Category: Visits

Paris…

January 21, 2013 / / 2 Comments

So here I am sitting at Paris Airport for the second day waiting for my flight to Madrid…

I had to fly from Delhi to Madrid and there were no direct flights. So I booked the one via Paris. It was my first experience with a connecting flight as I always try to take direct flights and haven’t had even the experience of a domestic connecting flight (where the things obviously are less crazy than an international one). All was well till I landed in Paris to find that the connecting flight has been cancelled Sad smile . There was another colleague of mine who has to come from China and board the same flight to Madrid. She reached well before me and had already done the research and asked the Air France guys to put us on some other flight. It was snowing like heck in Paris and so many flights were cancelled. Almost everything was messed up. Long queues at all the desks, people running around to get their flights changed etc. Finally that guy put us on another flight that was 2 hours later but it was departing from the other airport (Orly). And as we were boarding a different flight so we needed to collect the luggage manually and check in again. When the time is bad everything you touch goes wrong. We followed the process to claim the luggage manually and got the luggage ticket. We went to the corresponding Air France desk (after asking 3 or 4 guys) and the reply we got was ! “We have got too much of luggage collected over here, we aren’t handing over any luggage. So you need to tell us the address where the luggage has to be sent.” Sad smile . In the mean time a lot of time was wasted and there were not much chances of catching the flight in which they put us. So both the luggage and the flight got missed !

While running around, one guy had told us that there was an evening flight to Madrid and he could put us in that. So after missing this morning flight we went back to ask him to put us in the evening flight. oh boy ! all the flights leaving in the evening were full. damn !!!

So now back to another Air France desk. That kind lady took around 30 mins or so and said that I can put you in an Iberian flight that leaves in the evening from Orly. What could be better than that. We said yes. There was a plenty of time so we thought of grabbing something to eat and then leave for Orly (by bus). At this moment I swallowed some amount of chocolate also Open-mouthed smile (People who know me can understand what that means).

So we started looking for the bus stop and found that due to snow all the buses have been cancelled ! Other options were to catch the train to half the way and then get a taxi or get a taxi from here itself. But people here said that taxi is really expensive. They charge some 90 Euros. Moreover due to weather it was really difficult to find a taxi and also it may take long time to reach.

So we chose the train option, went to the train station and with the help of someone got the tickets. Boarded the train with a map in the hand to match what all stations were on the way. One, two, three, four stations passed but we cant find the names of the map. Something is crappy again man ! Then a dude told that the stations on the map were yet to come on the way forward on this route. well finally the next station was there on the map. We DIDN’T board the wrong train ! Winking smile

We got off at the station where we were told to and started looking for taxi. It again was a struggle but anyway after some 30 mins we got a taxi and reached the Orly airport…to find that the Iberian flight in which they put us has also been cancelled ! We queued in the line at the Iberian desk for 1 hour or more to get the answer “we cant do anything”.

Some more research and we were back to Air France desk (some other desk dealing with all such crap that we faced). They told us that no more flights for Madrid were there so the only option was to fly the next day. She arranged accommodation and taxi for us and put us in one of the morning flights. I said when time is bad…there were two hotels with the same name and the taxi guy dropped us at the wrong hotel !!! Again walked in snow for 25-30 mins and finally found the actual hotel.

It was a nice hotel and stay there was good too.

In the morning we left for the airport to catch the flight to Madrid. Here we reached and that one was also CANCELLED !!!

Back to the Air France crap dealing department and after a lot of struggle they put us on another flight that leaves an hour or so later.

So here we are waiting for that flight. Lets hope for the best !

Oh yes and the baggage status says “received at the airport”. God knows it is Paris or Madrid airport ?

Lets  hope for the best Smile.

Kolkata day 4

December 6, 2010 / / 1 Comment

Oh man day 4 is here but not much stuff to talk about. So today it is gonna be short and sweet 😉

Well, in this new guest house I didn’t wake up too early. There was less light and almost no chirping of birds. Day started well with DD1 playing an interview with Gulzar saab. Also, the guys prepared a real good breakfast; aalu poori. So after filling my tummy properly I left for the office and was there in around 20 minutes. It was a wet day in Kolkata and was drizzling almost for the whole day. I continued with the regular dose of tea every 3 hours :D. In such a weather tea becomes even more important :D.

