Kem chhe!!
This goes out to all fellow world travelers and whoever wants to become one some time!
Last newsletter I promised you news from my world trip New York - Frankfurt - Dubai - Ahmedabad - Mumbai - Frankfurt - New York. Here it is...
My trip started out with excitement and nervous meltdowns (how could it be any other way?!?). For India I had to get a visa, which -silly me- applied for like two weeks before leaving the US. The lady at the embassy said "the visa will be issued in a week OR SO and after that your passport will be returned" and I replied "good woman, in two weeks OR SO I hope to be in Germany or so. WITH my passport and the visa for India...". You see the problem. My flight was scheduled for Tuesday. On Friday morning I still haven't heard from or seen my passport. So I was already making alternative arrangements like going down to Washington and kicking some embassy ass to speed up the stamping process. No joking, I was getting quite nervous! But luckily on Friday afternoon 5 pm the relieving message came "your passport is ready for pickup". Puh!!! We have a saying in Germany: "when angels travel"... :)
Oh and how could I forget the other amazing news that week. I PASSED THE CPA!!! Woohooooo!! Those news, completed CPA and passport and visa in my hands, demanded a decent Christmas party with some good celebration! The party included Glühwein, Secret Santa and amazing friends. I don't want to praise my awesome roomies and myself, but we sure know how to host a kick-ass party! ;-)
On Tuesday, the 21st my journey started. Of course I started packing my bags really early... Almost 24 hours before my flight!! Okay, I had to go to work in the morning and had to take a packed suitcase with me. So actually, I packed like 6 hours before leaving the house. However, I still had time to sleep! *hahahaha*
From the point of leaving my house, the whole trip went very smooth. No snow in New York, therefore no delays at all. A snow-break in Frankfurt, so they had time to catch up with all the delays and cancellations. By the time I reached Germany, there were perfect conditions at the airport. (when angels travel...) On the 23rd I met Ana Banana and Philip on the Stuttgart Christmas market. I promise I delivered all wishes and regards. Just their Secret Santa gifts I kept for myself. Okay okay, chill everybody. JUST KIDDING!! *hehe* Christmas with the fam was awesome. We actually had white Christmas this year!
After the holidays it was time to hit the airport again. This time eastbound to incredible India, via exciting Emirates. After getting lost in the Dubai airport and making a fool out of myself at customs (that guy just didn't understand how I could have missed the supposedly HUGE sign for transfer passengers and ended up at customs instead of my gate. My bad. LOL) I spent the night at the airport killing time.
To not kill your patience I will try to summarize my India adventure. But I still want to give you a good insight so please bear with me:
This goes out to all fellow world travelers and whoever wants to become one some time!
Last newsletter I promised you news from my world trip New York - Frankfurt - Dubai - Ahmedabad - Mumbai - Frankfurt - New York. Here it is...
My trip started out with excitement and nervous meltdowns (how could it be any other way?!?). For India I had to get a visa, which -silly me- applied for like two weeks before leaving the US. The lady at the embassy said "the visa will be issued in a week OR SO and after that your passport will be returned" and I replied "good woman, in two weeks OR SO I hope to be in Germany or so. WITH my passport and the visa for India...". You see the problem. My flight was scheduled for Tuesday. On Friday morning I still haven't heard from or seen my passport. So I was already making alternative arrangements like going down to Washington and kicking some embassy ass to speed up the stamping process. No joking, I was getting quite nervous! But luckily on Friday afternoon 5 pm the relieving message came "your passport is ready for pickup". Puh!!! We have a saying in Germany: "when angels travel"... :)
Oh and how could I forget the other amazing news that week. I PASSED THE CPA!!! Woohooooo!! Those news, completed CPA and passport and visa in my hands, demanded a decent Christmas party with some good celebration! The party included Glühwein, Secret Santa and amazing friends. I don't want to praise my awesome roomies and myself, but we sure know how to host a kick-ass party! ;-)
On Tuesday, the 21st my journey started. Of course I started packing my bags really early... Almost 24 hours before my flight!! Okay, I had to go to work in the morning and had to take a packed suitcase with me. So actually, I packed like 6 hours before leaving the house. However, I still had time to sleep! *hahahaha*
From the point of leaving my house, the whole trip went very smooth. No snow in New York, therefore no delays at all. A snow-break in Frankfurt, so they had time to catch up with all the delays and cancellations. By the time I reached Germany, there were perfect conditions at the airport. (when angels travel...) On the 23rd I met Ana Banana and Philip on the Stuttgart Christmas market. I promise I delivered all wishes and regards. Just their Secret Santa gifts I kept for myself. Okay okay, chill everybody. JUST KIDDING!! *hehe* Christmas with the fam was awesome. We actually had white Christmas this year!
