7 hours adventure! - Part 4 - The End

 The waitress at the McD asssured she has "Cheese burger" which was vegetarian for her, but not for me. When I enquired her about the ingredients I found out it was not vegetarian! I had to settle for French fries. We were laughing thinking of Vijay's "vegetarian" friends who'd been taking this Cheese burger for weeks by then.

Though it was only around 3-3.30 pm it was starting to get pretty dark already. Since we had to return to the cruise at 5 pm, not even a minute late, we decided to move towards the nearest Tunnelbana. That was when Vijay gave that idea (which could've cost us dearly). He suggested we visit his university which was "just on our way" to the port. We hesitated but decided to give a try. What is life without adventure!

His university was pretty good and we got busy clicking some photographs in front of everything that was visible there. Even the closed doors and fallen bicycles.

Minutes ticked away so fast that by the time we realized we were getting late, we were well behind our schedule. As we were accustomed to running in dense snow, which has been our "most favorite mode of transport" since our departure from my house @ Helsinki, we started sprinting towards nearest the Tunnelbana again.

Murphy's law got proved once again. If something has to go wrong, it will. And it did. Unusually, the metro train in our route got delayed. Though it was only by few minutes, those final moments were precious for us. I was a bit optimistic when we were in a similar situation only a day ago, but this time I was perspiring. It was a diffferent country, different situation.

When we ran just like Jack of Titanic, once again, rushed in to our cabin, took a sip of Redbull and witnessed the slow departure of the vessel from the port, we still couldn't believe how we made it. Vijay was so kind he ran along with us all the way from the metro station under the earth till the boarding point. This trip was so tiring and adventurous that I was so sleepy on the last lap to my house from Helsinki port.

Though I could see very little of Stockholm, Sweden, these few hours will remain in my memory as solid as the rocky ice of that December Scandinavian sea, until old age like summer melts and takes it away from me drop by drop.


-The End-

--S--

7 hours adventure! - Part 3

What I thought would be a "short while" took much longer than that! Reasons being X-mas, New year and holidays :)

I mention 7 hours in the title because I was inside Sweden, in the city of Stockholm for just 7 hours. And adventure is not what anyone would normally imagine. No heroics. No tiger chased me in some deep interior forest. And I didn't climb any mountain. What made the entire trip adventurous was the time constraint I had. It was 10 AM when I left the cruise and set my foot on this amazing country which has given us Ingmar Bergman, Björn Borg, the Ericsson and Alfred Nobel! My return cruise was to leave Stockholm for Helsinki @ 5 PM the same day. So I had just 7 hours to see all that I want to. I did manage to see a lot. Or I should say, "experience" a lot. And yes, I did struggle (as usual) to catch my cruise in the evening, which made this trip very memorable :)

Before I move on I must tell something about the setting. The temperature was close to double digit in the negative. Dense snowfall had painted the city pure white. Whiter than the purest white I had ever seen. (Helsinki streets were filled with snow too, but it didn't seem so clean then.) And it was just a week before Christmas, and so it was celebration mood everywhere. All this together gave me a dreamy feel. If you are a fan of the Potter series you can relate it to how Mr. Potter felt during his first visit to the Hogsmeade village! This is the closest and the best comparison I can imagine. :)

My short stay at this foreign city was made comfortable and easy by my friend from college and later colleague at workplace - Vijay, without whom I wouldn't have seen as much as I did. He made the trip cheerful, unforgettable and exciting, not just for me, but also to my 2 friends (Athi &  Anto) who came with me from Helsinki. Vijay even brought us his friends' travel cards so that we need not waste some Swedish Kroons (which we exchanged for Euros inside the cruise middle of that Nordic sea!!). He met us near a "Tunnelbana" which is the Swedish term for Stockholm metro stations, and we headed straight to the old town area. From my previous visit to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, I learned that the best place to visit in a European city is its old town area. The new, urban areas of all the cities have no distinction. They all look the same. Shopping malls, McD, clubs, etc.

