Something finally gives way. The panicked desperation for a delayed spring, still needing to wear earmuffs and thick gloves. Piles of old snow blankets, dirty and tinged with Berlin's black soil but determinedly solid, unrelenting, refusing to thaw. They cling still on tops of shrubs, collected in muddy heaps on sides of roads and sidewalks, on hidden corners of roofs and deserted patches of earth. The sparrows still chirp, their loud cries defiant, shrill in the unseasonably crisp freeze at this time of the year. Then, something breaks. You're too warm in that winter coat, so you switch back to your thinner jacket, still cautious, still painfully aware of Berlin's fickle weather swings. But it stays that way. And then, out of nowhere, snow turns into rain. Not piddly no-drops like you're standing next to a fountain, but rain rain. Drops like spears, crashing on the perfectly smooth pallid roads, barraging on everyone, ratting out weak umbrellas. You blink around and wait. For that muddy, earthy fragrance when the first drops of rain sizzle on the scorching, wrinkled, thirsty soil. For the wafting smells of hot fried bhaji, pakoras and samosas. For warm, roasted peanuts in newspaper cones. For signs of little stalls crowded with people, squinting at the rain, a rustic glass of hot cardamom chai in their cool hands, blowing on it to cool it down. You wait for that squelch of shoes in the water rivulets born out of the downpour. For the splashes of water as people on two wheelers, late for work, irritated with errant raindrops sliding through their raincoats and wetting their backs, speed by, drenching hems of Kurtas and pants with muddy water. It starts to rain harder. I wait for chaos. For street urchins and school children on their way home from school, jumping in puddles. For the loud croaks of hidden frogs. For the electricity cuts that don't happen. Back in Berlin, the tram rattles to a stop and everyone gets in, irritably wiping the raindrops off their minds. Because here, in this perfect world so far away from home, not a hair is out of place. Bright umbrellas have popped up everywhere, people scurry past me. No one's cooking food on the street, no crowds have huddled around rickety food and chai stalls and no one is cheerful at the spring that has brought warmth but rain instead of sunshine. How could they be happy about it, how could they begin to understand, when they don't know what magic monsoon conceals in its muddy, splashing, trickling, cooling folds?
*******
I wrote this on one of the first days of spring a couple of days back, when it felt like monsoon in Goa. In Berlin. And this song kept playing in my head on loop all day. Sigh. -The Cyniqueen
Why are 'bad' things always the most delicious ones?
Bad habits
Naps that pull you in and sink you into perfect oblivion.
Doodling in class (my latest penchant -- writing German names and words in the Devanagari script).
Surfing rage comics on my smart phone.
My smart phone.
Eating that one last morsel of chicken curry even though I know I'm full.
Hot chocolate (for when it's cold).
Talking to myself.
Not being able to decide Indecisiveness.
Midnight "epiphanies" that you know are just a way to avoid studying.
Venting your anger at the elevator button. (It's like you want to hit the STOP button on something else).
Making too many lists.
Letting the dishes pile on a little longer than necessary.
Slipping into tawdry, remarkably shameless tardiness and running around like a tornado trying to restore the place to some basic accepted standard of cleanliness when you're expecting company.
Not letting go easily enough.
Thinking too much.
Shopping too little.
Chai.
Stationery.
Life summary - The end of a hectic semester, the beginning of a promising internship, the reevaluation of goals and right this second, almost ground-shaking thunder. I never understood why those kids in The Sound of Music were so terrified by it. Doubt cleared.
Berlin has been hot and humid since a couple of days. Not particularly sunny, but a cloud of heat floating along everywhere you go, making your clothes stick to your skin, emanating hot waves of air from your scalp, making your face sweat and your skin burn. Feels that way, in any case.
On the other hand, I'm enjoying every second of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, which I'm currently reading. Next stop, The Little Prince, as soon as Amazon decides to actually send me my copy.
And here is a lovely new venture from a friend of mine who wants to bring an online reading community together. I really love the idea and the enthusiasm that people are already showing. Do take a look!
Going through a huge jazz phase right now. Even though it's always been right up there with country music and swing, these days its been ticking inside my head like a thought that won't go away. Scratch that - like a thought that you don't want to go away.
