Eurotrip

I am presently on my way back to Atlanta after my 3 week stay in Germany. This Euro trip has been great. I landed in Hanover on 10th Jan. at around 3 pm. Kenny and I had no clue how we are going to go about finding the hotel we were put up at. Kirshers Landhaus in Denkmal. Juan had told us that taxis in Germany accept credit cars. Unfortunately ours didn’t and we had to pay him in dollars since we didn’t have euros. The hotel seemed nice and we managed to communicate to the managers with phrases that we translated using a $20 electronic translator we bought back in states that we had reserved rooms. Lol. We visited Hanover downtown that night and bought our eurail passes. It cost me $240 for Eurail selectpass for 3 countries in 5 days. We had decided to visit Amsterdam, Berlin and Paris during weekends. Hanover is a nice city. Pretty big place with nice malls and good eating places (Turkish, German and Thai). I particularly liked the Turkish doners which has thin barbecued lamb or chicken slices with lettuce and tomatoes stuffed in these huge buns. On Monday we started our basic programming course at Viscom, which I should admit was pretty boring. Alex Gauld an application engineer was our mentor for the first week and he tried his best to make the course interesting. Alex is quite a character. He is Scottish by birth, spent 20 years as a professional opera singer and then one day got bored of it and joined Viscom, Germany and has been a part of it ever since. His opera singing explains his low baritone voice which always puts me to sleep during class.

On Friday at 4pm we left for Amsterdam. We reached Amsterdam at 8pm. We got ourselves a room for 60 euros a night which is a steal in Europe. The room was “absolutely filthy” as Kenny puts it but one should understand that the quality of hotels in Europe are not comparable to the US. Television is a luxury in European hotels and they are so tiny, even my toilet in Atlanta is bigger than some of the rooms they offer. We then started exploring the city. The Dam Square, the numerous canals that flow through Amsterdam… (Amsterdam is known for its canals) .. the coffee shops where people legally smoke weed….. Amsterdam unlike Germany has many English speakers and communicating with them is simpler… Telling a waiter in Germany and France what you want is quite an experience if English is the only language you speak. Trying to find a common ground using just gestures is really difficult…. Anyway we enjoyed the Amsterdam’s night life… The next morning we took a canal cruise. I was fascinated with dutch architecture. Those red and black brick buildings with ornate full length white windows have a charm of its own. We then visited the coffee shops and the Van Gogh museum before leaving this beautiful city for Hanover.

We spent the night at Hanover (3 hours of sleep) and caught the early morning train to Berlin. We reached Berlin at 9am. We took a 3 hour walking tour of Berlin. Our guide (Kenny) was Scottish with masters in creative writing from University of Berlin. Berlin has a great history. This city was the epicenter of change in Europe and the rest of the world since the 12th century. 3 years back I was inspired by western philosophy and writings of Karl Marx and could visit the university in which he studied here. The cathedrals here are an absolute treat for the eyes. The huge Gothic arches and domes…. I learnt a lot about Berlin’s history from Kenny. Stories about how Hitler manipulated the German minds. The Cold war era where Berlin wall practically divided the world into two factions….the heroic stories of east Germans who tried to flee (Charlie Checkpoint)…. And of course how the Berlin wall fell due to the wrong choice of words at a press conference by the East German politburo spokesman. I usually buy just a shot glass from every city I visit, but for Berlin I wanted to have a piece of its history so I bought a piece of the Berlin wall which was cut in the shape of Germany. We spent the rest of the afternoon walking through Berlin’s streets. I like walking the streets of cities I visit instead of just visiting the main attractions mentioned on travel websites. To me its like enjoying vintage wine by taking tiny sips. We ate at a Vietnamese place which was recommended by the city tour guide and their rave reviews were totally justified. We reached Hannover at 11pm. We were amazed by what we experienced felt really lucky that we could visit these 2 cities…

The following week Dr Uwe (pronounced as Ooov) was assigned as my mentor for the remaining 2 weeks and I did learn a lot about programming the Viscom systems from him. After 2 weeks we ended up being good buddies and I am looking forward to meeting him in Atlanta in the coming months. That Friday we took an overnight train to Paris (Gare du Nord- North Terminal). We reached there at around 9am. We decided to visit the Eiffel Tower. Eiffel Tower is a very imposing structure. We climbed the stairs instead of taking the elevator since the queue for elevator tickets was very long. The view of Paris from the top is amazing. We then took a bus tour so that we get a brief introduction to the city before exploring it ourselves. Paris is the most beautiful city I have ever been to. Paris has a very rich history and has been been influenced by so many cultures. It has extremely beautiful Greek, Romanesque and Gothic structures. I went absolutely berserk clicking frantically to capture this beauty on my camera. The Cathedral of Notre Dame is absolutely fabulous. The architect introduced minor differences to get rid of monotony so it is not perfectly symmetrical. The Arc de Triumph, Louvre, St Michel’s, Napoleon’s obelisk and the Grand Palace besides being extremely attractive to look at, are buildings have very interesting stories associated with them. I found Lovre and Musee’ d Orsay very inspiring. Yes saw La Jacound (commonly known as Mona Lisa) from close quarters. I liked the renaissance period Italian painting in the Louvre and the Monet, Van Gogh, Rosseau, Manet and Renoir (Impressionism) paintings in Musee’ d Orsay.

There is just one thing I didn’t like about Paris. The food here is very expensive. We ate at a fairly decent restaurant and it cost me 25 euros, that’s like 33 dollars. The costliest dinner I had till date and all I had was a salad with 3 pieces of ham, wine (Bordeaux) and a cup of cappuccino. Moreover it was advertised as “generous serving”. When the waiter placed the dishes at our table we were like what the f*%$. I also observed that we hadn’t seen one fat Frenchmen during our 2 day stay there. If I ever decide to stay and work in Paris then there could be just two possibilities – either I starve myself to death or I go broke. Considering how much I like to indulge in good food, I think I’d go broke. We also has coffee in the open coffee shops on Champs Elysees (very Parisian J )

I should say this trip was fun and I like visiting new places and experiencing new cultures. I have decided that before I am 29 I would travel to the following places.

- Asia trip with Kenny (Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Japan, China and Mongolia)
- Africa(Kenya(big game hunting, Savannah and bungee jumping)
- Australia(hunting, spending 2 weeks with a forest ranger)
- South America(Amazon – spend 2 weeks in here, Peru and Chile)
- India(Himalayas- been here before but want to do this again)
- Hitchhiking East coast to West coast (Kenny’s dream too)

I know somehow I am going to get this done….whatever it takes.