Learning to swim
I had enrolled for swimming classes way back in August last year. I was no. 5 on the waiting list, and had hoped that I’d get to attend my first class before the winter got a chance set in. That didn’t happen, and I had to brave a light drizzle on a cold, windy, winter night to get to my first lesson. I passed several pubs and restaurants along the way, and the snatches of warmth and laughter I caught as inadvertently someone chose to step out to smoke didn’t make it any easier. By the time you are thirty, you (hopefully) acquire enough experience to be able to draw on the past to create a rough mental map of how you are going to navigate a new, unknown situation. This also makes life a little boring sometimes. Fortunately, once in a while, a genuinely new event comes along, which, nothing you’ve done in your life till that point, will prepare you for. Swimming for me is that thing. The closest experience I could have drawn on was being inside a bath tub. Since that was clearly going to be insufficient (much like the quantity of water in the bath tub), the evening before my first lesson, I turned to the Internet for tutorials on swimming. Bad idea.
I was excited and anxious in equal measures and the wife, on my request, agreed to accompany me to the lesson. I felt a little guilty. She finds every encounter with dentist frightening and I had been unable to accompany her to her appointment for a wisdom tooth extraction just that week. I assured her that she could leave the moment I stepped into the pool, but somewhere deep down I wished that she would hang around till I came out. I am sure she’ll engage in some word play on my surname after reading this and call me guilty Gulati.
The swimming pools are in a modern facility with an attached cafeteria, different pools for instructions and regulars and a lot of supporting infrastructure. The air inside was warm, thick with humidity and vaguely smelled of chlorine. Our glasses completely fogged up the moment we stepped in making me feel a little helpless. I paid up for the first batch of the lessons at the reception and in return got what looked like a plastic watch without a dial. It was my key to the entry into the pool area and I put it on my wrist. On the way to the pools was a maze of cubicles that I could use for changing into my swimming shorts. The cubicles had doors on two sides with no latches. I stepped into one, thought that the latch was broken and left it for another one. Same problem. I looked around helplessly for some visual cues that’d tell me how close the doors and realised that a wall perpendicular to the doors had a small folding bench attached to it unfolding which locked the doors on either side in place. I was congratulating myself for having thought ahead and carrying two plastic bags for the wet swimming trunks but immediately realised that I had carried nothing for the clothes I was wearing. I carried them in a pile and looked for the lockers. The electronic lockers at the other end of the room, had a display which I could hold my new watch against to see the number of the locker that I had been assigned. The watch was also the key to unlock the designated locker. The problem was, I didn’t know what I would hold it against to unlock it. I kept touching it to a black knob on the locker’s door but nothing happened. Turned out, that the black knob, was exactly that - a simple knob to pull the locker’s door. The key reader that unlocked the door was actually a tiny circle with a blinking light right below the knob. I somehow stuffed my clothes and shoes into the locker and followed the sign to the instruction swimming pools. Before the pools was a corridor with showers and one had to bath before stepping into the pool. I could see the shower heads jutting out from the walls, but found no way to operate them. There was a black patch a few feet below each shower head that I again kept pressing my watch against, but no water came. The showers were motion activated, and all I had to do was wave my hand against the black patch (thank you dear stranger).
