, so nothing much to describe there too...But yeah, there are some things I have tried to convey in this entry. I think there is some MBA level cock thrown in too...But it was entirely unintentional, and don't worry, the next entry will have more tourism.

Till next time...
Tata only

"The Layman on a Eurotrip" - Volume 1, The Lille-Paris-Berlin leg

Date : 30.9.2006,
Time : 5.50 pm European Standard time (whatever its called)
Starting Place : Lille Flanders Railway station

So this is where it started, the trip that was planned for 8 days (turned out to be a lot different from what was planned!) and that promised to cover a major chunk of Scandinavia. The train journey to Paris was uneventful, with me gasping a bit for breath due to the usual running in the end to catch the train thanks to chatting with BK till the last minute. Paris was expensive as expected and the Marlboro I got in the station pinched me badly, and that was the sore thumb in an otherwise good few minutes in Paris. I had a taste of the first of million burgers n fries that I was destined to endure in the trip here!

We peacefully reached Berlin, and the two hours at Berlin station where we tried working out plans for the week were mind numbing to say the least, with a lot of complexities and the Eurail website showing 2 different timetables to irritate the sh*t out of us... Whatever, the Berlin leg didn't start nicely at all, and we proceeded at around 12 noon to finally check out the Berlin wall (we now realized we had to spend the next day at Berlin), which a co-passenger said was right outside the Berlin Ostbahnhof station we were in. And all my plans of seeing something huge and historic fell flat when we saw a "kutti-chevaru" level wall full of interesting graffiti in front of us. A few of us did not believe that this indeed is the Berlin Wall! But yeah, the graffiti captured my interest, and some of them were brilliant pieces of art - ofcourse in the sarcastic sense! Some art pieces that ridiculed the commie regime, and how long germany stayed two countries were time-pass level. Check out this pic, that is my tribute to Rahul 'The Wall' Dravid! It was a particularly good snap considering the fact that I do 99% of the photography in my cam.
Apart from that, the day in Berlin was spent at the usual "Lonely Planet recommended" places.
The Reichstag, the Brandenberger tor, Babel Platz, Alexanderplatz and the World clock. I found them interesting, and the walk in the bustling Unter-den-Linden in the evening was something I thoroughly enjoyed. Most European cities have musicians playing on the roadside with hats collecting money. The feel it gives walkers on the road is amazing. Some of the wind instruments played that day were mindblowing and I spent quite a while simply enjoying the music and slowening my pace of walking. Anyways, Thanks to the big queue to go up the Reichstag, I had to settle for a view from the outside, and did some photoclicking that will be uploaded at my photolog in snapfish. I had dinner in a fair, and had some german speciality dish made of potatoes and mushrooms. It tasted good, and it blended well with the beer served at the Biergarten, which for the uninitiated are gardens that brew and serve their own beer.
So much for the day in Berlin, but let me tell you something else. Germany and Berlin were things that I got attracted to immediately for the following reasons -
1. The stark difference in prices compared to France - Sutta refill in Germany for sure.
2. The mystique that I could sense in Berlin, the brilliant intertwine of the old and the new. Here was a very intriguing city with a dark layer to it that I could sense - dont ask me how.
3. The German language, which I found to be more engrossing than French - all day, I was reading out German words aloud like (Stra-beta-e, Hauptbahnhof, Reichstag), much to the embarrassment of my co-travellers! Some of you do know my obsession with getting foreign language accents right! (Sebastian Grosjean etc...)
4. The S-Bahn - excellent train service, free for eurail pass holders and good frequency - what more could one ask for?

The night sleep in a bunker at a youth hostel (First time I slept in a bunker bed;)), and the rather forgettable experience at the wash room the next morning (Ping me and ask me why) were the only other things that were worth a mention in the Berlin first leg. There was to be a second Berlin leg to come in the trip - little did I know about that at this point in time (arnd 12 noon 2.10.2006)
So thus ended the Berlin leg, with a train from Berlin Hauptbahnhof to Hamburg Centraal. We planned to hit Copenhagen by night, but the turn of events since are reserved for my next volume - that will cover the next few days of my so-called Scandi trip. But as u would have realized, the first part of the trip had nothing to do with Scandinavia. So much for planning! But one thing I must admit - the kick you get out of being a backpacker who nomads his way around, little knowing where he is headed for next is something else!
Till the next entry - here is a Gute-Nacht from me....

Getting a feel of France

Sorry for taking nine days to come up with the first blog entry from here -
It was more a question of how lazy I was than anything else.
I did cover Paris over the weekend, and I did want to start the travelog with Paris as volume 1 of my blogging here - but since the Louvre is still left to visit, I would rather finish that and put an integrated Paris travelog -
As I got settled into the place, there are other snaps I took and have uploaded to snapfish - but will compile one nice album and post the link to you all soon.

