The beautiful land - Schweiz

It was decided the day I got my Swiss VISA that a trip to Switzerland is a must whatever the costs be !! And so when I got a holiday on Monday I mailed Pankaj Goyal (Jaat) that I am coming. The packing was quick, Pascal's lunch even quicker and then the dash to the railway station the fastest. It was not at all planned and I just had one address i.e. of Jaat and Gaurav Veda. The rest of the trip would be planned in Lausanne (my first stop).

The train from Nancy Gare at 13:33 took me to Basel SBB and I reached there at 16:12. Basel is a city on the borders of Germany, France and Switzerland and so it's train station has Swiss, French and German parts. My train reached on the French platform and from here itself I could see two doors - one to enter France and the other to enter Switzeraldn. On the second door was written "Wilkommen in der Schweiz". An altogether different experience, I stepped in the room and saw a checkpost where my passport was checked. After this I was free to roam in Switzerland for 15 days :-)).

After a lot of running I found the ticket counter from where I bought my four day pass and got the information about the next train to Lausanne. It was at 18:30 and would reach Lausanne at 21:30. I boarded the train just in time and then relaxed after the hectic running. When I turned my face to the window it was like, "Oh Gosh! Is this sooooo beautiful ??". I could see a lake just near the train with the Alps in the vicinity and then whole scenery was so beautiful that it looked unreal. I clicked some snaps and that took my entire time. The journey was through Biel/Biennee. In Schweiz all the rail routes are near lakes on the foot hills or tunnels in the hills. The natural beauty can only be experienced. At the Lausanne station, I was the familiar Olympic rings (and was later told that it is the Olympic Capital of the world ... interesting right ....)

I started walking towards Jaat's hotel not sure if I was going the right way (it was already dark) but halfway through I saw him coming ... oh what a relief it was !! We reached the cost hotel room and had a talk at length (for the first time I was meeting someone in Europe from my wing). The view of Lake Geneva from the room was beautiful with the French Alps not very far away. Veda was missing and I was told that he is working late night at EPFL. He came after some time and in usual manner started saying that he wont sleep on the upper bed. But we pushed him there and then went off to sleep.

Got up late in the morning and then I and Jaat set off for shopping and seeing Lausanne. I exchanged my Euros for Swiss Francs at the station and then it was all fun. Jaat bought a Nikon camera for himself and I bought a Swatch watch. We also went to H&M and bought a lot of swiss chocolates at the supermarket. By evening we very really exhausted and went back to the hostel and ate Maggi. After a short nap I set out all alone to see Ouchy, the "chaupati" of Lake Geneva. The weather was pleasant, the flags colourful and the music energizing .... perfect !!
After I came back I had a wonderful dinner cooked by Jaat, Veda, Pulkit and Mayank.

Next day early in the morning started my actual Swiss trip. I took a train for Bern from where I went to Interlanken. This is the place where many Indian movies are shot. This city was very beautiful with it's toy train rides, an old castle, cow bells (the one in DDLJ) and old churches. In one of the churches I met a group who sang two krishna bhajans for me and even gave me a CD. It was again near a lake. In one of the fast food joints it was written in Devnagari script "yahaan har prakar ke masaledaar bhojan milte hain". I also saw the Indian tricolour in front of a restaurant "Shalimar".

The next stop was in Luzern which is on the side of Vierwaldstattersee (Lake Lucerne). This is the most beautiful city in Schweiz and I had an overnight stay. The first day I was two churches, various bridges and the old city plus the lion sculpture. And I could see Indians all around from sardarjis to honeymoon couples to madrasis (they were in maximum no). I stayed at a camping site and I slept in a sleeping bag inside a caravan sort of thing. It was also a different kind of experience. The next day I went for a round trip on a cruise which was of 3 hours. It was the most beautiful experience I ever had. They showed us the entire machinery of the small ship and it looked similar to the one shown in titanic. The food was beautifully laid out. There were people from the 1st class and 2nd class. The first class ladies were really formally dressed and had an air about them. I was like tightlipped and standing in a corner till they left with their plates. And the brow of the ship - standing there it felt like I was on titanic. And then it started raining. The lake and the mountain side looked even more beautiful. Dont know when the three hors passed and I was back at Luzern.