I met the instructor by the swimming pool and after checking my name against his list of expected attendees he asked me to get into the pool where some students were already pacing about. I was to start in the shallow end of the pool (115 cm, read a red digital display on the wall along the length of the pool) along with other beginners. The class had students at different levels and some of them had moved to the deeper end already. Three lanes had been marked along the breadth of the pool to keep students at each level segregated. I found stepping into the warm water very calming and went through the drill of inhaling above water and exhaling under it quickly. I could stand in the water comfortably with the water reaching up to my chest and the next drill involved trying to step go horizontal while holding on to the edge of the pool. It felt a little strange and took some getting used to. The legs preferred the well-honed skill of standing to this new floating thing the brain was instructing them to do. They complied while the arms had the support of the pool’s edge but once I let go of the support of the pool’s edge, they kept pulling me to the pool’s floor. (HORIZONTAL barked the brain, VERTICAL said the legs stubbornly). I brought my head down into the water too suddenly a couple of times and the force of the water hitting my face dislodged my spectacles. A momentary panic set in as I slipped, sprained my back a little and went under. Just then it occurred to me that I had also forgotten to inhale. I had read about it being quite possible to drown in water that you can stand well above. I had been quite dismissive of it, but while I recovered from my fumble quickly, I also realised how easy it was to lose control. My heart was racing and I walked to the edge of the pool to collect myself. I tried removing the spectacles and leaving them by the poolside but it made things worst (the instructions were in a mix of Dutch and English and I had to rely on seeing the instructor for learning how to use my body inside water). My glasses have rarely ever prevented me from doing what I’ve wanted but for the first time in my life they felt like a handicap.
Some of the first time swimmers who had come in the class with me had already advanced to floating on their back and kicking with their legs to propel themselves some distance in the pool. The instructor would splash water into their eyes to correct their technique. And there I was in a corner, still trying to use my limbs properly in water. As the class finished, some students tried to swim to the edge of the pools, while others walked. When I stepped out of the pool, I couldn’t believe how heavy my arms and legs felt. I couldn’t move for a few seconds and almost thought I would fall into the pool again.
Usually when I’ve found myself in a situation where I am in a group that’s raced ahead in learning something new, I just put in extra time to catch up. Since swimming is not something I can practice under the shower (until three days ago I would’ve thought I could), I would just have to hope that the next class will be better. At least I was not traumatised by the whole experience and am quite looking forward to mastering my body under water (it’s a wonderful sensation to be so aware of every part of your body and at the same time being aware of it as a whole). Come to think of it, there is something I can draw from the experience of having only recently learned to cycle!
p.s. While the colleagues find it a little baffling that I don’t know swimming (and that I knew no cycling either till a year ago), they are very supportive. There is good natured teasing about me moving to the next leg of the triathlon. To this I say that I see these endeavours as acquiring just enough knowledge to be able to harm myself sufficiently. Cycling from a spring board into a swimming pool is my current fantasy.
p.p.s. While writing down my confusing experiences just before entering the swimming pool, I was reminded of the episodes in Asimov’s Caves of Steel where Elijah Baley visits a more advanced human civilisation on another planet and fumbles to use the restroom properly.
Venetian Gondolas
I couldn’t possibly have posted about Venice and not mentioned the gondolas. I cannot think of Venetian gondolas without thinking of this Barcarolle by Mendelssohn:
The work for me always evokes an image of a lonely gondolier rowing his gondola on a still, clear moonlit night (the linear notes accompanying the CD might have had a role in planting that in my head).
Bollywood’s representation is often a lot more literal:
We didn’t see (hear?) any Gondoliers sing. The Gondoliers row and the singing and music is often left to a dedicated singer, guitarist pair per two or three gondolas that tourist companies rent to groups. The music they make is beautiful and comes together nicely with the setting:
Music or not, the gondolas, gondoliers and their customers make for a wonderful subject:
Snow in Amsterdam
We were well into February when it snowed in Amsterdam last winter. We missed all the fun and chaos by being in India at that time but the cold persisted till our return and the canals froze (a once-in-a-many-years kind of event I am told). Still, save for a token snowfall on our return, we didn’t see it snow much.
The snow came in December this time, after what seemed like a never-ending Autumn. I had my fill of seeing it snow and walking in the snow. We even happened to be in Zaanse Schans where the snow’s magic is at its headiest.
A spell of mild weather followed and on some days it felt a touch warm for this time of the year in Amsterdam. When the temperature hovers between 6-8ºC, you don’t quite expect it to snow. This weekend the mercury suddenly dipped again. While walking home at night on Saturday, we noticed that all the cars parked near our house had a thin layer of frost on their roofs. On Monday morning, the roads bore a fine, white coating of frost too.
