Expeditions..... and an experience I did not miss

While playing AOE, the most exciting thing for me is not to build or destroy civilizations, but just to explore. I like to know what lies in the black parts of the map. Same in real life. I generally feel uneasy, unless I go around on my own to see every path around the place where I am living. So, often I take a walk in the extended afternoons around 7pm. Google Earth showed a huge green patch in front of the MPIK. The meadow amidst the forests is really quite a sight. However, the grass is knee high, larger than I wished it were. And I walked through the forests and hills around, along stale trails, but new for me.

I walked to Boxberg once. From there you get a good view of the city from the side of the hill. Further south is Emmertsgrund. I found a departmental store there, bought some stuff, and realized the pains of carrying 5 kg uphill, -an uninterrupted walk that lasted an hour. Although I later came to know that there are such stores in Boxberg too.

Konigstuhl is at the top of the hill, 500 ft higher than the MPIK and 7 kms away. Yesterday I decided to go there walking, taking some food supplies with me. The whole of this area is covered with forests and pretty dense in some places. It is part of the Neckartal-Odenwald Nature Park. I took a trail that goes past the institute. Every 500 meters or so, the trail forked leaving me in a dilemma. For some time I tried using my intuition for directions, then I started to do the wiser thing, that of taking the route which goes up. But I did not meet a 2nd person on the whole stretch. At some places I cut through sticky cobwebs, shuddering at the thought of tarantulas. And the trees in one spot, reminded me vividly of The Blair Witch Project. I was not sure where the path would lead me, but suddenly I heard a car, and soon I found the trail leading me to the main road at Drei Eichen. From there I took a cyclists' trail, and walked along it for about half an hour, again through the forests, until I reached a glade. It was a 8-side crossing. There were directions carved on stones placed at the corners. The name of that place itself was also carved on one of them, -Leopoldstein. The forest ended with the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, and soon I reached the summit.

And oh, what a sight! The city of Heidelberg, and beyond, much much beyond, the Neckar meandering through.

In the next few hours that I spent there, I saw the play of the sun and the clouds. The rays penetrating through the holes in the clouds falling like numerous spotlights on the panoramic landscape. A few birds got into the act too, showing their skills of floating at any point in the air. They would fly to a spot and then balance themselves there for minutes at length.

I called Abhirup to come up as well. He did, but left before sunset. The crowd thinned till only photographers and new lovers were left. The sunset in itself wasn't as impressive as the rest of the show.

It was 10.15 pm, when I decided that it is high time I return. There was still some light in the sky. I guess they call this twilight. I didn't have the guts to take the route through the forest. So I walked along the main road. In 10 minutes, I realized that it was just me and the road and the forest. A car would whoosh past after long pauses of about 5 minutes, blinding me for a moment, if they were coming up the hill. Occasionally, some noises like the rustle of leaves,emanated from the forests on either side of the road. I stopped sometimes to listen carefully. Must be some small animal I thought and moved on. From time to time, the sky also threatened to open up, with its deep rumbles. Other than that, the background sound was so low that my movements made the most prominent noise for much of the time. The darkness increased considerably, and there was a slight sense of worry somewhere in me. And maybe a tinge of fear too.

I was nearing an U-turn in the road, when I heard something. About 15-20 metres ahead, from the jungle fringes on the other side of the road, came a short deep throated growl, or a grunt, that just froze me. I was frightened like hell. From the depth of the voice, I was certain that the animal, whatever it was, must be of moderately big size. After a few seconds, I heard a second similar hoarse growl from the same place. i just turned and ran back uphill, without a thought. Car lights brightened my hopes, as I waved frantically. It slowed down, but then as it neared me, it suddenly accelerated and was gone in a moment. I was all by myself again. I thought that the animal could catch me anytime if it had such an intention, whether I went forward or backward. So going further away from my destination, might not quite help. I decided I had to cross the spot, and that I would do so when a car is passing through. But even then I kept running uphill halfheartedly. With the bagful of supplies it wasn't too easy either.

After a minute or so, I saw lights. Lights coming downhill. I stopped. I reversed my direction, and again faced my destination. And then I ran. Some run it was. Like running for my life. I didn't dare to look at the side from where the sound came. God knows what the car driver might have been thinking seeing someone run along the highway at 11.15 pm in the night. As if I cared then!!! I continued the run and stopped only when I entered the institute premises. Yet another lifetime experience !

Coo-curry

Besides this being a travelling internship for me, it has been a cooking internship under the able mentorship of Abhirup Nath and Yogesh Patil. Never had I expected to get home-like food here had it not been for them. By now I can pretty much fry stuff, and am graduating to make some curries with gravy. But when they are around, I restrict myself to peeling and cutting stuff, or washing dishes.

The menza (mess/canteen) food is very expensive - 6 euros a meal on an average, all the more reason to learn some cooking.