After the holidays it was time to hit the airport again. This time eastbound to incredible India, via exciting Emirates. After getting lost in the Dubai airport and making a fool out of myself at customs (that guy just didn't understand how I could have missed the supposedly HUGE sign for transfer passengers and ended up at customs instead of my gate. My bad. LOL) I spent the night at the airport killing time.
To not kill your patience I will try to summarize my India adventure. But I still want to give you a good insight so please bear with me:
12/28 -12/30 India Without Shailee
According to plan, Shailee was supposed to arrive in Ahmedabad shortly before me, we wanted to meet and go to her house together. Then the blizzard paid the US east coast a visit and her flight was cancelled. So I ended up in India ... alone. Don't worry guys! I was picked up from the airport and was staying with Shailee's wonderful family, so I was doing ok; more than that actually. I went shopping with auntie, riding the scooter with Foram (Shailee's sister) and enjoyed chai chai chai plus awesome home-cooked food. I don't think anybody can claim to have been in India, without falling sick at least once. So it was my turn after eating Pani Puri from a supposedly very hygienic place. Uhm yeah ... so much to "hygienic" ... LOL Unfortunately, I don't think I can ever eat Pani Puri ever again. After two days of piece and quiet, Shailee finally managed to get a flight out of the snow chaos and join me in India. So the madness began! :)
12/31 - 1/3 Jalpa's Wedding
Basically, an Indian wedding is a three-day event that includes a lot of functions and ceremonies and even more relatives and friends. :) And for the girls among you: an Indian wedding is a fashion show! Two different outfits per day, hair gets done beautifully, makeup changes according to the outfit (obviously), and my favorite part: mehndi! That is the application of some awesome designs on the hands and arms with henna. It stays like for about 10 days. It's an art! At this point I want to say: congratulations to Jalpa and her husband Mayur. You guys make a beautiful couple!!
1/5 - 1/6 Balasinor
Shailee and I visited the formerly princely state "Balasinor". I got to meet a princess!! :) We stayed at their palace, had amazing home-cooked food and visited to close-by dinosaur site, which is the third largest excavation site in the world! I touched dinosaur bones and skin!!! It was just amazing.
1/7 - 1/9 Udaipur
Hardly returned from Balasinor, we packed our bags again to go to Udaipur, Rajasthan, known as the city of lakes or "the Venice of the East". For the first time in India, I saw fellow tourists, some of them even European!! :) Udaipur is beautiful, but please see for yourself at my pictures! We visited the city palace, had a boat tour around the Lake Palace and attended a light-and-sound show about the history of the city (unfortunately in Hindi, but thanks to my vivid imagination (and some of Shel's translation) I got a good picture of the past).
1/11 - 1/14 Mumbai
After Udaipur we had a day in Anand for some shopping and then ... again ... packing the bags for the last trip - Bombay! We we reached Bombay and got out of the train station I got the first culture shock since I arrived in India. I could hardly speak (and that doesn't happen very often! LOL). It was loud, and crowded, and smelly, and hectic, and huge, and all that at 10 in the night! *OMG* In Mumbai I felt not like a tourist at all. We stayed with family, did some shopping and very little sightseeing. I got to know the "real India", not the "tourist India"! :) Therefore, please excuse the limited amount of pictures!
1/15 Return to the U.S.
