Taste of a german family

Its a thought in general of the young that the real enjoyment is possible or infact allowed when you are away from your family, and you can eat drink and do whatever you want. but the love that the family shows whereever you are is something which always drags you. and particularly out of the country, its a great feeling to spend time with families and think of your sweet memories

and it was time for me in germany to be invited by a colleauge to his house and spend some time with his family. it was jeurgen, a key account manager in behr, who invited me to his house in goppingen. he was always sympathetic towards me for being away from my family, which reminded him the days he spent in Brazil!!!

so it was a saturday afternoon when i took the train to goppingen where he was already ready to pick me up. i never dreamt that he had such a big family, and unlike the europeans there was such a good bonding between his own family, his brothers, aunts, parents and inlaws. so i was lucky enough to meet such a big family. 

he has a very nice house with 4 children, 3 boys and a very cute little girl. along with them stay 2 dogs and 2 cats :), so a big family of course...

we went to a mexican restaurant, and believe me, if you are longing for indian tastes, some mexican food can really satisfy your apetite. so all along the dinner time we had some wonderful conversation. it was basically related to india because their family was mad about our country. they travelled to so many places i bet atleast 90% of indians would never have been to. i am lucky enough to travel to a lot of places courtesy my job as a marketing engineer for behr. so i was the best one to challenge them in the number of places covered.

one situtation which they explained when they travelled from cochin to goa in a general compartment, sleeeping on a bag infront of the toilet......was good to hear, certainly was an awesome experience for them.

they love indian food, infact the younger bro of jeurgen, michael, makes palak paneer and gobi manchurian at home even today!!!

after the delicious meal, it was time to head to their house and take a relaxing beer. they even had a hindi songs CD, which i thought they played for me that day, but infact they were the favourite songs of the whole family. and the little girl was singing the songs and was giving a competition to whoever the singer was.

it was wholly a memorable experience. it was getting late and i had to go back.

it was an experience i cherished and will be remembered for a long time.......thanks again to the family.

Pisa, Florence & Venice......the start and end of the trip were most anxious

As the title suggests....our train from main stn was at 5:09 to frankfurt. our local train from feuerbach was at 4:56 and had to reach main stn by 5:02, so 7 mins is always more than enough to just go to the main platform and board. we were anxiously waiting for our train and min by min passed by and finally it arrived at around 5:01. we never really bother about these one or two mins when we tell the time to someone in real life. we just round it to the next 5 mins. but first time in life in understood the value of every min that was passing by. we reached at around 5:08, and we ran out our lives to catch our train. and the result....obviously shocking for us. the train left just a min before we arrived. we just did not know what to do. waited for the ticket counter to open. i said we had missed the train, and i explained to him how our local train cheated us :P but some more bad luck came our way. if we had to get another ticket without paying anything extra, the computer had to show that the lead time from feuerbach to main stn as 13min, and it showed 15!!! so he explained us how our planning was wrong, and we had to pay another extra 85 euro to get ourselves two tickets. a great start to a loooong tour.
all along the trip i found hari's expressions the most hilarious. you will find out slowly.......................
we took a ryan air flight(for 5.99 euro) to pisa. as we rode through the streets of pisa, the disgusted look on hari's face was wonderful. he was frustrated to see the dusty roads, a village like environment, and really after you have been in belguim and germany, italy known for its historical importance and tourism is not so advanced. so we reached our youth hostel to find no body there. the place looked a bit mysterious to us, so took a hotel nearby. we forgot to cancel the hostel booking and never really bothered about it, and we knew that they had billed us only after we had completed our full trip and came back home.
we saw the leaning tower of pisa and a couple of monuments beside it. there was a free tour that was planned by the hotel, and at 9.30 the next day we had a meet a lady at a clock tower. when we asked how we could recognise her...there came a very comical answer. the lady would have a sunflower pinned to her shirt, and we had to find her out by that. truly unvelievable. and of course the next day we did not find her even though we waited a long 20mins.