Monday started with a glorious sunrise and it didn’t look like it would translate into a snowy evening. At around 3:00 PM I got an alert from the National Spoorwagen’s (NS - the national rail here) iPhone app about expected disruptions to the service on the 15th due to snowfall. And by the time I left office, fine, powdery snow was already falling. When I reached home, it had already coated the entire courtyard of our apartment complex.
Most people at work, especially those who have to to take trains from nearby towns, dread the snow for the havoc it wreaks with the train schedules here. Being from India, my expectations from the railways from any other country tend to be low, but this phenomena baffles even me. At the merest mention of snow by the met department, the train timetable here goes for a toss. Such is their commitment to snow, that one almost wonders if there is a secret society for preservation of innocent snowflakes that the National Spoorwagen chairs. I often have a vision of these disruptions coming up in a meeting of the committee for railroad improvement on a warm, June day, when the office is stiflingly hot, and snowfall and the incumbent problems seems like a distant memory of a landscape too disconnected from the sunny present. At this point the meeting is summarily adjourned and the middle-aged bureaucrats, smartly dressed in black suits too warm for the weather that day, step out for a beer. To be fair to NS, snow is a problem for handful of days in a year and the investments in infrastructure required to fix this problem probably don’t add up.
I am a brisk 35 minute walk from work and while I do use the public transport in the morning I am not overly dependent on it. The worst the snow does to me is stretch that 35 minute walk by a few more minutes. I spent Monday night in the anticipation of snow and kept having dreams that vaguely ended in my disappointment at the absence of it. The reality next day didn’t disappoint at all:
Even garbage waiting to be picked up looks clean and pure when snowed in:
Amsterdam is stunningly beautiful when it’s covered in fresh snow. I couldn’t resist a short stroll at lunch:
Our office’s 5th floor cafeteria offers a delightful view of Amsterdam. Rembrandt’s statue at Rembrandtplien, seemed to bear the snow in good humour.
The weather has turned colder over the last two days and the temperatures have been hovering around a good 3-7ºC below zero. The snow has been trodden upon many times and where it is not dirty, messy slush, it is sullied, slippery ice. Speculations are flying thick and fast about a possible repeat of February last year.
It’ll only be fair to end this post by quoting the lyrics of the Dean Martin song whose endless repetition everywhere we went in December drove us a little mad:
Let it snow, let it snow.
P.S. Bicycles covered in snow are my favourite subject these days (something tells me you might’ve noticed already)
P.P.S. It snowed practically all of Tuesday. Big flakes fell from the sky. I had visions of giants in heaven duking it out with the finest quality goose-down feather pillows.
Vignettes from Berlin
We were in Berlin for a short break around Christmas. Some vignettes from the trip:
A bizarre train ride
Our coach in the train to Berlin did not have any electricity. This can be a little problematic for a train running in North-western Europe in December because of the short days and freezing cold evenings. As a compensation for the inconvenience, everyone in our coach got a free tea/coffee. When the crossed the Dutch border and approached Bad Bentheim, our first stop in Germany, we heard this ominous announcement on the public address system:
“For those of you in coach 7, we are going to stop the free drinks after Bad Bentheim. The Dutch crew will get off and the Germans will get on the train.”
The German crew tried their best to persuade everyone in our coach to look for seats elsewhere in the train. English is such a nuanced language (I guess all of them are) that minor changes to your choice of words and your phrasing can completely change the texture of your message. The crew’s sincere and earnest announcement took a touch of absurd and melodramatic.
“This train has no electricity and no light. It will be dark from Hannover. So for your safety please look for another seat in coaches 4, 9, 10.”
“It’s for your safety. Everybody is falling here. No one can see anything.”
“It’s better to stay in light than in dark.”
The last bit cracked us up a little as it almost sounded like something you’d hear at the local parish church on a Sunday morning. We persisted with our randomly assigned (but reserved) seats till Hannover.
The landscape outside with snow covered fields, distant houses, leafless trees and the occasional mist, kept altering between fairytale and post-apocalyptic. We passed a wind farm which was shrouded in fog and all you could see was lazily turning blades of the wind turbines. It felt as if the decapitated heads of the wind turbines were floating in the air.