Till next time - here is a huge bow to Divya and Girish for their mindblowing rendition of Navneeth's masterpiece - "Thanimai iravu"

Its Au revoir! only i guess, for now

Ambalappuzhe

- sung soul stirringly by m.g.sreekumar n chitra.
This has to be the song that's moved me the most, and that's set me in tears so many times....
it just transports me by a volvo bus to a different world, a rustic, peaceful world away from the noisy bangalore...and reinforces my belief in an institution that I already revere.
whenever I gain membership to that institution, I will remember to listen to this song, millions of times. In particular, during some important moments.

The bliss of solitude

Wordsworth's words are timeless...

I have been experiencing this very state for sometime now, and loving every moment.
I have tended to avoid hearing voices now, and only instrumental music is played in my room for most of the so-called "24 by 7". Occasionally I do want a few voices crooning something for me to indulge in conversation with, and I sing along...But, thanks to
1. Ilayaraja's How to Name it
2. Ali Farka Toure and his brilliant guitar
3. Steve Vai
4. L.Subramaniam
5. Prasanna
6. Kadri
7. Mandolin Srinivas
and a few others, I just LOVE the feeling of the music playing in the background and setting the mood for my thoughtprocesses, naps and occasional bouts of work on Microsoft Word.
So much so, that I have tended to keep my conversation with wingmates over food to the minimum, and long to come back to the room and let the music takeover....
Has this been the best part of my love affair with music? I tend to think so.....
There is a constant train of thoughts on the transient nature of this all, when I will have to move into the real bad mad world a year from now, and this blissful state might have to die an early death. I shudder to think of that, and tend to pump up the volume at those times.....
Psycho! when did you master the art of evasion? Atleast you have finally become a master at one art! So stay happy and get back to the music dude.....

Summer Summary

The last 72 days have been good for me in 5 ways (I have spent this summer at home!!!, and thought I must post an entry on the gains),
1. I got to gain a few inches around my already well rounded waist, thanks to some excellent food, cooked by amma and chefs who run some of Chennai's top hotels. I must have visited close to 30 different restaurants for lunch, and got to savor varied cuisines. Good on me, I must say... Well, the extra pounds...errr....IIMB and its mess shall take care of them...I hope;)
2. Quality time with Giri, BK, Rama, Vatsa, Sriram, Bharat, Nanba... et al. I have not got to spend this much time with these important people, for the last 3 years now. BK making his one month trip coincide with my summers, and giri flying down twice, have been great blessings, and the booze sessions with Raama, Sriram and Vatsa have been wonderful fun - I dint miss Bangalore all that much;).
3. Mallu Music - Well, this has to be the best thing that's happened to me in the last few months, this gives me enough belief that, there are bound to be blissful nights of solitude in Bangalore in the year to come...
4. Movies - Thanks to Raama, my IMDB movie count has gone up by 200% and thanks to Satyam cinemas - my tryst with movie theatres have been renewed. So what if I watched some crappy movies?
5. No sales in life!!!! - Summers at Microsoft taught me this gospel truth.

I am packing my bags and proceeding to Bangalore in less than 18 hrs. Wish me luck for what should be a good year, in terms of fun and learning.

Of Strategic Sales and Syriana

The two parts of the topic are not related...by themselves.....except that one constitutes 5 days of my week, and the other is an example of a creation from an industry that keeps me alive the other 2 days to withstand the boredom from the first part....
I realized that there was no post in moi blog on my work.....it's specifically general. generally occasional, occasionally heavy....usually confusingly simple....and rarely simply confusing....
this many words plus that 2 word description "Strategic sales" are sufficient to describe...Moi work.....
A recent component of my work is decent....it involves getting into the dirty, stinking shoes of a private sector bank credit card salesman, who says "Sir, we are calling from $#@# bank...."
It's an experience in itself, that a so-called pampered kid who had it all easy in life needs to go through atleast once in life...Approaching people for appointments and going through repeated rudeness from pretentious PA's who say "He's in a meeting, why do you waste my time with all your calls!"...and finally on the fifth attempt, getting to speak to the senior manager who says "Why don't you contact me 4 days from now", and after subsequent subjection of the poor chap to repeated torture, a fifteen minute appointment.....
Traversing the trafficky roads of Hot Chennai, and quickly wiping the face of truckloads of sweat that flows as freely as freebies by political parties in chennai....before meeting the customer....with a faked "fresh and ready to go" look on the face, and a feigned smile that does Miss India aspirants proud....My god...respect to all the salesmen of this world...

The syriana part of my week is seriously good for me...cus I get to be me during that time...and what more could one ask for....