In the evening, I had planned to meet an old friend. He planned for a dinner at Arsalan, a very famous Mughlai restaurant. We had some kebabs & special biryani in the dinner. His house was pretty far from the place we had dinner at. So he needed to leave for home in time. For me also, it was the time to catch a taxi and get back to the guest house. It was great catching up with him after long time.

So that is the gist of what I did on Day 4 in Kolkata 🙂

Kolkata day 3

December 5, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Okay…here we go with day 3 😉 and I think I am doing a real good job :D.

Like yesterday, today again I was up at 6. Killed some more time in bed and finally got up at 7. It was a holiday for me so there was plenty of time for some site seeing. Started calling few contacts but nothing worked out. One dude, who I thought was here, had already gone back to Delhi. Another friend was busy in some house hold stuff (he is married actually :D). So I thought about planning something on my own. There were few good places that I could visit and I had to meet one of my ex manager and a good friend too. He is getting married on 10th of this month. I probably won’t be able to attend the marriage so it was the best time to meet him. So I asked the guest house guys to book a cab for me. The cab was there in an hour. I had my breakfast and left for the city. Visited a mall to buy a gift and then left for Victoria Memorial. If you aren’t aware what it is, Wiki comes to rescue 😉

The Victoria Memorial, officially the Victoria Memorial Hall, is a memorial building dedicated to Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India, which is located in Kolkata, India – the capital of West Bengal and a former capital of British India. It currently serves as a museum and a tourist attraction. It is an autonomous organization within the Government of India’s Ministry of Culture.

It is a really beautiful example of architectural excellence. There was lot of interesting stuff related to history; old pictures, weapons and other information displayed as text or paintings. I spent more than an hour over there enjoying the old beauty. After that I had a glimpse of Hugli bridge,  Howrah bridge, High Court, Raj Bhawan and few other places.

Finally I left to meet my friend. He was staying at his in laws house for preparation of some music item he needs to do before marriage :).  It was really nice to see him after so long; may be 2-3 years, I think. Had some Bengali sweets there and left for the guest house.

The guest house guys had already told me that they will be shifting me to a new guest house. So I packed my bags and left for the new guest house. So here I am writing this post ;). Just like any other new place, feeling bit strange here. Another issue is that no set top box with TV, they have got some local cable rather. So not many Hindi/Punjabi channels here :(. Lets see how the coming three days go. I seriously hope that I will be writing day 4 as well :D.

& oh yes it is feeling bit cold here. Don’t know why. May be it is some other part of the city :D.

Kolkata day 2

December 4, 2010 / / 2 Comments

Oh yes, there is some energy left in me to write day 2 ;). Well, the first thing; man the sun rises really early in this part of the country. Am I being an idiot or being in east really does matter? I mean at 6 in the morning, it was full light in the room, birds started chirping outside and I was wide awake. I did try to sleep a bit more but that was a miserable attempt to be in bed for another hour or so.

I had to go to workplace by 12 noon so I had plenty of free time. They prepared aalu paranthas in the breakfast but not so good, totally understandable though. Preparing good paranthas is kinda North Indians’ patent :D. Anyway a cup of tea can always fill the gaps.  So had my breakfast and tea and left for workplace by 11 or so. It was hardly 4 kms so reached there by 11:30.

Change of weather has its shot and nose has started running a bit. Also those guys have their ACs switched on in the office, so it was even more troubling for me. To reduce the bad effects, I kept on taking regular doses of tea from a khokha outside :D. After a suggestion from a colleague, I also tried a cake from the same khokha and it was really good.

For some time there was nothing much to do and I was sitting kinda idle. So I thought why not look for a Café Coffee Day around. Well, I searched in Google maps in my iPhone and it showed the nearest one, some 300 meters away. Before leaving for CCD, I had an egg roll (for just Rs 10…if you have seen the rates in some posh areas in Delhi, it would sound inexpensive for sure) from a shop nearby and it was real good one. So to look for CCD, I started following the directions given by Google maps. Luck gods were not happy, I tried for 15-20 minutes but couldn’t locate where it was. Finally had to come back and had to take tea from the same khokhe wala :P.