we then took a train to florence. even this is a small place same like pisa, and we can just walk from one end of a city to the other. all the monuments are so close by. we became experts in seeing the map and finding our way. we saw so many places in florence. i just dont remember their names to mention, but the beauty of the place is worth mentioning.

almost the whole week we had either beer or wine, with sphagetti or pizza, of course they are the specials of italy. da vince and michael angelo belong to this place, and so you can find so many artists and sculptors everywhere in the place. art is something which is given due respect, and that is a really positive sign for the future to come. the meuseums were also very good, informative and the paintings..just mind boggling.

i appreciated both pisa and florence, if not hari :) but venice was my best. shocked to come out of the station and find a pool of water, and i had to take a boat and not a bus or a train to reach my hostel...which was on another island called Lido...can you believe that!!!
i love water, right from my childhood i admired the vizag beach more than anthing else, and when i joined the aqua swimming pool, my love for water grew more and more. and i cherished my stay in venice. the love for water is now tooooo much.
we took a daily pass and took boats to everywhere and anywhere. we were there for a couple of days, and did not see the sun even for a second!!! water water water everywhere. boat taxis, boat ambulances, police on boats......just amazing how people there manage everything.
it was getting dark that day and we had to cover there ilands, murano, burano and torcello. by the time we reached burano, we did not find a single inhabitant, it was like a place ram gopal varma would love to direct a nerve shattering thriller. but it was a place famous for its glass factories and we visited a few shops where there were beautiful glass made articles...but of course far far away for our budget. so after the window shopping, it was time to go to torcello. this time we were the only people on the boat too.hari's expressions were worth seeing when we reached the island to find water and trees everywhere...and a black cat just passing by. he was ultimately frightened. on the board we could see a toll free no which we could call and ask for help...and to increase his curiosity, it did not work. he tried asking the boat driver for the isd code, but there was of course a communication problem, and the result, a big zero. i was laughing away at the sight of his face with lots and lots of tension. and he got info from somewhere that the last boat was at 8pm, and it was already 7.55pm. he rushed to the driver and persuaded him to take us back. he just could not imagine the scenario where we would be left alone on the uninhabited island...and then anything could happen!!!
the boat took us to burano, where we saw the boat timings. to ease a lotttttt of internal pressure, we found that the boats run all through the night :)
we came back to the Lido and had the same old italian dinner. next day hari was to leave early. so after seeing some more places, it was time for hari to go. and it was time for me to pass hours and hours just aloneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

i had lunch for 2 hrs, dont be afraid, i ate very less but just sat for a long time. then took to bus to the airport where i waited another 2 hrs. then the flight and the bus to frankfurt main stn were also ok, then started struggle. 2hr wait at the frankfurt airport, in the extremely cold weather....narakam kanipinchindi!!!

to add  to the woes, it was a break journey...and the break was just unbearable. i got down from the train at Bruchsal at 3:30am, and had to board my train to stuttgart at 6:21am. 3hrs at a village, no one in the station, no where to go, nothing to eat or drink, very cold weather................if u know something more than hell, pls let me know, i can use this term exactly here.

as the time got near, i became happier...but suddenly nature started calling me...and for 30mins i had to oppose nature in all the ways possible..........and as soon as i boarded the train, the ticket checking woman greeted me and was about to ask for a ticket when i fleed to the WC and that was a moment of my life. i came out extremely satisfied to show her the ticket and went home safely.

this weekend has been targeted only to take rest......i have been travelling too much, and of course my body needs some rest. so after two days of very good sleep, i feel wonderful to start afresh.