In the night from the 14th to the 15th of Jan I flew back to the States. I had to say goodbye to India and many new people and friends I met there. :( BUT, as Arnie Schwarzenegger already said in all his Terminator-wisdom: "I'll be back!" After a layover in Frankfurt, with a short but very awesome visit of my parents and Lena (oh and not to forget an extensive exchange of goods), I reached the U.S., survived a two-and-a-half-hour line at immigrations, got home and dropped dead in my bed after being up and running for 45 hours! Puh, sitting on a plane and watching movies, eating and drinking all the time is indeed exhausting!! *hehehe*
Summary
And here a ten-sentence summary about India, that I've been promising to many people. The shorter the allotted space, the more precise the description will be. And the clearer will be the impressions and priorities! So here we go:
Everything in India can be described as ODDS, standing for old, dirty, disorganized and slow (thanks to PT for such a fitting mnemonic)! However, the people are more friendly, warm, and welcoming than what I have ever experienced anywhere in the world. Family has a completely different meaning in India; parents of friends are addressed as "auntie" or "uncle", even taxi drivers and waiters are "brothers". The motto "mi casa es tu casa" should not be in Spanish but in Hindi, since there is never an invitation necessary to drop by a friend's house at any time of the day! Parents expect their childrens' friends to come over even if their kids aren't at home, everybody is always welcome to stay for lunch or dinner, or even better: stay for lunch, dinner AND a sleepover. The gap between rich and poor can nowhere be seen more clearly, than in India - people are sleeping on the streets, street work is done in manual labor, and child labor is no exception. However, even the poorest people wear the most colorful clothes and seem to be more content with life than some middle-class people in the U.S. or Europe. The traffic in India is crazy: honking, screaming, honking, passing, honking. And I just loooooooved riding in the back of a bike or scooter and rushing through the traffic! :)
And now, I can't decide whether my last sentences goes to bollywood or the coexistence of animals and humans... *DARN*! ;-) Everybody who saw me in India knows, that I just loved all the animals - dogs (or how I liked to call them "flea taxis"), camels, cats, monkeys, even elephants, and of course LOOOOOTS of cows are part of the daily life in India.
India is an incredible country. I think everybody should have at least one trip on their what-to-do-and-see-during-life list!!!
Everything in India can be described as ODDS, standing for old, dirty, disorganized and slow (thanks to PT for such a fitting mnemonic)! However, the people are more friendly, warm, and welcoming than what I have ever experienced anywhere in the world. Family has a completely different meaning in India; parents of friends are addressed as "auntie" or "uncle", even taxi drivers and waiters are "brothers". The motto "mi casa es tu casa" should not be in Spanish but in Hindi, since there is never an invitation necessary to drop by a friend's house at any time of the day! Parents expect their childrens' friends to come over even if their kids aren't at home, everybody is always welcome to stay for lunch or dinner, or even better: stay for lunch, dinner AND a sleepover. The gap between rich and poor can nowhere be seen more clearly, than in India - people are sleeping on the streets, street work is done in manual labor, and child labor is no exception. However, even the poorest people wear the most colorful clothes and seem to be more content with life than some middle-class people in the U.S. or Europe. The traffic in India is crazy: honking, screaming, honking, passing, honking. And I just loooooooved riding in the back of a bike or scooter and rushing through the traffic! :)
And now, I can't decide whether my last sentences goes to bollywood or the coexistence of animals and humans... *DARN*! ;-) Everybody who saw me in India knows, that I just loved all the animals - dogs (or how I liked to call them "flea taxis"), camels, cats, monkeys, even elephants, and of course LOOOOOTS of cows are part of the daily life in India.
India is an incredible country. I think everybody should have at least one trip on their what-to-do-and-see-during-life list!!!
I hope I've not put you all to sleep! I'm looking forward to your replies. :-) Please stay tuned for my next newsletter.
Much love!! Veronika
P.S. Please excuse the lack of postcards. India seems to not have yet incorporated the purpose of them!
Much love!! Veronika
P.S. Please excuse the lack of postcards. India seems to not have yet incorporated the purpose of them!
No comments:
Post a Comment