This Day..Last Year...

Disclaimer: This is gonna be a helluva long post!!!

December 26th 2007 was a day in my life that I'll never forget. Words cannot describe what I went through on that fateful winter night.

Before questions start hovering in your minds, let me take you back to Friday the 21st December 2007. I had planned to spend my Christmas in Italy. No, I am not one of those privileged souls who spend their holidays abroad, I was in France last winter, so I thought of paying my Italian friends a visit for Christmas.

Before I bore you with my story, you will need to be familiar with the names of a few French and German Cities/Towns.

Orbey, France - Home and office in this small village

Colmar, France - Nearest town, and Railway station

Strasbourg, France - The Nearest city.

After the office hours on Friday, I went to Colmar with a colleague and spent the night at his apartment. Got up at 6 in morning to catch the first train to Strasbourg. Reached Starsbourg in about an hour, and waited for an hour for the Lufthansa Bus to Frankfurt. After a 2 hr bus ride, through thickest fog ever, and with a 10 min stop at the Franco-German border, I reached Frankfurt Airport. I was happy as I had 4 hours before my flight to Italy. But as my luck would have it nobody knew from which terminal RyanAir (the Air-Deccan of Europe) flew. As it turned out, it didnt fly from Frankfurt Main Airport at all and that it flew from an unheard-of airport called Frankfurt Hahn. To make matters worse, that friggin Hahn airport was 150 Kms from the main airport. From that point my adventure began.

I managed to find the bus to Hahn airport. Boarded it and let out a sigh of relief. I thanked god that people in Germany were conversant in english. And I thanked god for one more thing, I had a Brazilian beauty for company all this while and some more time. Beauty is an understatement, Bombshell is the right word ;).

What followed after that short-lived scare was the awesomest time of my life. Met all the people I knew in Italy at a party. Those guys had arranged a trip for me to a near-by city called Ferrara. Then I stayed with some Indian guys whom I had made friends with in my last trip and played cricket with them. Had a rocking time in all. Four days went by in a blink of an eye.

But what was to follow this was nothing short of an ordeal. From here on, me catching every flight or bus was touch and go. The flight back to Frankfurt got delayed. Reached Frankfurt friggin Hahn at 8:25 PM. Rushed out to catch an 8:30 PM bus to Frankfurt Main (this was the last bus by the way). Had to reach Frankfurt main by 10:30PM at any cost so as to avoid spending the night at the airport. To make proceedings interesting, there was a traffic jam on the freeway. The bus stood there for what seemed like an eternity. Reached Frankfurt main at 10:28 PM. I dont know how, but the driver spotted me running towards the bus and stopped it, I boarded it and dozed off.

I was to reach Starbourg at 1:00 AM. I didnt have any issues with that as I already had booked a hotel and the bus was to drop me at the doorstep of the hotel. But when I am involved, how can things go perfectly?? I reached Starsbourg at 1:00 AM, I went to the hotel reception and to my horror, the hotel was full and the receptionist didn't budge. So there I was, on a Snowy december
night, all alone on the streets of Starsbourg, no where to go. I had to find a place to spend the night as I had to catch a train to Colmar in the morning. Unlike in India, train stations in Europe dont operate at night.

I roamed and roamed on the deserted streets of Strasbourg till the wee-hours of the morning seaching for a hotel and to top it off, it was snowing cats and dogs!!! I finally found a hotel at 3:30 AM, I went to the room and crashed. Got up at 6AM took the train to Colmar, met the colleague at the station (had tied-up with him) and he took me straight to the office. So much for going to the office.

To sum up the experience, I felt like a contestant on the Amazing Race. Only difference being the winner of the Race gets a million dollars. And considering the fun I had in Italy, I already had won my prize.... :)

Bitter Sweet November

Here I am after a month long hiatus. It was not a planned one though. Just that I was a wee bit lazy to blog.

November month came and went by. The month that started in anticipation and excitement. Everything was going good on the work front, had a couple of marriages to attend, had a long holiday trip to Bangalore planned, and last but not the least India was doing bloody well in cricket. An unplanned/unexpected thing happened too, and it made me pretty happy. No no i didnt find a girl, but I got a mid-year hike :D. Man, what a month it was going to be!!!

After ages I went on a trip with my whole family. My cousin was getting married in Bangalore. Had the 2nd most awesome train journey of my life ;). Well the most awesome was when I was coming back from Bangalore 5 years ago and had this gorgeous girl for company. Coming back to the present, train journeys are always fun provided you have the right company. Here we were 5 guys and we had loads of fun. Laughing aloud at stupidest things, playing cards, singing and what not.

We all landed up in a place in Andhra called Anantapur for the groom's side gathering. There we had an all boys outing. Before your imagination runs wild, let me tell you that we went to the Anantapur Club and played snooker. I cannot recollect the last time I laughed so much. In the process, me and my bro got named as Steve and Mark, after the famous Australian Waugh Twins. :)

This marriage was one of the best ones I had attended. After all the closest cousin of mine was getting married, it HAD to be fun!!!

Post marriage, my family with very close family friends drove down to Tirupati. What a wonderful trip it was. Catching up with those family friends after about 15 years was like going back to childhood all over again.

These 10 days were the best 10 days in a long long time.

As not everything that starts well ends in the same fashion. The last week of November saw something that India had never seen before. 10 armed guys wrecked havoc in Mumbai. I am so sad about whatever happened there that I dont even feel like writing about it.

Just as any sweet stuff leaves a bitter aftertaste, so too did November 2008.