At Hannover we found new seats in a coach with light and heating. It was pitch dark outside so we lost ourselves in our books till the train stopped at Berlin Huaptbahnhof.
The cold and the Christmas markets
We had come prepared for the cold in Berlin but -4ºC still shocks you a little when you step out of a warm train coach. As expected, Berlin was covered in snow and we carefully negotiated the wet, slippery footpaths to reach our hotel.
We had seen a Christmas market on the way to the hotel and in the light of the adverse weather, decided to limit our itinerary that evening to a visit there. The Santa chocolate we found on the cushions in our hotel room provided the requisite encouragement to step out into the cold again.
The Christmas markets of Berlin operate at a scale I hadn’t seen before. There are countless stalls selling Glühwein (warm, spiced, red wine), freshly baked breads of all sorts, candy, Christmas decorations, wooden toys and other miscellaneous things that defy classification. And they somehow manage to squeeze in a few joy rides in what seems like very constrained space.
The weather didn’t improve over the evening. By the time we returned to our hotel, the local municipality had cleared the snow away from the footpaths. Tiny, special-purpose dirt wagons were spreading a thin layer of grit over the footpath to cope with the impending snowfall.
The Berlin walking tour
The free walking tour of Berlin begins near the Brandenburg Gate. Having seen fewer days of snow than we can count on our fingers, we remain largely ignorant about coping with snow and the accompanying cold. I had left my muffler at the hotel as in the warmth of the hotel lobby, with layers of turtle-neck sweater and a jacket that zips up all the way to the top of my neck, it had seemed like a redundant, showy accessory. While standing in the snow, waiting for the walking tour to start, it quickly became evident that it was a dreadful mistake. When it’s so cold that your face hurts because it’s uncovered and each breath is a painful stab in the lungs, a muffler feels like a life saver. A fleece one was quickly procured from a souvenir shop just before the walking tour started.
The tour is a great way to see important landmarks in Berlin and despite the cold we quite enjoyed it. The Holocaust Memorial - an open field full of concrete slabs of varying heights - gives the impression of being inside a graveyard full of anonymous graves. It was snowing lightly by now which served to make our surroundings even more somber.
A well timed coffee break allowed us to warm ourselves, take a count of our digits and made us give up the idea of abandoning the tour half-way. By the time we stepped out, the weather had worsened. It was hard to tell if the form of precipitation that fell from sky was rain, hail or snow, but it made us wet enough to necessitate opening the umbrellas. When we reached the shaded area outside the museum at Lustgarten, we tried closing our umbrellas and realised that whatever little rain that had fallen on them was now frozen into a web of icicles. My jacket had caught some rain when I had stopped to click a bicycle on the way, and it had a thin layer of frost on it too.
A chilly wind had picked up and was making every moment spent outdoors painful. Fortunately we were visiting around Christmas and a large, warmed tent at a nearby Christmas market selling Glühwein came to our rescue.
A memorable dinner on Christmas Eve
It’s surprising how abruptly all the festivities in Berlin come to a close on Christmas Eve. The weather had finally warmed to a pleasant 8ºC (a new low for our definition of the word pleasant) but all the shoppers had magically disappeared from the streets.
The shops and restaurants had begun shutting down and we eventually landed up at Berlin Hbf in search of a bite. The station was quite empty too but the McDonalds there was open. A hot cup of darjeeling tea is not something you would order at a McDonalds under normal circumstances but this isn’t the first time we have surprised ourselves. It was strangely colder inside the station than outside. I wondered if the trains were giant plungers pumping the station’s cold into the city.