You guys, I have so much to tell you. Like the fact that the approaching winter can be a pain and rock at the same time.
That Austrian cheese "aus dem Bergen" ("from the mountains") and Glühwein from the Christmas markets here is magical.
That I rediscovered the Tacheles house (that I've told you about several times before, remember?) last night with K. Met some of the people there, happened to land up in the middle of a Mexican birthday party, got a new cloth bag which says very coolly - Kultur kann man nicht kaufen - which in English means - you can't buy culture. And then there's an asterisk and right at the bottom, in small letters, it says aber (meaning 'but'). Cool huh?
The artist is Tim Roeloffs and his work pulls me out of my comfort zone and makes me think. I also bought this postcard right here. It means 'Berlin - The City of Peace'. I love that little bear and the dove.
And my birthday was last week and it was really good. One of my many lovely presents (from friends I now have, hallelujah!) was the Amazon Kindle I got from G, complete with a book I was waiting to read. Moment of crazy dancing here for the awesome people in my life:
A dancing banana
A dancing cow WITH bananas (and udders for genitals)
Thank you Google images for the awesomeness. Ironically, the cow is smaller than the banana.
Lots more to tell, but for now, Saturday sloth is calling.
The last, crumbling signs of autumn lie dulling on the ground and winter is slowly reaching out its frosty hand, frost being the operative word there. I know I don't usually start with the weather (or do I? Eh, don't really care to remember), but when you're in Europe, you can't not talk about the weather, you simply can't.
See? How can you not talk about it?
More things that happen when you live my life:
Your language becomes a royally awkward hodgepodge of English and German that makes you fumble and falter no matter what language you're trying to speak.
You realize for the first time in your life how cold some things really are - keys, door handles, coins, zips, for example- especially when you have to heave your hands out of the warmth of your pockets.
To your mild surprise, life still has many, many firsts to offer that make you want to act like a child (blow smoke/mist in the air, pick up leaves frosted overnight and stare fascinatedly at everything wintery).
You listen to old hindi songs on your mp3 player in the
train and cherish the secret joy it brings you, surrounded by people
who don't know the language and may never understand the beauty of
Kishore Kumar or R.D. Burman.
You click pictures every time you see something novel. Which is all. the. time. Oh yes.
You begin to want hot chocolate everyday and feel bad about it.You discover that the sugar-less Cappuccino from the vending machine at your uni is surprisingly good.
You discover the pure, unadulterated joy of cooking Indian food in a foreign land. Of bonding with your mother and grandmother who taught you to cook, and feeling their presence next to you, guiding you when you're cooking something even though they're continents and oceans away.
You cry a little when you have to write a report on the German political situation that you know squat about. You also snivel at German literary texts that you are supposed to read up on and understand. You wonder at how it is possible to understand every single word in a sentence and still not follow what it being said. You nod obediently at people, even when their German is too fast/thickly accented. You wonder or cry about it later (as the case may be, especially if the German in question is spoken by a teacher giving important instructions for the next class). Basically, you cry a lot. And by 'cry' I obviously don't mean sob. I mean your eyes well up a bit/you want to tear something or scream just a little.
To put it simply, there are several moments of deep self doubt.
...but then there are days you're proud of yourself because you just did one more thing today you never thought you could have :)
You learn to budget a little better. A little tighter. It makes you feel a little grown up. And then you buy Aloe Vera gel for 7.40 Euro and save like a squirrel the rest of the week.
You finally stop saying 'Rupees' at the end of every sum and switch to Euro.
You learn about some huge cultural differences between India and Europe. You can't wrap your head around them.
...and some things, like smiling at strangers, you love and adopt as your very own.
You learn that moving away to a new country means finding new brands of personal products. Which can be a pain.
You think you're going to miss your train everyday and run... then you bake in your 50 layers of almost-winter clothing.
You wonder how bad and gloomy January will really be, especially with everyone painting such a bleak, depressing picture.
...but you secretly wait for the first snowfall of your life (and hope you can cope with the cold).
You do a happy mental dance when you give tourists directions to a place in Berlin.
