VIBGYOR

The beauty of Europe

I am lucky. I get to travel once or twice across countries every month. It is not often that I put things in this perspective. However, yesterday, listening to some announcements on the train, it just struck me about how lucky I am.

The announcements started in French - a language I am beginning to understand more and more though the conversation with my french friend yesterday went like this:

Colours: "I did not understand what you just said".

EG: "what! You are not listening?"

Colours, who loves to tease him about his accent though he speaks very good English: "you just said something in french"

EG: "I did not. Besides you know French now".

Colours: "Ya sure! Ca Va? Bien! Etwa! Merci!"

EG: "It is time you learnt more. You have known that for 2 years."

Talk about honesty in friendships! In anycase I digress. Let me come back. The announcement then went on to dutch, English and then German. There was something comforting about the variety in the atmosphere. There were German, French, Dutch, native English and even a Malayalam speaker in the train. All sat in Harmony each one doing their own activities. We were all united in our activities - trying to make the time fly in one of the best trains in Europe.

Perhaps because I come from India, the land of variety I crave for that variety and I do not find it in any other place in Europe than in Belgium.Switzerland is a land of 3 official languages too - yet, there is no one place in Switzerland where all three languages are spoken. Besides, as the European Union capital, it is not just the three official languages one gets to hear. When one sits in the tram there is a myriad of languages being spoken all around you. The high immigrant population from the African countries adds to the diverse colours, sounds and sights in this city.

I reached Germany from the city of colours and there was the completely orderly German train station at the Frankfurt Airport. There was not a cigarette piece out of its place, there were no papers lying around. White looked white and grey looked grey... - I looked at the ICE (the train I had just travelled by for the last 3.5 hours) and wondered how on earth did they manage to keep a train so white in colour.

Help spread love for India

My boss has invited me over for lunch tomorrow. He and his family are travelling to India early April - yes, the usual route - Delhi, Agra, Rajasthan. He has three children (tall, handsome boys with blue eyes and a charming smile) - between 10 and 15 years of age. He would like to know more about India and make the children more aware about the country before they leave.

My boss has been to India once on a business trip to Bangalore - the only negative part was that  he got swindled by a guide who asked him 80€ for a guiding him through Lal Bagh gardens and 100€ for some packets of seeds. However, he feels that it was because he was gullible and not watchful this happened to him and was quite amused at how he allowed himself to be taken for a ride.

If you have any suggestions about what I could tell a family about India so that they like India - please please help me out. Having been out of India for 8 years and having lived in southern India I am really not sure whether I can give my comments effectively. However, I would like to try.

I will complete this blog entry later with what I might say - I am posting it incomplete now in the hope someone will be able to offer suggestions.

Paradise on earth

If there is a paradise on earth, this is it. Surrounded by friends, sanity was restored. It was a true renewal.

It was also a good opportunity to take a break and spend sometime thinking. So when I came back today and operational issues beckoned, I reminded myself that I should not get lost in these. The break even has me feeling positive and back again looking forward to doing something constructive - as I should have been doing.

Though in two hours I was again back being strict, I think I reminded myself not to get upset and stressed about being strict. Being strict without being rude is yet to be learnt (even google search does not help).

The curse of an immigrant who falls in love

"It is a curse to love two countries." He smiles, wryly at his own melodramatic words. But there is sadness in his eyes.

The colleague I was out for dinner with day before yesterday gave me a book to read. The passage about someone who lived in a country other than his own stood out. He came back to his own country after having stayed away for a few years and missed it.

Last week I had coffee with another colleague. She was born in Vietnam and her parents moved to Belgium when she was three. She talked about how she is a foreigner in Vietnam as well as still a foreigner in Belgium.

"I was in New York for a year" - she said - "it was one place where I felt at home. Everyone seemed different - not just me."

I have lived in 4 countries in the last 10 years and fallen in love each of them (yes, even Brussels with all the aches). Yes, I am different in each of these countries - but for me it is a voyage into the discovery of the difference and I love the feeling of being different. Finally, while I would perhaps love to settle down in Switzerland or in India, I still mourn the thought of moving out of Belgium or at the thought of not going back to Germany. Yes, it is a curse to love each country and I have still not tried out other countries. Unlike my colleague, I still feel I cannot like US enough to live there but perhaps I have not given it a chance enough. Perhaps I do not feel different enough in the US.

Yesterday's picture of the day

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

and on the way to work....

and by evening everything had disappeared.

Travel weary?

Happy Independence day to our dear Neighbours and Happy independence day eve to all my brothers and sisters except one to refer to the parody version of our Pledge which we used to say before the day starts daily in school - yet when I think about it today, my heart swells with pride and my head goes automatically up. Happy 60-th birthday!!!

Spider Spider on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? Skirting around the numerous spiders around the bridges on the River Vltava, I stood an arms length away and balanced the camera on one of the stubby pillars. A sleepy husband chanted from the back - "there are 5 spiders moving towards your arms rights now" and away I jumped with no concern for the camera in hand. It was a quick lesson for him. I tried to get the postcard picture of the castle lit up at night with the Karlův Most. It was however easier to get away from the spiders weaving their net across the iron and stone on the bridges than around the numerous tourists. Lesson number 100: I still love night photography but I still miss the tripod locked up for the last 2 years in the cellar in far away Walldorf.