We decided to call it a day, came back to our hotel and given how tired we were from walking all day in the cold, had no problem sleeping. We woke up around 8:30 PM and realised that we were both hungry. From what we had seen of the city a few hours ago, the chance of finding an open restaurant in the vicinity of our hotel was pretty slim. Still, we searched for Thai restaurants on google maps and started calling them one after another. One restaurant within walking distance from our hotel was open so we reluctantly put on our jackets and made a dash for it. Outside the restaurant a man was smoking a cigarette and seeing us approach, told us to try the restaurant as “the food here was really good”. I took the person to be a waiter/agent at the restaurant (his black tie gave the impression) and made up my mind to give this restaurant a miss. Whenever we’ve caved in to haranguing by restaurant staff in touristy places, we’ve regretted either the food or the service or the price. But before we had gone too far, he asked the wife if we could take a picture of him and his girlfriend (whom I hadn’t noticed). We then realised that the person was just a regular customer eating at the restaurant and at that point our aversion to the restaurant evaporated. The restaurant was a small, 4-table, one-person enterprise that served delicious, hot Thai food. With 15 € for a dinner for two, it was surprisingly light on the wallet too.
(It’s funny how you remember the little details - the restaurant had a TV in the corner (on mute) tuned to a local German channel that showed some costume drama which the wife tracked down to Buddenbrooks by following a trail of tenuous connections to one of the actors in the drama who looked like another actor in another series that she closely follows).
P.S. This was the first time I was traveling without a dedicated camera. It was surprisingly refreshing and a touch liberating.
P.P.S. Just a couple of days before this trip, I was surprised to discover that The Beatles had recorded two of their hits in German - She Loves You (Sie Liebt Dich) and I Want to Hold Your Hand (Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand).
The 2012 book list
Reading is usually the first causality (damn you autocorrect) casualty of a busy schedule. Strangely, it is also the first thing I turn to when things get really busy and I need to carve some time out to catch my breath. I find the act of picking a book, lying on the couch and reading till I lose track of time very soothing. Over the years the rate at which I get through books has slowed down. Last year I decided to keep a list of the books I finished - an exercise I hope to continue this year.
Since I have that list, I might as well share it with the world:
- Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth - Frederick Kempe
- Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
- My Family and Other Animals - Gerald Durrel
- For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
- His Monkey Wife - John Collier
- Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man - Thomas Mann
- Hocus Pocus - Kurt Vonnegut
- Solo - Rana Dasgupta
- Mortal Coils - Aldous Huxley
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
- Of Human Bondage - Somerset Maugham
- Coma - Robin Cook
- The Scorpion God - William Golding
- The Tin Drum - Günter Grass
- Author, Author - David Lodge
- Ides of March - Thornton Wilder
- Amsterdam - Ian McEwan
- We’ll Always Have Paris - Ray Bradbury
- The Fate Of The Fallen - Ian Irvine
- The Curse On The Chosen - Ian Irvine
- Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
- 1Q84 - Haruki Murakami
The books are listed in the same order that I got through them. I don’t have any particular preference for genres or authors or writing styles though I do crave fantasy/science fiction from time to time.
Here are the ones I enjoyed reading most:
Berlin 1961 - it’s a new account of the events that culminated in the construction of the Berlin wall. A lot of insights presented in the book are based on material that has been only recently declassified and the narrative reads like a spy novel. I wish history was taught at school like this.
For Whom The Bell Tolls - my first Hemingway. Such lucid prose! The story and characters are still fresh in my mind as if I had finished reading it just last night. Hemingway is the sort of author that inspires you to write but when you get down to it you realise that he made it look much much simpler than it is.
Solaris - a brilliant science fiction work that explores the human mind. On the surface it’s the story of a spaceship on a strange planet but by the time I was through with it, I found it to be one of those rare books that have the potential to alter the way you think about people and relationships.
1Q84 - another author that I’ve been meaning to read but never got down to it until this year. Theres something hypnotic about Murakami’s writing style and I often experience this vague, out-of-body sensation of being in a dream. This, like all of Murakami that I’ll ever read, was an English translation of a Japanese work so I am really not sure if this is a factor of the original style, a byproduct of Japanese language and culture or an unusual translation. Once you are through with this book though, you’ll never look at the moon in the sky in the same way agin.
The Tin Drum - again, one of those books where the vivid characters linger around in your memory for a long time. The protagonist recounts the days of his life in Danzig from a mental asylum. I think the book captures the madness of World War II beautifully.
