Travelog - Italy and Germany 2006

Wow Milano!

It was the evening of the 4th of October and I was playing pool in Nottingham. I knew I had to stop drinking as I needed to drive to London Stansted airport 130 miles away and its illegal to drink and drive not to mention extremely dangerous. So I got drunk, staggered home in a stupor, barely slept for an hour, jumped into my car and drove away at 3 in the morning. It was a feeling, a feeling of resignation to fate, a feeling of self loathing for not being able to stop drinking and yeah a sense of pristine fear that any minute anything might happen.

And the winding dark roads of A1 continued till I reached the airport, for the first time in ages I thanked God for my safety and got onto the flight to Milan-Bergamo airport. There was a pig of an Italian guy sitting next to me and I don’t talk to men, so I napped. Bergamo airport is a standard box sized cheap airport when my passport control lasted exactly 2 seconds, yeah the power of the British passport. On reaching my hotel, rather call it my jail cell in Milan City centre, I called my brother-in-law and planned to meet him at 4 in the evening at the central station and go around and paint the town red.

Pizzaaaaaa...

Well it has to be isn’t it? Went to a pizzeria close by and had the most authentic pizza with olives, capers and jalapenos, nearly died it was so spicy!!! Even for an Indian!

Power of Globalisation

Milan central train station was a massive imposing old building that is all Romanic from outside and all commercial chic inside with the largest rotating bill boards with the prettiest faces I have seen in an area of public transport. When will Secunderabad train station be like this?
Anyway, met my bro in law and both of had a good laugh about the power of globalisation. Atu Chennai itu Nottingham madhyalo meeting in Milan.

We went to see the famous Milan Cathedral Duomo; it was breath taking in magnitude yet so calm and serene. There were so many wonderful paintings I wished I could be an appreciator of art. Went to sit near a statue of Leonardo Da Vinci and get inspired for invention but it turns out his statue wasn’t photogenic so we left it to move onto the fashion streets of Milan. It was chic chic chic all the way, streets of close shops of one world famous brand next the another - Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci, Prada, Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino, Versace, Hogan and a million others. I found a tunic for the staggering amount of ten thousand euros!!! I took a picture of it.

The next day I set out on my own to explore the city and instinctively went back to the cathedral like God was calling me. Indeed he was I spent the most calm 2 hours of my life in the duomo and then moved on to get trashed! I wanted to do Milan on foot, I did Milan on beer!

History repeats itself, I was drunk again but I guess that history repeats itself pretty much every night for me. Staggered to the hotel at 12 slept for 2 hrs and yeah another bus to Bergamo airport. But this time I am going into the good hands of dear Sam, who like a true friend was there at Frankfurt Hahn airport, with his car, water and apples. It was almost instinctive he knew the state I would come in. We had a fine drive through the German autobahns with fine views of German countryside with difficult to pronounce villages like Ludwigshafen, Neiderkostenz, Hunsrückhöhenstraße over to Darmstadt.

Welcome to South India...

Once I landed in Sam's house, inspite of the plans to go to Frankfurt book fair where India was the flavour, I parked myself and did not move at all. Dosas, kandi podi, sambar, shoe shopping, burning hindi dvds, packing avakays, some pool in the evening where Sam kicked my ass. Sam told me about the importance of getting married and how I might struggle in India after getting used to European life, all valid yet strangely not indefatigable.

Then off to Dusseldorf in a super fast white Deutsche Bahn train with a mouse like engine. It was a very beautiful train indeed, like our first class compartments with doors separating coupes and the route parallel to the Rhine river all the way with beautiful villages peppered on the other side each owning their own long mast boats. More importantly, I had for company in the coupe, a German girl called Marcy with humongous breasts who liked to show them and knew I like them too. She took my email and left in Cologne. Wow if I get the job in Dusseldorf and she gets in touch... dream on!

Dusseldorf is a beautiful city with an old town with old Germanic buildings housing government offices of the federal state of Noord-Rijnland-Westfalen. One of the most striking features I found in Germany was the greenery in living; I mean greenery in lifestyle. Rural areas are green anyway (as seen from the aircraft) but even urban areas. Parks everywhere, wide roads with trees on both sides, more parks. Dusseldorf is a major city in the most industrialised area of Germany and it has parks everywhere. I wonder where are the land mafia like the ones in Mumbai or Hyderabad? I was waiting for my interview in the lobby, and the receptionist was like... why are you sitting here, why don’t you take a walk in Hofgarten (a park right next to E.ON headquarters and the river Rhine)?

Wo Weeze ist? Where is Weeze?

Anyway, interview went ok but am certain I won’t get the call for the second round so went into town and got drunk on German beers again before I tool off to another cheap airport called Dusseldorf-Weeze. This village Weeze is closer to Netherlands than it is to Dusseldorf, what a ride on the bus through the darkest winding roads leading out of Dusseldorf towards the Dutch border. It was surreal as I was expecting soldiers to stop the bus shouting ‘Achtung! Achtung!’ in harsh voices and dragging all non-white people. Oh sorry this is 2006 and that doesn’t happen anymore and there are no borders between Netherlands and Germany and hence no soldiers, thank God for that. At the Weeze airport which was more like a shed followed by a small terminal building, I went to the duty free store and found that Marlboro lights were just 38 euros which was 40% of what it costs in the UK. On a British passport I can carry 16 cartons apparently but I bought 8 only. Will sell in the UK and make a small profit. Everyone does that why cant I?

These cheap airports are cheap and cheap airlines are cheap. Their business model may sound great but ultimately it costs the same, if you count the hard costs of buses to far off airports, extra charge for baggage, food and drink and intangibles in frustrations in time spent in travel and lack of information. This flight was supposed to take off 10pm but calmly landed at 10.40 with nobody telling us what happened to the flight. As it was the last flight of the day (of the massive number of 8 that go from that airport), the airport was very silent. We heard some noises then, a couple of kids ran to the end of the waiting hall and were excitedly saying in Dutch 'Daddy, daddy the flight is coming'. It reminded of late nights in Indian Railway stations where the train turns up at it own time, nobody knows where it is, the authorities are absent and then suddenly children run 'nanna nanna train vacchestondi' and a slow powerful locomotive with a blinding light hums into the platform.

At last airborne again, homeward bound and a pretty young thing in the next seat. Sam told me that Germans are interesting in our culture etc so I struck up a conversation with her. I said something about death if I remember correctly and she was immediately like 'Are you a Hindu, is it your culture which keeps you at peace with life and death?' and I was like yes! namaste, you can only do what you can and leave the rest to karma and continued with language peppered with Hindu mystic words while desperately trying to remember the last time I went to a temple. Unfortunately Dorothy has a boyfriend but we exchanged numbers and will meet each other if I get the job or some other reason am in Dusseldorf!

Well that’s all guys, 5 days of actions, observations, chats, food, pool, flights, trains, cars, autobahns, brother in law and Sam! Now back to the shit!

See photos in photos.yahoo.com/nishbabs Album: Italy and Germany 2006