Then I went to Zurich, one of the most important cities of Switzerland. A river flows through Zurich and falls into a lake beautifully. I saw three beautiful churches and again went for a round trip on another small ship. In the evening I took a train to Basel where I had to do a lot of things. I first got the currency exchanged then went looking for the french ticket machine. I found it but needed more change so again had to go the exchange office. I asked for 10 euro change. This time the man at the counter said, "Are sure you won't need more ? because we'll close at 8:00." He then looked at my purse and said, "Give me that 20 euro note ... I'll give you the change." After taking the ticket I had dinnner sitting on the french side with a french girl. Finally I was on my way back to Strasbourg. That was all but an unforgettable trip to a marvellous land.

IITK and Paris

For the first time I was going to meet IITK people in Europe. I was eagerly waiting and looking forward to this trip. I started from Nancy on Saturday morning (after a hectec night the day before at the disco) and reached Paris at 9:45 am. I got my Eurail reservations changed at Gare du Nord and then went to Charles de Gaulle airport to receive Ishan (Nikhil's friend). He was not there and when I phoned him he told me that he was at the Gare TGV of the airport. Finally caught up with him there and then we headed directly for Notre Dame to start our paris visit.

Notre Dame is a huge church on a small island (not everybody knows this) but we could not go inside because some sort of programme was going on. However benediction by newly made priests was going on so I got it done for myself and said a special prayer in my heart. From here we went to La Defense which is famous for its buildings. (especially The Grande Arche and the one with the football) ... there was a MacD nearby so we had our lunch and some rest there. After that we took a metro for Arc de Triomphe ... from there to Obelix. And then we went to Pigalle where I saw Moulin Rouge for the first time. From here we went to the Eiffel tower where I had a long wait ahead of me because we were supposed to meet Nikux, Shubham and Sandy here. Ishan climbed up the tower and I waited for the other three. When they didn't come for two hours I rang Nikux and was told that they are caught at the Paris Beauvais train station.

Deutschland

It was my dream to go to Germany because I had done a German language course in IIT. And the second reason was to buy a camcorder and mobile from there because I had heard that they are cheaper there. So a tour was planned for Germany in which we were to go to Munich and see the region around Bavaria.

We started at 1:00 pm on Friday and our first destination was Kalsruhe. A small but old and historical town of Germany it was worth a visit. We first went to see the Royal Place moving along the fence of a zoo (which we did not enter). The palace was closed because it was already 6:00 by the time we reached. We then sat down idly in the adjoining park and took rest. Then came the thought of looking for a night club (because our train was at 3:30 in the night). This brought us to the markets and to our surprise they were open even after 7:00. We went to a supermarket and had a delicious ice-cream (one of the best I had in Europe).

We then met two Indians who tols us about some night bars and so we set out to look for them. We had to catch up with the others (Pushp, Vishesh and CKD) so we met them at the pyramid (the city square) at 9:00 and then after having dinner again started our search. Finally we saw one open - 'Gina bar'. First I and Rishi went inside. We saw that there was a door leading us further inside. At the bar I was told that a drink is compulsory. So I first went outside, called Saurabh, Rizi and Vishesh and then we all were in the bar. All others ordered a beer while I ordered a Cola (worth 4 euros). To our dismay the inner door lead us nowhere and we were to sit and sip our drinks in that little place itself. The only girls near us were three above-50 old ladies who were coaxing Rishi to offer them a drink. I exercised my German skills a bit and then after sometime we slipped onto the road laughing about the whole episode.

Still there was a lot of time and nothing to do so it was considered wise to just move to and fro on the S-Bahn and get some sleep. Our train from here finally brought us to Stuttgart and then to Munich around 9:00 in the morning. Akash Gupta was standing at the station to receive us and the 'Bharat Milan' of CKD and Akash was kooooool !!

Dachau - A Nazi Camp
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The plan for the day was to see the oldest Nazi concentration camp of Dachau. It was not far away from Munich but we had to take a metro and then a connecting bus to reach there. In the bus stupid Pushp realised that he had left the travel passes at Akash's place. Anyways since we had reached Dachau, we made the maximum out of it - seeing the museum, the furnaces, the dorms and the gas chambers. The movie really opened our eyes to the horror of Nazi barbarism. In the evening when we were back in Munich, we rushed to the 'Mediamarkt' shop to see camcorders but since they were costly I didnt buy one. As the night fell, we went to Marienplatz (the city center) and saw a wine festival. Waiting for the last metro, we started playing Dumb Charades (not knowing that this would become our favourite on al future travels). The night was spent at an IITB friend of Saurabh's.