Yogesh and his productions

Yogesh and Abhirup had brought their artillery of spices, turmeric, and masala from India. So, a feast is what I have when they are around in the kitchen, . Realizing that the taste of pretty much everything we have comes from spices and salt, I have been quite liberal on using them. Without these, the potatoes, vegetables taste pretty bland. Anyway, the turmeric turned out to be the source of some major trouble too. I didn't know that it is too strong a chemical for German detergent chemicals to overcome, and so was a bit careless with it initially.

And then the next day I ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. The cleaning lady is rightfully the right-hand (woe)man of Ms Hafner. Firstly she doesn't know English. Only thing she can say in English is that she knows it little. So our communication was limited to hand movements and acting in some cases. (Now I understand the importance of dumb-charades). Next, she liked putting all the blame on me, irrespective of whether I am responsible for it or not, -if there are unwashed dishes, according to her it had to be me who was behind it. And then she uttered one phrase that is still ringing in my ears - pointing to a tiny yellow spot, she said "Aal-iss-curry". I thought of the complications involved in explaining the differences between curry and turmeric, and then decided it easier to nod my head in approval. A terrible mistake in itself. Overjoyed at gaining some ground against me and also at her success to say something in English that I could comprehend, she celebrated it by showing yet another mark, and again claiming "Aal-iss-curry". And this went on for the next 5-10 minutes. All the while she pointed to inexistent spots or spots which under 100X magnification becomes resolvable by the normal human eye. Or marks that have faded beyond recognition. She even showed stains on the scrubber itself. Meanwhile I got bored, and started counting the number of times she's using the phrase. And then when I lost count, I just muttered to myself "All-is-well" everytime she said "Aal-iss-curry."..... Really, if she is so concerned about guests, she should remember that I am a guest too.

Random drifts

So far I have said close to nothing about my work here. The reason being that the task I was assigned was related to programming, an instrument interfacing, the coding of which involves no physics, and I was not very satisfied with it. At the same time, having come for just 2 months with very limited exposure, experience and knowledge, I couldn't expect to be given some hi-fi pure-Physics project either. This leaves me disillusioned as I burden myself with the feeling that I am good for nothing.

Of late though, it has been nice to be around with Siva. Most of the people here work hard, but Siva probably works the hardest, he is always the last one to leave the lab, and by some margin. I have been learning a lot about the laser experiments he is performing. I continuously bug him with questions, (mostly I prefer thinking aloud) and he always answers my doubts patiently. More importantly, I am also getting an idea about the lifestyle of researchers in general.

I sometimes go and attend the talks. They are nice too. But overall, academically speaking, there is something amiss.

Inside the Bothe Lab - Not as frightening as it looks

A missed experience

An extract from a GTalk chat at 1.10 am on 10^th June:

me: kothay? (where?)

Abhirup: deepesh er ekhane
dint go
But had a one hell of an experience

me: wat abt deepesh?
how so?

Abhirup: no one went
we went and sat near the neckar park
along the river bank
and then it turned cloudy
and sky went black
then all of a sudden

me: hmm, bhishon brishti holo (it rained a lot)

Abhirup: a white big cloudy thing
came running
all over the sky
came frm no whr

me: what the???

Abhirup: and filled the sky in seconds

me: had ur cam wit u?

Abhirup: no
:P
but we were scared to shit

me: shit! what was it?

Abhirup: deepesh screamed
sayng its a volcano

me: what did u think, aliens? :P
ohh :D

Abhirup: it filled the whole sky coming frm behind thw mountain
it was HUGE
filled the whole sky in seconds

me: gosh missed it

Abhirup: we were shit scared
and ran
but it was so damm windy
and cd see lightinings in the far sky
seemed like hurricanes
:P
it was awesome
better thn ne strip club
:)

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I wish I had some attraction towards strip clubs, so that I didn’t miss this…

A journey like never before - Part 2

At 3 pm, we left Luzern by the Golden Pass line, a scenic route lasting 5 hours, a journey through unforgettable landscapes. There are lots of lakes in here, and they are pretty big. The water is bluish green, and has a ground glass look. The line took us through Interlaken, Zweisimmen, Montreux, and then finally Lausanne.

Our diet mainly consisted of chocolate cakes, loads of bread and apples, that we brought from our originating cities knowing that Switzerland is costly. Being starved of sleep and also a proper diet, we were all pretty tired, when we moved to Geneva airport for the night stay without going around Lausanne for a while as planned previously. The day saw people become nostalgic over mess food.

We also had to drop Zermatt from our plan, as our Eurail passes weren't valid on that line. But it was good in a way because we had more time for Luzern. At Luzern the group broke, as Diptarka and Ketan had to return early.