The first couple of hours were spent in roaming around the old town area (called "Gamla Stan"), looking at the narrow streets decorated for Christmas, petty souvenir shops, Churches, etc. We saw the Royal palace where the guards changed duty at the hour (Sweden follows Constitutional/Parliamentary monarchy). Then we saw the Swedish parliament. While we were clicking some photographs in front of it we saw a lady come out of a room, lock it and drive away in her car. Vijay joked she could even be a member of the parliament! We were told, the MPs there are very simple (should I mention 'unlike ours'?).

We then moved to a small junction which seemed like some market place, with several souvenir shops, lots of pigeons, buildings painted in many interesting colors, Christmas gift shops, etc. Those tiny streets led me to the Nobel Museum which houses lots of information about the life and inventions of Alfred Nobel. I also remember seeing his Will regarding the Nobel prize awards. That one hour spent there was definitely worth it. 

When I came out of the museum it was quite different than how it was an hour earlier. There were lots of kids, playing with a Santa, and someone was arranging mikes and speakers. Within few minutes the cute little kids starting singing some songs, should be Christmas choirs I guess, which was lovely!

By this time we started feeling hungry. Being a 'strict' vegetarian I don't expect to get veg food everywhere. During such trips I prepare myself to mange with just some chocolate bars and energy drinks. Those are enough for me to keep myself active. But still, at that time we felt it necessary to eat something. Vijay said the local McD serves Veg burger, which I didn't believe. We decided to try my luck and started marching towards the McDonalds without knowing that I would remain hungry throughout the remaining of the day. :(

(To be contd..)

--S--

7 hours adventure! - Part 2

The next couple of minutes took very long time to pass. At least that was how I felt. Probably, "'hundreds' of automobiles" is an exaggeration but certainly there were enough cars and buses ahead to shock us. Slowly they moved. The moment we reached the bus station we jumped out of the bus, ran to the Tram stop, jumped in to the next tram and lost us amidst the crowd, counted the seconds, reached the port, ran ran ran! Finally, we made it to the port, and thankfully due to heavy crowd check-in was still open. After few minutes of standing in one of the most disciplined queues, and clicking few pics near a miniature Eiffel tower kept nearby, the excitement was back in me. The enthusiasm and energy was back!

As we were rushing in to the tunnel leading to the cruise I noticed few young guys who seemed like students holding some signboards and thrusting something in the hands of everyone entering the cruise. When I was rushing past them, one of the girls there gave me a small packet and said something which was neither audible nor understandable to me. It was then that I noticed the red-ribbon symbol on their signboards and could guess this is what she must have said - "Have it safe!". We three kept on laughing about this incident for a long time.

Like any other luxury cruise you must have heard of, this one too had so many things. Restaurants, coffee shops, gaming centers, pub/disco, swimming pool, massage parlor and lot more. I spent some time sitting in a restaurant, sipping coffee and watching a fantastic violin performance by 4 Bulgarian girls.

And then there was this cartoonist/caricaturist from Bulgaria again who made a caricature of me with few "Indian" elements sketched around - which included, elephant, snake and kamasutra. I wanted to ask him why didn't he know anything else about such a big sub-continent of India, but I stopped myself, for a moment I thought what I knew about his country. I couldn't recollect even the capital of Bulgaria for a long long time.

The best time pass I had was watching a Premier league game of Arsenal, a Real Madrid game and a Serie A game all running parallel on European satellite channels inside a sports bar. It didn't occur to me for a while that I was in the middle of some sea in the Scandinavia!

If you were wondering what is this "7 hours" about, I'm coming to that in a short while.

--S--

7 hours adventure! - Part 1

Laziness, carelessness, 'small' mistakes, procrastination and being unpunctual are not bad always. Sometimes these are the qualities that put you in to lot of excitement, action and adventure. This is what happened to me and 2 other friends of mine when we made a weekend trip from Helsinki to Stockholm, the capital of Sweden (which is the center of world politics right now, thanks to Julian Assange and his Wikileaks!).