You feel somehow browner, just a tiny bit. It makes you respect your heritage :)
You get frustrated at your hair's lack of effort to be
presentable in Berlin and its animosity towards the water here. But
then, after a couple of weeks, the bounce comes back and you look normal
again.
There are some moments that jerk you away from Berlin, from Germany, from Europe and hurl you back to India - to a sight (beige, smooth, sparkling beach sand) or a sound (hundreds of honking cars) or a taste (pani-puri, Goan bhaji, batatwada, hot, soft chappatis) or a person (family). It leaves you bewildered, exasperated and yearning in an incomplete, torn sort of way.
You try eating a lot of new things and decide you like most of them (except for duck that one time. And 'tropical fruit tea').
Autumn - bites you in the face and produces awesome mist type thing in the air when you exhale/talk. Not to mention how beautiful the bright yellow, fiery red leaves on trees and rustling, whispering heaps of dried leaves on the ground (like in the picture above). I can almost hear my skin cracking gently against the cold. Also, I keep hearing the term 'golden autumn' (goldener Herbst) everywhere.
The end of waiting. Almost - My course starts very soon. I'm excited, but have mild concerns about starting out a Master's course in a field I've never studied before and in a foreign country. Oh yeah, and in German. Mild concerns *pulls out hair and runs amok*
My only friend/confidante/support here moving away for a while. It's going to feel like the first day of kindergarten. Like the time you're cooking something and you realize you're out of salt. Like when you're only pair of shoes breaks when you're travelling, y'know what I mean?
Upside of aforementioned course - fewer students in each class, which means a higher chance of being able to make friends. Past experience sits on its throne of smugness and scoffs at my optimism at hoping to make some reliable friends (and not the kind to flake out on you in times of need, as has unfortunately come to pass several times before), but I'm planning on dethroning it and being the one who scoffs. With my new friends, hopefully.
I am soon going to be in possession of some very coveted substances - Indian cooking ingredients! As much as I have come to love Schnitzel and Quark (curious? Go Google), I can't wait to make some decent Goan Sol Kadi and attempt (hopefully successfully) to make chappatis and Pav bhaji and things like that. Yum!
Why this sudden slap of religion, you ask? No, it has nothing to do with the Pope visiting Berlin today (he really is. Go Google it if you want.). It has nothing to do with religion. Devotion? Reverence? Ah, the lines begin to blur a little there.
It started with an egg. It started shortly after I was conceived, with my mother eating an egg every day 'for the baby's sake'. I wish I could tell you that I remember the food I ingested as a foetus, but I'd like to think that my crystallizing, still-forming brain loved it like a dog loves a belly rub. I'd like to believe I relished it and let it stay on my tongue (well, after I had one) and smiled a satisfied smile before I swallowed and went back to floating in the warm cocoon of my mother's womb. (I'm pretty sure that the foetus doesn't eat any of the food by itself, but this is the bit where I play my poetic license card).
For as long as I can remember, eggs have occupied a special place in my heart (figuratively, although it may hold in its literal meaning some years down the middle-aged road, cholestrologically speaking). I ate them at breakfast, I had them as a snack in the evening or simply because I wasn't too hungry at dinner. When I was still a kid, I loved hard boiled eggs. Hard boiled and fried. I detested the flaky, smelly yolk of the boiled eggs for several years, only to discover years later that the same yolk tasted like heaven sprinkled with sunshine and angels' smiles if you boiled it for a lesser amount of time. I also learnt what divine pleasure fried eggs, the sunny-side-up kind, can give someone. And except for a brief affair with bread and butter in my school years, eggs have been my breakfast staple. Imagining ife without eggs was (is) very very difficult.
Having been a fussy eater through my growing years, with an almost spiritual connection to junk food and sweets and all things unhealthy, eating eggs seemed to take away some of the guilt (just to be clear, I wasn't an unhealthy or overweight kid. The weight issues started very mysteriously, much after I adopted a healthier lifestyle, but that story's for another day. Like the day after the apocalypse).
Eating eggs, with all their folic acid and protein and minerals and calcium and potassium and iron and vitamins (PACKED top to bottom and side to side with nutrition. Go Google it if you want), made me feel like a nutritional angel despite my loathing of certain other healthy food. The NECC (National Egg Co-ordination Comittee) would have been proud - speaking of which, I dug around youtube and found these. Too bad if you don't understand hindi:
And the one I think is slightly lame in terms of over the top acting and bad quality , but also rocks in its listing of why eggs are awesome *drumroll*
How eggs could possibly, conceivably be vegetarian is beyond me, but whatever.