Finally a Zoo

When we missed out on going to the zoo in antwerp during our visit to belgium, we were very disappointed. so the wilhelma zoo in stuttgart was a must see for all of us. so the third day we started early to the zoo. as usual it was huge, and following the map, we made our way to see the ducks, birds, monkeys, tigers etc etc.
but the most fascinating view was that of the penguin and the polar bear. i never even dreamt in my dream that i would be able to see them some day. it was a memorable scene.

we were ultimaely tired as we came out...and even more hungry. so it was time for the konigstrase again to a posh restaurant. amidst all this was the tension for uday to head to porsche meuseum from where he had to leave for aachen by car pool. once again my favourite car pool turned out to be time and money saving :)
so we left the other guys to eat and took the train to my house to collect uday's belongings. never did i feel so lucky to catch trains without waiting a minute for them. we had to change a lot of trains, from main stn to my house, then to feuerbach, then to porscheplatz. generally a trip like this takes about 30mins in the trains, but a 15-20mins just waiting for them. but on this particular day, we finished it all in about 35mins. yes, god is great.
hari and sandeep were waiting for me to visit the rosenstein park, but unfortunately my train to main stn was scheduled only after 30mins........so by the time i reached them, it was already dark...and we had to go home.
that night was special again. sandeep was going away to italy...and we had to catch a train at 5:09 to frankfurt. so the adventure continueeeeeeeeees

Black forest

The second day we planned to make a tour of the famous Black forest. an advise from my friend to visit the Triberg and Titisee was a real good one. we started in the morning and we had to change a few trains to reach the small villages in the black forest. after we reached there we knew about the famous Cukoo clocks that are manufactured in Triberg and it was good to see some astonishingly huge Clocks. the train journey was equally amazing as it was the time of Golden October. its the time when the trees turn yellow from green and start shedding their leaves. truly amazing sceneries we could see from the train.

there was a nice waterfall at triberg, but was a long way to walk up the hill. it took a lot of time, not only because of the distance but because of the thousands of photos we clicked. a good chilly atmosphere, clean and green with zero pollution, it was a memorable stay. it was dark very early and then we started off for Titisee.
but advise from an old and very helpful woman there suggested that it was farther than we thought and the boards showed. so we dropped the idea and had a nice dinner at an italian restaurant. it was time to head back to stuttgart, and again it was a very tiring day....but we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Time for another Bitsian get-together

So as our Italy trip was planned with a lot of research and hard work, hari was to come to stuttgart, roam around a few places in germany and continue the trip to Italy. but it was awesome to have uday also join us. and as usual my buddy surendra(jaffa na jaffda) was there to accompany us. the surprise package was akkanapragada or simply sandeep. a friend of hari and working in Italy, always frustrated in life about something which he doesnt know...he suddenly took a flight to land up at stuttgart and join us on our adventurous trip planned obviously by siddu.
people got up early to feast of the delicious breakfast i prepared, but had to compromise on the unexpectedly RED poha i prepared. i donno why but it just happens when ppl are there to judge my talent, every other time i really make it tasty. we started of for the porsche meuseum.

uday specially wanted this photo to be publisiced everywehre because out of the innumerable photos we took, he says this is better if not the best. his taste for photos has really become saddistic, he hates every photo in which he is present, and u bring in the worlds best photographer, and he can point out a mistake. i think its time one reminded him, whatever u r like, the same u get in a photo. 

after the meuseum visit for a couple of hours and discussions about cars, mechanics etc etc..we landed at the Bad leuze, a mineral water swimming pool. and the same situtation which i posted in my previous blog repeats. 

after a tiring day, it was time for some relaxation...and we chose the pub which is most famous for its"xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" so though its a censor, u can imagine it to be a really wonderful night for all of us, especially for the 3 pilla pooooos hari, uday and sandeep.

Finally a cool swim

Its been a long time since i have penned down the events here in Germany, reason being the really busy schedule. Not because of work of course, the extensive travelling and enjoyment has snatched away all the time to fill in my blog..........
so here starts a new innings. i was again in Pforzheim, but this time waiting 2hrs for surendra to come and pick me from the bus stop as a result of his as usual handover. then we decided to go for a swim. entered one of the oldest and biggest pools of germany............and if u have seen a lot of episodes of baywatch or similar serials, its time to rate the german girls a bit higher. they were not awesome as usual..they were ultra awesome, and u can just understand why they were like that!!!
we had long 4 hrs just swimming and more of admiring. like kids we played, swam for a while, played a few water games......and finally entered the sauna to relax. as usual more of description can lead to censors..so i will finish of this right here.