The initial day at Prague had me wondering whether I had become travel weary. Dragging myself away from the bed, I trudged downtown near the museum beseeching Parmanu to enter the cafe, tempting him with the promise of long afternoon buried in books surrounded by soothing music. Finally after a long walk he succumbed to the temptation.

I sat with Love and Longing in Bombay. The title had captured my mind - it reminded me of a previous lifetime when I had a crush on someone living in Bombay. I had desperately wanted to live in Bombay and the promise of love and the longing for the city enticed me into picking up the book. It was thus that I sat buried in the cafe unable to lift my head from the book. "It has nothing to do with the love and longing you are so desperately seeking" - warned the lanky tall guy who knows me very well - I cannot hide any thoughts from him.

After one of the stories, I remembered an ex-colleague who lived in Prague and called him much to chagrin of my dear husband who had wanted a quiet weekend with me away from the madding crowd. It was thus that M and his girlfriend found us - M works in Walldorf and commutes every weekend to Prague. Husband and I were completely buried in our books in the cafe called "Coffee and Cigars" and I felt a little disoriented in the initial moments when M pounced on us.

It was the third cafe we had been to and here it was that I again had the pleasure of struggling with a foreign language. Now that french is not as foreign as it used to be once upon a time, I was beginning to feel a little nostalgic about and missing the feeling of not understanding the local language. The waiters in other cafes spoke English fluently and I thought this one spoke English too. The waiter brought me the biggest expresso that I have ever had. Later M translated the bill for me - he had not served the expresso I thought I had ordered - it was Kava Viennese with whipped cream!!! - and here I was thinking it was just the Czech way of serving an expresso.

One thing that I must mention about other cafes that I tried: they remind me so much of how India coffee house used to be before all those lovely coffee houses went into oblivion or into state of neglect. Of course these had the Bohemian architecture and the chairs were more elaborately decorated.

Cafe Slavia - the first night we were here, introduced us to the culture of live piano. The old man with a carved moustache at the piano table smiled and nodded as he played the different pieces. His light brown attache rested between the green wall and the dark legs of the grand piano. When he disappeared for a short while, I noticed the two American girls in the table next to ours - they talked loudly disappointing parmanu who thought he sat amongst the locals. The two German youngsters had the books on Prague from the same publisher as L's book on Brussels and S's book on Ladakh. At 11:45 p.m, the sky near the bridge burst into fireworks.

Cafe Louvre this afternoon again reminded me of the India Coffee House feeling. Both these cafes were quiet different from Coffee and Cigars which was the modern Barista type of cafe. In Louvre a tribute to the original Louvre stood welcoming us - a quite bad painting of the glass pyramid surrounded by the magnificent buildings. This and the tower in Petrin hill make me wonder about the fascination that Czech must have for Paris - was this to offset the German influence?

... maybe to be continued????

"Failure is not the only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others."

--Jules Renard,
French author

More from the weekend

A greener town with old buildings I have never seen before

A mix of the old and new captured my attention

While nearby a stern man waited to cross the traffic signal

just on the other side the lions were being tamed

and some people had all the luck in the world

and some people like examining the lions too...

with an indication of what everyone expected from the weather.

   

Lübeck

We started our journey to Copenhagen and landed in Lübeck in northern Germany. I am happy that the traffic was too high and we got delayed in several staus which made us stop over. More about Staus and Lübeck later. Now I am just waiting for Husband who is standing in the line to get more information. Sitting in a Lavazza coffee shop normally goes against my principles but I will survive without ordering a coffee.

wanderings

The trip started at Argentina. It was a very emotional and bonding trip... in between we had some interesting lectures, some boring politicians long speeches to sleep through to make up for the lost sleep after partying all night before. There were serious researches on poverty - coming from India we have already got used to such things. What one is not used to is the uncertainity with which Argentina lives and the soccer fanatism of the country. The class relationships changed and we bonded more than before - this can only be a disaster before leaving on vacation. Sandra and I had withdrawal symptoms when we left and we were happy to be in Ladakh with each other for 2 weeks.

If we thought Argentina had been a discovery trip what waited us in July was more surprise. Needless to say the beauty of Ladakh captured the two of us. When travelling through Ladakh three things moved me - the friendliness of people, the beauty of the place and the patriotism I felt when I travelled on the Leh-Batalik road with memorials on either side to soldiers who had sacrificed their lives. I had to watch Lakshya when I came back.

This city and me

This city somehow manages to endear itself to me. The ancient buildings, the cobbled stoned paths, the colourful cafes, the Montmarte in the distance.... - The first time I was here I hated it as I battled the cold winds in the winter and hid in the museums- but I did fall in love with crepes and the Versailles. "Love-hate" is soon becoming my favourite word - the feeling for the city soon changed to love.

This time it was a special feeling as one friend told me where he has lived in the city and where all he would consider living - every time I cross a locality in Paris I wonder whether this is a place he would consider living in.

Another friend told me that his family lives 25 minutes walking distance from the Eiffel Tower - now every time I cross the Eiffel tower I wonder in which direction he would have roller-bladed every other day (I saw quite a few people roller-blading along the maple tree lined pathway next to the River Seine).