Author, Author - a fictionalised biographical account of Henry James’ life that I wished would never finish. It’s also a wonderful exploration of life (mostly the literary scene but there are plenty of references to other aspects) at the turn of the 20th century.
My Family and Other Animals - a heartwarming account of the author’s days in Corfu as a child. The writing was simple and uncluttered and sent me to the warm, sunny island of Corfu on my tram rides through the frigid Amsterdam weather. If you were in Amsterdam in February, took a tram of central station, saw someone lost in a small book and grinning to himself like an idiot, you probably saw me.
Hocus Pocus - a book that was slightly unusual in presentation and challenged the notion of “chapters” and “paragraphs” that we’ve come to expect the material to be organised by. The story made me a little sad but it never got tedious.
Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close - another book that cleverly played around with the presentation of the material. It is not a light read though. There is a strong current of loss and bereavement throughout the book that rub off on you so not a book I’ll recommend when you are feeling low.
Ides of March - it’s the story of the last days of Julius Caesar told through fictionalised letters and other documents. I found book’s exploration of Roman politics and philosophy quite absorbing.
Not all who wander are lost
You learn all sorts of things about yourself once you leave the house or the city where you grew up. My biggest realisation has been that I love traveling. The wife shares the enthusiasm and doesn’t allow us to slack off. Whenever we feel a sense of ‘sameness’ setting into our life, we head someplace new. We traveled a lot this year, so much, that my blogging hasn’t been able to keep up. While detailed posts on some of the places we visited will eventually follow, I thought I would post one picture from each vacation:
Jan 2012
Nice, France: Azure skies, bright, moderately cool days but empty pebble beaches and promenades. Tourists stay away from Nice in January and it was a great start to our year.
Monaco: One of the smallest and prettiest train rides got us from Nice to Monaco. It was a Sunday so most places were closed but we had a great time walking around. For a city, that from the clusters of high-rises looked densely populated, we saw very few people around. Our theory was that they were all nursing hangovers from Saturday or traveling to places with even warmer climate (after cold winters in Amsterdam, anywhere above 10ºC was warm for us).
Feb 2012
Delhi - Bangalore, India: Visited our parents after nearly a year. Somewhere deep down I was feeling homesick but found out that visiting India does nothing about it. In a fit of nostalgia, pulled the old LP player from the loft and played Bollywood LPs I grew up listening to.
In Bangalore, besides visiting all the favourite haunts, took a ride in the then newly inaugurated Bangalore metro. An auto ride also happened to take me past the apartment I used to live in. Felt a little sad to see someone else’s laundry drying in the balcony.
Mar 2012
Lisbon, Portugal: My fondness for Fado, Portugal’s traditional music, got us there instead of some place in Spain. While we didn’t visit any of the Fado cafés this time, we loved roaming the warren of streets in the old town, riding the yellow trams and sipping cool sangria at an open café with the view of the town and sea.
Venice, Italy: This is definitely my most memorable trip from this year. There is no traffic on the streets of Venice but the canals are full of gondolas and water taxis. A visit here makes you understand why the city has acquired such a prominent place in literature and music for such a long time.
April 2012
Keukenhof, The Netherlands: Considering how close Keukenhof is to where we live, perhaps it shouldn’t have made the cut but I cannot forget that day in April we spent cycling along the tulip fields. Spring came a little late this year and one felt a little sorry for the bare, leaf-less trees. But the tulips seemed to have a jolly good time. The weather that day was a little rough and we cycled against gale force winds in a cold drizzle. Endless rows of colourful tulips made sure that it was well worth the effort.
Rotterdam, The Netherlands: For country as small as the Netherlands, it’s surprising how much we are still to see. Rotterdam’s city centre was more or less completely destroyed by the Luftwaffe bombing in Word War II and you won’t find many 400 year old houses here like you do in Amsterdam. Rotterdam with its shiny, new skyscrapers and massive bridges is your typical modern, western city. We enjoyed the trip but felt like village bumpkins all along.