It was a dull-white, snowy but pleasant afternoon, the weekend before Christmas. Most of my colleagues there were already on long vacations or were about to dump their laptops and jump on a flight or cruise depending on their destination. But back home in India, my team was working hard as any other 'insignificant' day of their lives. Me, caught in the middle, was neither needed to work as hard as I would have done had I been at Chennai, nor was I able to pack-up and go on vacation as coolly as my European colleagues. So was the situation of my 2 other friends - Athi and Antony. But we managed to book a day's trip to Stockholm that weekend in a cruise from Helsinki.

While laziness and carelessness are my personal traits, collective procrastination and unpunctuality of some of us in the team adding to that caused a hurdle to our departure to the Swedish capital that evening. Our cruise was scheduled to leave the port ('satama' as it is called in Finnish) at 5 pm and we had to check-in at 4.30 pm. We hurried from office at 2.30 pm, and reached my house, did some last minute packing/stuffing some snacks/charging batteries and mobile phones etc etc. Meanwhile I got a couple of phone calls (wasting few precious minutes!! ;-)). It was 3.15 pm when we ran out of the house targeting a bus to Helsinki (we were in a place called "Espoo", about 40 minutes from Helsinki city) which would arrive in a couple of minutes.

It was at this point we made that 'small' mistake. Before our bus there came another one, numbered 216A if I'm not wrong, which was also heading to Helsinki. Why wait then! We just jumped in, only after confirming with the driver that it IS going to Helsinki. What the driver didn't tell us, and what we realized after few minutes, was that it was taking a different route. And that different route was in the opposite direction which we'd never tried till then! By the time we realized it was a new route we had come a long way, and were, as fate decided, back near our office premises! What a tragedy! Clock was ticking as usual, but the circumstances made it seem running faster. For a moment, I imagined, Einstein was laughing at me and teaching me relativity yet another time.

We were clueless how long it would take for the bus to reach Helsinki central, though the driver assured us we'd reach Helsinki 'soon' but never mentioned any time. He did not know English much and our Finnish vocabulary was lesser than the number of fingers on my either hand. Thankfully, after few anxious minutes the bus got back to right direction to Helsinki and we breathed a bit easier. Anto started clicking few photographs and the situation relaxed little bit. We kept assuring ourselves that we will reach well in time, since the roads were almost deserted all the time in Helsinki and also the way our bus took was not the main highway. It was 4.10 pm when our bus took a sudden turn towards the main highway and came to a halt few minutes later from where it should take no more than 5 minutes to reach Helsinki central. We looked forward through the front glass and we couldn't believe what we saw. There were hundreds of automobiles ahead. For the first time in 5 months we saw 'traffic jam' in Helsinki.

With only 10 more minutes for check-in to close, and since we had a 4-minute tram travel from Helsinki to the sea-port, we couldn't avoid sweating even in that minus-degree snowy weather. The usual, unavoidable, inescapable silence of Helsinki amplified our heart beats several times.

(To be contd..)

--S--

Singara Chennai - Fantastic Frankfurt - Heavenly Helsinki (Part 2)

Frankfurt.

My colleagues in office who had already travelled to Helsinki via Frankfurt had warned me the airport is so big and difficult to find you way through it. Lufthansa made things very easy for me. Even before landing at Frankfurt I had all the details of my connecting flight to Helsinki. In-flight display provided me the info of terminal and gate numbers to board the flight from, and the airport map clearly showed me how to navigate to the gate.

Though I had only one hour for the next flight, I casually walked across Frankfurt airport since I knew where I'm going, observing the airport's magnificence and gorgeousness. It was surprising to see lots of cyclists inside the airport terminal.