By 6 pm, I was free and left for the guest house by yellow taxi. And oh boy I saw something new about taxis here. When you stop at some red light or in some traffic jam, their meter starts counting the wait time and the charges are added for the time you spend waiting. This is not the case in Delhi. Also the charging meter of these yellow taxis is bit complicated one. Wikitravel says:

The fare is 2 times plus Rs 2 the reading of the meter. The Meter starts from Rs. 10, which means Rs. 22 actually.

Now I don’t know what the heck is this. Nose is running so not able to calculate what exactly they want? Why can’t they bloody set their meters to show the actual fare? 😛

The last thing “dinner” for which we all are fighting ;)…these guys were serving fish & rice that I was in no mood to have. So I went out, walked half a km and found a Punjabi dhaba where I could have daal roti. The food was good and not very expensive too. After enjoying the dinner & the evening walk 😉 here I am at my guest house.

Almost all the free time, I have been Facebook’ing. So much on Facebook that I am kinda fed up of it now. I think, need to stay away from it for some time. Or I shall not touch it after getting back to Delhi.

Tomorrow I am totally free. Let us see if I can utilize it for some site seeing or it also gets dedicated to bloody Facebook ;).

Good night guys…

Kolkata day 1

December 3, 2010 / / 10 Comments

I am almost bored to death and got nothing better to do than to write a post :D. So lets get going 😉 .Today morning, I came to Kolkata on a official trip. It was an early morning flight at 7 AM so that required me to get up at 4 AM. Really tough shit to handle, in this weather especially. Anyway, I managed to do that somehow ;). The starting was not so brilliant as someone switched off the power to the refrigerator and the milk got screwed up. So that means no tea for me :(. Well, digested that shock and left for the airport. And oh boy there was more in the stock. The taxi got punctured. Another 15 minutes down the drain. Driver changed the tyre and started moving towards the airport. The flight had to depart from the new terminal T3 and there is a different route to the new terminal. The driver took some other way and said that we can go from here too. We had moved a km at the max and found that there was a traffic jam…oh yes baby traffic jam at 6 in the morning ;). So he took back from there (wrong side…) and took another way.

Finally reached the airport in time and was able to check in, get security check done and board the flight, everything in time. No breakfast was included in the ticket price. I thought about having a tea. Well ordered that and man believe me…it was the most pathetic tea I had in months.

And early morning flights are full of laziness. People hardly talk, most of them are half asleep ;). I too, after some time put on my earphones and played tumhe dillagi bhool jani paregi. What a relief! Overall the flight was pretty good. The take off was real smooth but landing was bit crappy. The plane touched the ground like a stone and the pilot applied the brakes as if plane was going to fall off some planet’s corner :D. Well, investigating the wrong area probably, so should leave it here.

I got my luggage and started waiting for the taxi. It took around one hour or so to reach the workplace at Park Street and spent the whole day there. I had no breakfast so was eagerly waiting for the lunch time. Everyone told me that Park Street is a real good area and there should be many good eating joints. There was one called Shiraaz nearby and I enjoyed bhuna chicken & afghani naan :D. In the evening after getting free, I had a round of Park Street but it looked like bit closed. Also being alone, it was not much fun. Finally landed at the guest house and had good cup of tea which really helped in giving the body the much needed energy. Had that cup been not there, this post would never come :P.

Few things that attracted eyes; traffic situation is almost same as Delhi, lots of time gets wasted due to traffic jams. Traffic police and waiters wear white color uniform, totally unfit for the kind of job they do. Also the yellow taxis are all around, somewhat like autos in Delhi. To a bit of my surprise, pretty good number of people speak and understand reasonably good Hindi.

So that was the story of the whole day. Just had my dinner and these guys made really good daal, aalu gobhi & roti. He asked for the trademark fish n rice but I am feeling bit cold’ish so decided to settle for standard daal roti & the dinner was real good.

Enough for day 1, I think and now the time to end this post. Let us see if there comes any part 2, 3 or so :D.

And oh yes, any suggestions for good places to visit in Kolkata are welcome 😉

BTW Calcutta was such a beautiful name. Why did the change it to Kolkata. May be due to the Ooo’ization Bengalis do of everything 😛 (no offence intended).