The Lion Monument built in memory of the Swiss mercenaries who were killed in the French revolution

A cave bear skeleton at the Gletscher garten.

Here we went through the geologic history of Switzerland, all about ice ages, the clues it left behind in the rocks, and remnants of mammoths and other flora and fauna dating back to 4 million years in the past.

But where Piyush and I had max fun was the house of mirrors, where we were literally lost in the 'bhulbhulaiya' made by using mirrors. We had to grope our way to understand which was a mirror and which wasn't, and many times we crashed right against the mirrors.

We took a ferry to Burgenstock-Kehristan. They called these boats.

The picture above is of Mount Burgenstock from where we had yet another breathtaking view of the Luzern lake. To get up to the hill, we rode a funicular (pic below), which took us up at something like 60-70 degrees, but the passengers in it felt it as 15 degrees odd, because of the shape of the vehicle.

1/3 of the panoramic view from atop Mt. Burgenstock, where we went for a 1.30 hour walk with this view on one side and the tree covered hill on the other

One good thing about Switzerland is that all its ultra-beautiful spots are very easily reachable. To scale huge mountains they use an array of ropeways, or vehicles like the funicular. In India, what would have taken a 2 day road journey, winding up the hills, here it is done in 15 minutes odd.

And another thing is the weather. I got the impression that mostly it remains sunny in here. In our short stay, rarely did the clouds come to block the views.

A journey like never before - Part 1

Rolling hills, flush green meadows, snow capped peaks, turquoise lakes followed us everywhere. Switzerland just did not allow me to keep my hands from the camera.

Our first destination was Bern. A tiny city built around a ‘U’ of the Aare river, is strangely also the capital of the country. The bear seemed to be important here. It features in their flag and coat of arms and in the name of the city itself.

We sampled some chocolates at a local shop, but the price restricted us to a morsel each. It was awesome though.

Bengalis might find it interesting to know that a type of fish found in these waters is called the Aasche fish.

We went to Zurich for night stay at Eshan’s. Zurich is a normal bland city without any tourist attractions.

All morning as we went from Zurich to Engelberg through Lucern, the weather was inclined towards gloomy. It remained so, as we took the long climb up Titlis, not by foot of course, but a series of cable cars. While on the ropeway, we were surprised by a soft music playing. It took us some time to realize that it came from the random tingling of the bells around necks of cows in the meadow below.

We were excited at the prospect of getting to be in snow soon, but what took our breaths away was when the cable car exited out of a dense cloud, and we could see the bright sun, the glowing snow all around, the sea of clouds below and the snow capped mountain peaks, peeking out into the sun as if floating in the clouds. It was a sight of a lifetime.

A rotor (rotating ropeway) took us to the summit. The view was majestic and in spite of the snow it was warm- 2 degrees Celcius.

At Titlis, 60% of the tourists were Indians, the remaining ones being mongoloids. And of the Indian tourists some 60% were Bengalis.

We took a one hour-stop at Lucerne, before taking the Golden Pass route.

The Chapel Bridge (Kapellbrucke) is the oldest wooden bridge of Europe dating back from the 14th century

Vagabonds

In our tours, we are taking full advantage of our youth, as we are stationing ourselves anywhere, -airports, floors of friends’ rooms. At night, we go around looking just for a roof to rest under and some safety. If we get more, then we feel like kings. Such a king’s life I was leading for the night at Sasikanth’s. I had to come down to Heidelberg city in the evening because the next morning there weren’t any bus down the hill till 8.44. And I had a train to catch.

We talked in normal Indian volume, but later came to know it was too loud for the neighbor. The wooden walls and floors didn’t help. The Mr. Heckles of the apartment apparently complained to the landlady resulting in Sasikanth getting the following notice the next day (click to enlarge):

Sasikanth did something after that, which deserves loads of credit, which effected in a second letter from the landlady of the following form:

The state of honesty

As Abhirup put it aptly, “For them, honesty is not a virtue, it’s a habit.”

I have never seen a ticket checker on the buses here. When we are in our country, we (at least I) never think of ways to avoid purchasing tickets. Here it automatically springs in the mind, - to think of taking advantage of the numerous oppurtunities to give them a miss. And not just me. I saw most Indians thinking in these lines. The prices are too high is a good rationalization. We think 12 minutes bus journey – 2.2 euros. We convert 2.2 euros = 130 rupees. Too much. Even now, people can travel from Calcutta to Delhi by that amount.

Same story with Eurail pass. People try to find ways to prevent their dates being stamped so that the day can be re-used. And I have seen some of them to be proud of this achievement.

At the MacD near Bismarckplatz, if you ask for cold drinks, they give you a glass for an euro, and then it is self-serve. They did not expect that a group of 6 Indians guys will come one day, and one of them will come to fill the same glass some ‘n’ number of times, and everyone in the group will drink from it !!!!