My colleagues had warned me that the immigration check in Frankfurt is very severe. The airport authorities disappointed me. All the security checks got over in less than a minute. I reached the boarding area for my flight to Helsinki well in advance.

I knew it shouldn't be difficult to kill time there.

It was time for my favorite hobby. I started observing the people around me. Not even a single Asian / African face. Only Europeans, especially people from the Nordic. For a moment I felt a bit of loneliness and uneasiness in me.

I told myself, 'Yes, I am in Europe!'

The already short flight of 150 minutes from Frankfurt to Helsinki became even shorter as I got my seat next to 2 European girls returning from their vacation.
Thanks to a family man who wanted to switch my actual seat for this one so that he could sit with his family. That man spoke to me in Finnish without even thinking I wouldn't understand his language. I somehow understood what he meant and changed the seat.

These girls were all the time smiling and laughing and talking in Finnish and only Finnish. When they spoke to me, I noticed how horrible their English was. At that time I didn't know it was only a trailer for the big picture which is waiting for me in Helsinki.

[If you think you can easily manage anywhere in the world or at least in the west, with your English, visit eastern Europe.

There are only 2 languages in Finland - Finnish and Swedish. Many people do speak English but they struggle a lot. Everywhere - name boards, information, instructions, newspapers, television channels, ingredients on food packs, everything in Finnish and Swedish. No English at all!]

Helsinki.

Upon disembarking form the flight and collecting my luggage I went to the airport taxi counter and showed the polite gentleman there my address. He looked at it and said '8 minutes, sir'. I didn't understand why he said that. I kept waiting, checking my watch. In exactly 8 minutes came my taxi. I got out of the airport and inhaled the sweet smell of Finland.

--S--

Singara Chennai - Fantastic Frankfurt - Heavenly Helsinki

Think of what you'd love to carry with you if you're sent to a foreign country for several months where they don't even speak English? I took 5 books of my favorite Tamil writer - the late Sujatha, totally weighing about 2-3 kilos. Enough material for me to read, read and read for the next several months.

It was my first international flight. So my parents, brother and uncle had come to Chennai airport to send me off. Due to some security arrangements (?!!) visitors weren't allowed inside on that particular day. I was so upset because I had so much time to kill until I board the flight, and now I had no company. They were also upset since I had to manage all things alone with no one's help. Anyways, as long as Chennai security is on alert I'm happy.

All the way from the entry point to boarding point, for some reasons the movie 'Ayan' kept coming to my mind.

I had very less idea about boarding an international flight. And even lesser idea about 'how to pack your bags so that you can get away with few extra weight than permitted'. I made the terrible mistake of packing all my favorite books and my winter clothes in the same hand luggage, which looked a bit over-weight. At home it measured just few grams over the permitted level. Damn my weighing scale. At the airport it weighed at least 3 kilos over the limit. I had to decide between books and winter wear. Survival or Sujatha. I made the tough decision and pulled out all the books one by one, only when it came within the limits.

I tried to change my mind by observing other people around. There were confused foreigners, casual dhotiwallas, scared lonely women, naughty kids and some very-good-looking girls of Lufthansa airlines. After some time a person came and sat next to me with a book in his hand. He was unknowingly, unintentionally teasing me. It was Sujatha's 'Srirangathu Dhevadhaigal' in his hand!

I wonder how things like this could happen. There seems to be some sort of connectivity in all that happens around us. Otherwise how will someone come and sit next to me in such a big airport with a book of my favorite writer in his hands, whose books I had just some time ago left back half-heartedly?

Finally, after waiting for 100 odd minutes, watching 100 really odd people, IBM-Infosys-Oracle-Cognizant backpacks, I set foot on the Lufthansa carrier to Frankfurt. After politely declining drinks and patiently finishing my food, I casually sat and observed other people around. There were mostly Indians, Tamils especially.

To my right was a German guy who watched movies without wasting even a minute of the 10 hours flight. To my left was a boring Indian family. At the front were some naughty americanized-tamil kids and behind me a loud Polish family.