Garmisch-Partenkirchen
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Early next day we set out for Garmisch-Partenkirchen which was the base for going to Zugspitz (the highest point of Germany). I did not go to the top because the weather forecast was not good. So I spent my time touring the city, seeing churches, the river and window shopping. It was raining occasionally and so I finally sat down at the station to get some sleep. Around 3:00 I saw that Pushp and group had also arrived there. So we then waited for Rizi and group to come back from the top and then started back for Munich. In the evening we went to see the OlympicZentrum (Olympic Centre) where Metallica concert was going on. We climbed a hillock nearby to get a view of the entire city. It was beautiful with red roofs. Then we went to the Englisch Garten and saw the Chinese tower Bier Garten (it was huge and I has fun on children's slides). We were loitering around happily unaware of what lay ahead in store for us. We were told that we could not spent our night with the IITB guy because of his whim and so we would be spending at the Marienplatz metro station. So we sat down comfortably (I was reading Godfather) for the sun to rise.

In the morning I changed my clothes at the station platform and then we again took a train for our last visit to the castle of Neuschwanstein. We had to catch a train back to Munich and so we saw this one in a hurry. But the most enjoyable part of the day was feeding ducks and coaxing them to come out of the water. Once back in Munich, we knew that we had a long night ahead because we had to change a lot of trains to reach back Strasbourg. I will never forget the dash to a nearby market at one of the stations - It literally took the breath out of me. A new experience was a small station on the German border where there were just three platforms (1, 2 and 9). We also met a girl from Nancy at this station who clicked our pics with flowers. Our train was from platform 9 and we were really disheartened to see a two-coach train. Anyways on this train we made the historic ride of crossing over to the French border on the river Rhine and finally landed in familiar territory !!!!

IITB and Paris

This was a trip to Paris by me and Saurabh a day prior to our Amsterdam trip. We did not want to waste a Saturday at Nancy and so we started from there at 6:47 and reached Paris at 10:00 (our train was 20 minutes late). After a long search we finally located Madhur with whom we had to go to Emirates office to get our return tickets preponed. He said he would meet us at Eiffel Tower.

So I and Saurabh started off with a day pass and a metro map in our hand to find the Eiffel tower (we knew it wouldn't be difficult because of it's size). As we were getting closer to the destination, we could see it from our metro and this was exciting (we were finally going to see "The Eiffel Tower"). We got down at the metro station and when we came out we were dissapointed because it wasn't there ... we moved for about 2 minutes and then we could see it .... a dull tall monument of metal standing lifelessly in the cloudy sky. We clicked our first snap with it and then moved towards it. When we were finally in front of it, all of a sudden the sun came out and then we cud see it shimmering in all its bronze grandeur. I just could not move staring at it in awe - no wonder it is one of the seven wonders!!!

After that we spent our time quite quickly taking photographs from every angle and bargaining with the Indian boys selling replicas of the tower. Madhur came around two and then we went to the Emirates office only to find it closed. From here we went to Champs Elysees (the main and the oldest street of paris quite similar to tha Rajpath in Delhi) ... we asked a policewoman standing there about the way to Arc de Triomphe and she pointed a finger ... we could see it right from here ... so we started walking thinking that we would reach soon but it took almost 45 minutes and we were very tired when we finally sat down at its base. Arc de Triomphe is a gateway similar to the India Gate built to commemorate the victories of Napolean I and his grand army. There was some kind of function going on there that day and so there was a huge flag on it which was making it even more royal. We took rest here and then went to MacD for an icecream.

From here we went to see Obelix which is an Egyptian monument gifted to the king of France. I and Saurabh sat down at one of the fountains because we were very tired. There Saurabh challenged me to sing so loud so that the person sitting nect to me should run away. I started singing "Gareebon ki suno woh tumhari sunega ....". Even after a long pursuit the person did not budge but I got the attention of some tourists there so I kept on my flow. Later a huge Indian group came and I did not stop even then. When we were going back we asked the Indians that how come such a big group was travelling together. It turned out (to mu utter dismay and misfortune) that these people were from Agra and knew my mom very well. We just bid them goodbye and escaped sheepishly from there. After that Saurabh kept singing the song whole night .... and I kept laughing over it !!!