So anyway, things were fine, I was happy and eggs were delicious. Then came research, like it always does to ruin a good thing. Eggs are evil, it said. The egg yolk has fat. And cholesterol. Terrible things will happen if you so much as smack your lips in the presence of an egg (...is how I saw it then). This happened when I was a teen, and for a while, I ate my boiled eggs without the yolk, and our cats fought over who got to eat them. Then came more research which said hold on a minute, may be we were wrong. Really? I thought, and continued eating eggs - with the yolk, minus the guilt. And like the boy who cried hen (I know, I know. But, poetic license.), research stuck out its 'objective', 'methodological' head and shuffling its feet on the ground and biting its indecisive lips, whimpered something else about the health benefits of eggs. More recently, someone brought to my notice that eating eggs every day may not be good for me and I should try cutting down.
This is how I see it:
The good in the egg seems to outweigh the bad, with more health benefits for women.
To roughly quote my mother, anything eaten in excess is a bad thing. Which is why my mom put an, ahem, limit to how many eggs I could eat in a day (Two. Except when there was egg curry or bhurji. That was like a bonus). And I still stick to it.
Very few things rival what eggs mean to me. I know it sounds silly, but it's true.
One more fact - If it really came down to it, I think I could give eggs up. But only for the people I love (Except that the people I love, if they really love me, wouldn't take eggs away from me, would they?).
And finally, it doesn't matter, okay? I don't stuff myself with eggs till I can't eat anymore. I simply treasure every bite of egg as if it were my last (even on days when I was running late, when the boiled eggs were eaten almost whole). When I bite the soft, boiled egg white and it hits my tongue, for the slightest second, my world stops. It does.
So scrambled or fried, boiled or baked or poached or cooked, this is it. My biggest romance with food. I want to grow old with it and never let go.
Mock me if you will -- all I'll do is swish my healthy hair at you and walk away, with a smile on my face and an egg on my mind.
Almost 3 weeks in Berlin and I'm still in the first flush of love. Since having been here, I have gone to Brandenburger Tor twice, travelled a bit within the city on my own, and oh, did I mention - I also got the spot at the university of my choice. Not a bad few weeks, eh?
I have also made 2 trips to Hakescher Mart (about which I've told you a few times) which is a weekly market with stalls selling spectacularly
assorted things from shiny necklaces, curious hats, fresh coriander
(that was one joyful discovery), agarbattis, antipasti, falafel, crepes,
photo frames and paintings to second hand books.I went there last week in the afternoon when I had been having a day best described as a string of clumsy accidents (dropping my things, missing the train and so on) and all I needed was some Hakescher Markt. I had a big cup of hot chocolate at the stall with the warm, smiling italian man who's always humming to italian songs playing in the background as he makes your drink. Now wouldn't that turn your day around?
On my list of things to do in the two years (at least) that I'll be here (with regard to food) is try as many varieties of cheese, tea and bread. So the tea here is very different from good ol' Indian chai, but there's a mind boggling range and I'd be a fool not to make the best of it.
Ooh, and I haven't had any beer or bratwurst (sausages, which Germany is famous for) since I got here. Unbelievable. Also, calories. But still, Curry 36 will happen soon, I hope.
This time around in Berlin, things are different. There's no hurried rush to take it all in. It's not a quick snack, you know? It's a sumptuous dinner, cooking luxuriously over a low flame, bubbling with anticipation, drinking in flavours and just simmering. Mmm...who's hungry?
Happiness is a state of mind. Cliché? Yes. Untrue? No.
I'm so happy right now. Even though my room is a mess of clothes roughly classified into 'Clothes that fit' and 'Clothes that will fit again soon'. Listening to Jack Johnson, thinking about the beginning of the end of acne (according to my doc), thinking about a similar, more panicked scene 10 months 1 day ago; and a similar scene which will come to pass in a couple of months from now. Packing. Clothes everywhere, strewn plastic wrappers of knick knacks freshly packed in a suitcase bigger than me, worrying about being on time, about good weather when I land, about nothing breaking inside, about perishable food not getting spoilt. Looking forward to Brötchen on the plane (about which I blogged that one time), looking forward to Germany. To all that being there means to me.