Overall it was a not-bad journey. My personal excitement of first long distance flight was neutralised by boring people and their loud snores. Also the environment was 'almost Indian'.

I managed to watch SRK's 'Rab ne bana di jodi' for some time until I could bear it no longer.

The flight was nearing Frankfurt.

--S--

Germany

Coincidentally Germany happened to be the first country I set my foot on outside India.

Coincidence because that was the first country I wanted to go even when I was a small kid.

When I was in 3rd standard I had a lesson in English prose. It was a story about a boy, set in a rural area in Germany. Though I don't remember the exact story now, I remember very well the effect the story had on me. The kid's mom would send him to his aunt's place in some other village and he would take walk along the woods to reach the place. The naughty kid would carry a cheese bar to his aunt, but how? He would tie it to a string and pull it with him like a god. This scene and the sketches shown in the pages presented a very beautiful image of Germany to me.
In fact, that story would have fitted well even if it was set in India, Brazil, China or any other country in the world. It just happened o be Germany. (for some reasons?)

Later on someone told me that Steffi Graf and few other tennis stars are so rich that they even own some islands. I always imagined islands to be like a paradise. Steffi happened to be a German. This again increased my interest in Germany.

When I learnt about Adolf Hitler, Munich olympics, Berlin wall and all, my opinion about Germany moved drastically southwards.

Sigmund Freud in his 'Interpretation of dreams' said, "every dream will reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance, and one which may be assigned to a specific place in the psychic activities of the waking state."
Thinking slowly, i realise how true it is. All our dreams are result of what we see, what we read and what we think about in real life. It is magical that somehow somewhere they connect and make sense. He meant only about dreams and how they can be reasoned out. Not how dreams in turn becomes live. This is a mystery and will always remain one.

Okay. Coming back to Germany...

Well, you might wonder what did i do in Germany!

It was only a one-hour transit in Frankfurt, on my way to Helsinki ;-)

--S--

Delhi, Gandhi, and Me - Part 2

Keeping the horrible heat aside, my next stop was at Safdarjung road - Indira Gandhi's residence. The place where Indira Priyadarshini 'Gandhi' spent her time in the 'service' of we Indians, and dedicated her whole life for the 'betterment' of the poor Indian society, has been converted in to a museum. It was a strange feeling, to be on the spot where a PM was assassinated by her own guards. It was, well, 'different'.

The museum had in display lot of newspaper reports of the incidents that happened to/because of her. Also in display were some of Rajiv Gandhi's things like the dress and shoes he wore for the last time in his life, before being assassinated in Sriperumbathur in my-own-Chennai. But there was one thing which caught my attention - the laptop he used! Believe me, we had a PM who used laptop in the late 80s! I've heard he was interested in gadgets. It was amazing to see.

Finally, it was the visit to Gandhi smriti that gave an unforgettable experience of my life time. It was the place where he was assassinated by Nathuram Godse, Narayan Apte and others. After visiting the dead Mughal kings, politicians who are alive but of no use, and PMs who died for the country during their 'service', I visited the man who lives even after his death. I'm telling about the original Gandhi - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Now that we have too many Gandhis 'ruling their India', the actual Gandhi who never ruled 'India by power' but 'Indians by his principles', is in such a pathetic state that he has to be introduced.

To be honest, I'm no fan of Gandhi. Nor do I hate him. He has always been a mystery to me. Before I read the first half of his autobiography, I thought he was almost a God. After I finished the first half, I realised he was just an ordinary human. In fact I started to hate him for no particular reasons. When I saw Richard Attenborough's 'Gandhi' and Kamal Hassan's 'Hey Ram', he gained some respect from me. After I finished reading 'Freedom at midnight' by Dominique la pierre and Larry Collins, I lost some more respect I had for him. So, it has always been like this.

Gandhi is never a static image in my mind.

