Well it's been rather long... ages... no... a little over 10 months since I updated this little thought pit of mine... A number of posts lie unfinished, but I'll let them rot. Not much to say in those.
A lot of water has flown since my last post. Rather pessimistic one that... even silly, when I look back at it. Of course, I haven't gotten any more optimistic or life hasn't gotten any better; in fact, it's taken quite a turn for the worse, and I've gotten used to a pretty miserable existence; but that anyway, is not my topic for the day.
In between these 10 months, I have been to Germany twice. Mostly short trips. (I must add that these were official trips, company sponsored.) The first was for a week and the second for three. The first was a lot more memorable though. One reason being that it was my first abroad and that was quite a tempting prospect. But more because of the number of goof-ups. Must be humanly impossible to jump from blunder to blunder in such a short span of time. When I look back and think about it, it's pretty amusing, embarrassing even.
The trip was basically to attend a technical workshop. That part of it went well, no problems. Only that though.
It all started with the way the travel was planned. I wasn't in town for 4 days at a stretch. On the day I got back, I got to know of my travel plans. It was, well, to happen the very next evening. I (we, rather... my project lead also was in the travelling party) had to take a flight to Delhi first, and then a connecting flight to Amsterdam and from there to Stuttgart finally. All this was fine. But wait, something went missing... what? The tickets. Oh yes, we had no tickets. They were booked and all that, but our rather efficient travel desk chose not to send us our tickets. Well, they finally did and I left office at 2.45 p.m. tickets in hand and lots of time to catch a 5.30 p.m. flight.
I did manage to reach the H.A.L airport (this was thennnn...) just before 5... and after much hustling, was guided to the plane by a rather petrified lady at the Kingfisher counter saying, "Sir, the flight is almost taking off!! You must go right now!!!". Really? Wow... :-)
I got into the flight a little short of breath and looking straight into a pack of blazered business class travellers, looking rather bemused. Felt almost like running after a BTS bus and getting into it. Having done it 4 years with more success than failure, it felt pretty normal. But not for the poor business class babus I guess... I moved in to find my seat and to my infinite joy it was right in between two rather well-sized chappies. The author is no small chunk of humanity himself, and that made for quite a close gathering. Of course, I must add that the cabins up above were stuffed with luggage leaving only the space underneath the seat to keep my little travel bag and that made the journey all the more better with lots of leg-room and no chance of feeling cramped. Well it was to be only a 2 1/2 hour journey. So enough time to lose some flab with all those crunches I guess.
Anyway, the flight took off almost in time and we were mid-air when the entertainment started. The guy to my right (near the window) decided to watch a pretty hilarious Hindi movie called "Heyy Baby". I watched it for a while too. I guessed it was supposed to be hilarious from the rather loud bursts of laughter (not to mention a slightly rocky right side seat) from my right and from a well-mannered gentleman somewhere in front.
We were to land at Delhi at around 8.10 p.m., but were caught in a traffic jam upstairs, not at all unusual for us Bangaloreans. The pilot then must've decided to stay off the jam for a while, so he went around Mathura, Agra and back to Delhi again to keep from getting bored until all the planes went their way. Seeing that most of them had adamantly stayed put, he repeated the dose another couple of times until finally some mercy was shown and we were given the green signal. Landed in Delhi at 8.45 p.m. 4 hours to go until ദ next take off.
Nothing much happened at Delhi and a very sleepy me entered the KLM flight, with an aisle seat beckoning this time around. I don't even remember when or even if we took off, because I'd already fallen asleep. KLM is a pretty decent aircraft, with decent leg-space even for the likes of me. But nothing else is much good, specially not the food. Specially, not the sad attempt at Indian food. Nothing hurts than being woken in the midst of decent sleep to stuff your mouth with elastic sheets (they were called rotis, I think).
An uneventful, uninteresting flight later, we landed at Amsterdam sometime in the early hours of the day. The landing was the best I've ever experienced, though. Nothing as smooth. None till date. Of course, temperatures were pretty close to zero. So, the jerkin had to make an appearance as did the gloves. Then was the connecting flight to Stuttgart and about a couple of hours later we landed. The flight was over. The luggage was safe (rather surprisingly. as we learnt later), so were we. We header to our hotel (The Ascot, Ditzingen). In a Merc. In a journey of firsts, this was my first tryst with one. Quite overwhelmed I was. Inspite of it being a pretty common thing in airports there.
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