A difficult goodbye, a familiar buzz, lots of green tea over 2 flights and then, the landing. And then? A new life.
There's no water in the house And in my mind, a tap's leaking
Does that make sense? Guess not. But there really isn't any running water in the house since morning. Urgh. So disgusting I feel in this sticky heat. But we had fish curry rice again for lunch today and then we had alsaandyachi bhaji yesterday and today (which is sort of like Rajma, but you only get it in Goa) and life was merry again.
My internship's going pretty well and I've got a couple of bylines in the paper too. And also, I have the best morning commute in the world. The road from Margao to where I need to go is lined with coconut trees and fields and green and ponds and rivers and glimpses of the ocean. Whenever I get the window seat, I get no reading done whatsoever (except on Saturday, when I was so exhausted while coming back from work that I feel asleep with my face against the window, doing that involuntary, terribly undignified head bobbing, falling asleep thing I used to laugh at fellow-commuters for).
I miss my sister, who is still in Pune, very, very much. I wish she was here too. It's nice to be home, have my folks around, have the comforts of air conditioning and a soft bed. A little annoying what with the no water and all, but still. I get to be home home. In my birth and growing-up place ^_^
And and and I have a lot of work still, but I can't get my mind to be still. It's not horrible like the pre-German-test tension and restlessness that was pouring out of my ears, but simply the tired kind. I have to peel myself off the couch after I get back from work and I'm done with dinner. And then work again. But we must what we must, no? I gently placed my Berlin magnet above a photo frame in my room because there's no magnety surface it'll stick to. I need to keep reminding myself of the bigger (and ahem, thinner) picture. Next stop, fitness.
When life gives you lemons, make fresh lime soda (sweet & salty). [Image via Google Image Search]
That title has nothing to do with the post but I thought it sounded nice. May be I can use it in a book some day? If only, if only.
And also, I want fish. I want lovely rava fried chonok and delectably tender tandoor pomfret. And mussels (very fried, very oily, very yum. And completely worth it).I want to be sitting at Furtado's in Sernabatim or Boomerang in Colva - enjoying the breeze and that home town feeling. And I simply want to be in Goa.
It sucks that a part of my heart came cleanly away from the rest when I was in Germany and simply refused to come back to India with me. It lives in Germany, that bit, and beats softly and gently, nibbling at my longing and feeding the fire from all the way there. Couldn't I, just for a moment, hold both (Goa, Berlin) in my mind's arms like babies and cradle and coo?
My love-hate, now-we're-in-love, now-we're-not relationship with the Summer is back with double passion. Summer with its powdered dusty wings and its fool's smile. (Don't even ask. I have become Vague Queen for now, it would seem).
Ist er nicht unglaublich süß? / Is he not unbelievably cute?
This, my lovelies, is what my friend Kivi gifted me on my birthday. I want to hug him all the time. Now I'm not really the stuffed-toy kind of girl, but look how cute! I've never owned such a big one. Oh wait, how rude of me. Readers, this is Clouseau. You see, I thought his name should end with an /əʊ/ (or 'oh') sound, and my friend suggested Clouseau, which is a mouthful, but I think it should stay. And may be another nickname for when I'm feeling especially affectionate.
And those of you who spotted that bottle of perfume in his lap - that is Hugo XX - and it makes me want to lie in a meadow with flower petals falling on me and dappled sunlight all around. It was a gift from my lovely sister.
And because I am the mother of telling things in a nutshell (Heh, quite the contrary actually, but anyway) here is what I did on my birthday. And also because I am the mother hen of all things listed, here it is in bullet form:
Biryani at Blue Nile with my sister and Kivi. Which was so deliciously yum. And this Ice vanilla shake thing. Which I never have for fear of how dazzlingly indulgent it looks. And it was. Mmmm.
A very soothing nap at my grandmother's house. Which some people might think was a waste of time, but there's something about sleeping in that house which makes you feel all refreshed and happy.