When I said it was 'an unforgettable experience of my life time', I was not emotional or over-acting. It was truly such an experience. The taxi which had no AC, the afternoon heat, thirst and hunger - all these had taken me to a dreamy state.
After seeing some of Gandhi's belongings and a fantastic science museum which explains his life and principle in a very innovative way, I felt I was in January, 1948.

I walked along the path by which he used to walk to his daily prayers. The path had markings of his feet. On the sides were several paintings depicting incidents in his life. I entered the prayer area where he was assassinated.

I played in my mind, the scene of his assassination from the movies 'Gandhi' and 'Hey Ram'.

I could imagine Gandhi hurrying to his last prayer meeting for which he was unusually late.

I could imagine Nathuram Godse ready to fire. Was there any Saket Ram there? Or were there many Saket Rams?

It was a surrealistic moment.

I never heard the gun shot. It happened in silence.

When I came out I had only this in my mind - 'Did he really utter 'Hey Ram' before dying?'

--S--

Delhi, Gandhi, and Me

Few months ago I had been to Delhi, on a one-day visit to apply for my Visa to Finland. It was summer in Delhi at that time, and when I landed there at around 8 PM, the sun was still not gone. I don't know Hindi much. And my little broken Hindi didn't work with those fast-speaking almost-Punjabi people of Delhi.

The next morning I reached Chanakyapuri (the area in Delhi where all countries have their embassies in India) so early that I was the first person in queue at the Finland embassy! I got a chance to roam around the Chanakyapuri area for about an hour while waiting for the embassy to open. Not-so-surprisingly, I saw a lot of people in front of the US embassy, but to my surprise every 2nd or 3rd person was a Singh! The crowd was getting bigger and bigger there. All other embassies were nearly empty. For some strange reasons, Afghanistan's embassy looked as frightening as Afghan itself! Perhaps it was that armed cop in military outfit standing behind sacks of mud-packs that gave the effect.

My Visa formalities completed within 15 minutes. I had the rest of the day to roam around New and Old Delhis. As I had been managing from the previous night with my broken Hindi and lots of unnecessary 'nahi hai's and 'ji haan's, I had gained enough confidence that I hired a taxi by myself explaining that I had whole day in Delhi and wanted to see a few places. Since I agreed to pay 1000 bucks for the whole trip, the owner of the taxi stand himself offered to show me around the city. To my shock, he happened to be a 70+ year old Singh ji, who spoke 98% Punjabi and only 2% Hindi, and, was almost deaf! :-( It was like watching 'Jodha Akbar' - I thought i was watching a Hindi movie, but I hardly recognized any word they spoke on screen.
So, there began my exploration of my capital city.

My intentions were clear. I wanted to see only the historical sights. Not shopping malls. Not markets. And definitely not temples.
My first stop was at Qutb minar. Next was Humayun Tomb, and then Teen moorthy bhavan. I hardly saw any people in those places except, of course, some lovers, like in any other historical/archeological site in India. Perhaps they were 'planning' to 'create' their 'history' in the places which are history now.

Then came India gate, and then the very important - Rashtrapathy Bhavan. It wasn't as exciting as i had imagined it to be. Reason could be because it is 'Rashtrapathni bhavan' now. May be if Abdul Kalam had continued there, I would have felt goose-bumps!

I had a glimpse of several political addresses. 24 Akbar road, 10 Janpath, Sitting-ministers' residences (Dayanidhi Maran - to name a prominent one) , residences of ex-ministers who are still sitting (Mani shankar Aiyar) for god-knows-why?! I wondered what the others were doing that hot summer afternoon.

Coming to think of it, the heat was unbearable. It was summer at its peak in Delhi. Though I was happy seeing all historical sites, I struggled a lot to manage the heat. An unnecessary stop at the Lotus temple worsened things. I walked on bare-foot on the shining hot tiles floor and roasted my feet. It was horrible.

--S--

(To be contd..)