Sabudana vada, which no one can make better than my grandmother. And no, I cannot possibly explain to you what that is, but may be this recipe can and this picture.
Oh, I forgot to say - lots of shopping at Fabindia - I love my new Kurtas and Kurtis.
Dinner at home with Unmesh and Anand and my sister, playing Taboo and talking. Unmesh had to leave early (Grrr) but we had fun anyway. And oh, he totally missed dessert, which by the way, Unmesh? Was awesome.
All in all, I had expected nothing and so everything nice was a bonus in itself. If you dread birthdays like I do, believe me, this is the way to go.
And if you were having a bad day, this will cheer you up. So the landlord's thirty-something son calls out to me and says, "Hey, the ballcock is broken, the ballcock is broken."
*moment of respectful silence for me because I didn't burst out laughing in his face like an effing Hyena*
I go like "Umm........*trying hard to block a million eye-blazing visions away*...what?" Him: Yeah, so the ballcock? Doesn't work...blahblahblah
So a ballcock, which looks something like this *moment of raucous, shameless, indulgent laughter*, has something to do with water tanks. But that's not important part, is it? No, it is not. I'm still giggling a little.
Cause of extreme happiness and a lot of smiling when I switch on the laptop every morning - more blogging activity. Thanks to Kim K, a whole new world of (German) blogging has opened itself up to me.
I have to get going now. But I heart you all very much :)
I hate being all sombre and morose and vague in this blog, I do. But every day I just keep realizing that there are people in the world doing so much more, and tapping into whatever potential they have. Like him and her and her and Brad (who prefers to be called Adam, apparently, so that's what I shall call him henceforth) and CC, with his Love Sex Dance Magazine, (an online fashion magazine which you really should check out, especially the current issue)...I realize I spoke about people who are not in India, which is just a coincidence. The point is (as I see it), either they're doing what they love or working towards it; and logically speaking, that's how it should be for all of us. It shouldn't have to be an extraordinary thing, but it is. I admire people like this so much. And the weird thing is - nothing's stopping me but the shadows of my own mind.
I am happy for some things in my life though. Like for instance I took the more sensible (and harder) decision of staying on in Pune (instead of Goa, which hello, is fabulous) whether I get through the German course for this session or not. I'm happy that I'm doing something more to stay healthy. And today, I joined Guitar class, which I have wanted to do for so very long. You see, technically I've been playing the guitar since late 2006. But I mostly learned it on my own, off the internet and with very little personal help. So while I can play some things, there's so much more that I need to learn and (eeep!) lots and lots of wrong playing techniques I need to change. I hope this goes excellently. This still counts for something as far as the whole tapping your potential thing goes, does it not? I hope so.
I have a total love-hate relationship with my birthday, which approaches swiftly. In my mind, it waits there ahead of me (now at a distance where I can see it) and rubs its hands together slyly, not divulging what it has in store for me. Birthdays are frigging unpredictable, am I right? Even if I remain occupied the whole day, there's always this little voice in my head that whispers alluringly, sinfully - it's your birthday, you're supposed to be having a superamazingcrazilyexcitinglymindblowinglyecstatic day. And even though until then I've been pleased with the day, it suddenly begins to seem not-good-enough. And yay! becomes eh. Also, having a normal, routine day on your birthday is somehow anticlimactic and depressing.
I think it has everything to do with the fact that most birthdays when you were a kid actually did seem superamazingcrazilyexcitinglymindblowinglyecstatic because of the presents and the attention. Sigh. I wish stuff meant just as much now. Although I must admit, if I could have bought a DSLR on my birthday, I would have been disturbingly elated. So anyway, I was talking to G about it who says it wouldn't bother him at all if his birthday were like any other day or even if he were alone. It's going to be hard, but this year I'm going to try not putting any pressure on the day and let it take its own course.
And now, an attempt to brighten up and sweeten this post:
This was a sprite flavoured cake (baked using sprite instead of egg. How cool is that?) I baked during my CMYK (photography) course for the whole class and Saloni clicked this picture. The gems (which got displaced on the way from Margao to Mapusa) are supposed to spell click! and there's a smile there in the middle which drowned in the icing. But look - colour can spruce up anything :)
Shot (a little shakily) from a car window. I fell in love with the old architecture.
Oh yes, I did! Family holiday to Hyderabad happened, and it was so much fun, mainly because we (my parents, my sister and me) were all together.And because I don't have the patience (and admittedly, the time) to relate everything in loving detail, I give you, impressions in bullet points:
Biryani at Cafe Bahar and Qubani ka Meetha (this apricot and date syrupy sweet dish, served cold. It sounds funny, but trust me, it grows on you. Mmmm...) and Dil Pasand (how cute, no?) and a lot of very comforting cups of Irani tea, which I was completely infatuated with. It's a wonder my clothes still fit.
Hyderabad has loads of Bakeries at every corner, beautiful flower decorations outside of some shops (because it was Diwali), Telugu and hyderabadi-hindi (which, without a doubt, rocks), some very nice places to go to like a drive through the IT area of the city and Charminar, the Salar Jung Museum, although after a while you do start to get a little tired of looking at antiques. Although may be you wouldn't, Carolina Primavera, fan of antiques :)
It also has some not-so-great places to go to like Snow World, which if you've ever seen real snow, I plead you to stay away from. I don't know if they've changed the way they are supposed to do things, but we did not enjoy being shoved into a line, given jackets and gloves, made to hand in our footwear and given gumboots (wet from the inside) to wear and what I very strongly suspect were used-socks (ewwwwwwwwww. eww,eww.), and then jostled into another room with ice (which seemed to be mixed with sand or something like that). Eh, I don't want to get into details about the crazed people who were throwing ice at every surface (including our camera). There were things to do of course, like some sliding thing, but it was so annoyingly crowded. Then they announced that there would be snowfall in two minutes. We left pronto, not wanting to get that weird sand-snow in our hair. It was okay, though. We did get a lot of laughs out of the whole thing.
I love Pune a little more now, because Hyderabad has more honking and noise and traffic than Pune. Which I had not thought was possible. So yes, Pune-1.
The Hyderabad airport is magnificent (although they do charge you this UDF Fee which is Rs.100 for domestic outbound passengers and Rs.800-something for international outbound. Not so nice). But yes, it is a vision of loveliness (as much as airports can be) and quite comfortable.
***********
Impending birthday looming in the horizon of my mind (and calendar), and I have no plans. As I was telling my friend Unmesh, I have a very specific grudge against birthdays (I mean, my own) and he agreed (and bitched in his blog, here). But that's for later. And now I find my righteous fingers staring at me reproachfully (drumming themselves on the table. Heh), and I must devote typing-activity to other, more fist-eatingly boring work.
Berlin, I miss you. I miss listening to German all around and feeling good about understanding a language I just learnt. I miss the plump pigeons. I miss wearing a coat and buttoning and unbuttoning it as you have to get inside. I miss the annoyance that it caused. I miss feeling excited about what new place I'd be seeing each day. I miss how scared I was to travel within the city on my own for the first time ever. I miss taking the U-Bahn. I miss walking into the Supermarkts and just looking, awe-eyed, at the sheer variety of everything. The sandwiches are missed, and the brötchen (a type of German bread which smells so fresh and tastes so good, you wouldn't want to ever have Indian sliced bread again). I miss googling about the weather forecast before stepping out. I miss missing India, ab und zu(translation: now and then). I miss seeing potential photos everywhere I looked. And I miss the people who made Europe, Europe for me. So G, it goes without saying, that doing mundane things together like walking around the city with you is missed. Sorely.
The tangible remains of Berlin- a few tickets (and a monthly pass that enables you to use all the public transport of the city. Isn't that super?), some spare change, books, Sandtiere (which I described to you that one time); and my much loved (and adorably little) Milano cup.
I guess it doesn't look that small in this picture I clicked, but I swear, it's daintily petite. And look - next to it, my spare Euros and cents :)
With uncrossed fingers, I must somewhat dolefully tell you that I didn't get admission for the next level of German I wanted to do, because well, just too many people want to learn German, apparently. So yeah, that hasn't worked out like I'd planned. But in the spirit of positivity that is suddenly bursting inside me and has nothing to do with anything, I think things will turn out okay. Within the next year. One always has hope, right?