Luxembourg: There wasn’t any particular reason why we were there. I think it was merely a yearning for a long train ride and the desire to avoid the Queens Day revelry in Amsterdam.
May 2012
Barcelona, Spain: We remember Barcelona for all the wrong reasons. This is the only time while travelling in Europe we came close to being mugged. It wasn’t particularly late and it wasn’t a narrow by-alley. We were in a residential locality to see one of the buildings designed by Gaudí when a person approached us to ask us for directions to the nearest metro station. We were barely done talking to him when two men came running to us from nowhere, showed us some sort of ID and asked us for our passports. Apparently, if we were talking to a stranger we were dealing in drugs or forged currency so these “plainclothes policemen” wanted to take a stock of our bags and wallets. We didn’t have much cash on us and our Dutch IDs mustn’t have looked very lucrative. After ensuring that we had nothing of significant value, the direction seeker and the “policemen” ran away. Although we came out unscathed - both physically and monetarily, the experience shook us to the core.
Jun 2012
Los Angeles, USA: LA can be many cities rolled into one and I’ve always found it a little overwhelming . Had it not been for a family get-together, would have given it a miss.
Seattle, USA: Seattle is my favourite city in the US (it used to be my favourite in the world, but that slot now belongs to Amsterdam). The Fremont summer solstice parade and a day spent hiking near Mt. Rainer with friends were the major highlights of the trip. On the last day of our trip, we did a very touristy thing - we went to the 73rd floor observation deck of Columbia Tower (probably the highest I’ve ever been outside of an airplane):
July 2012
Antwerp, Belgium: The Dutch National Rail (Nationale Spoorwegen, conveniently abbreviated to NS), offers deeply discounted tickets from time to time. We took on one such offer for a trip to Antwerp. We didn’t know this while buying the tickets, but we had chosen one of the coldest, rainiest day of the season for our visit. Fortunately, the tickets also included a voucher for two for apple cake and coffee at an old, picturesque restaurant called De Groote Witte Arend (The Great White Eagle). Unfortunately I had forgotten the printout of the voucher at home. We were fully prepared to pay for our coffee but the waiter, upon learning the story of the forgotten voucher, generously offered the wifi at the restaurant so that I could retrieve and email them the voucher from my phone. Also, Antwerp train station is the prettiest station we’ve been to in Europe.
August 2012
Basel - Lucerne - Interlaken - Bern - Zurich - Geneva, Switzerland: Our “big” vacation this year. We had never thought we’d go to Switzerland and complain about it being too hot and yet this is precisely what we ended up doing. The view of distant, snow-capped mountains makes the heat seem much worse. The only time we felt cold was during a visit to Mt. Titlis in Engelberg. The way back from there was supposed to be a gentle downhill trek but somewhere we lost our way and spent 4 hours coming down a rugged trail we simply weren’t prepared for (I was nursing a barely-healed knee from a recent fall from the bicycle and the wife had a dodgy foot which the doc had advised resting). But the scenery was beautiful and kept us going.
September 2012
Paris, France: We had been to Paris last year, but something about it keeps drawing us back. The wife thinks it’s simply the dosas at the Sarvana Bhawan at Gare Du Nord that get us there.
October 2012
Amsterdam, The Netherlands: We stayed put at home in October. The winter this year has been taking its own sweet time to set in and the trees put on a brilliant show for the Fall.
November 2012
Warsaw, Krakow, Poland: Work kept me at home again in November but the wife had a jolly time in Warsaw and Krakow. She has done all the homework and promises to play my guide next year.
December 2012
Berlin, Germany: Christmas in Amsterdam is a slightly drab affair so we packed our bags and went to Berlin to enjoy the countless Christmas markets and all the food and glühwein that goes with them. We were struggling just a little with temperatures of around -4ºC during the first two days of our trip but it didn’t seem to affect the general festive atmosphere around us. But on Christmas eve, just as the weather turned a corner, practically the entire city shut down. Fortunately, thanks to google maps, we managed to locate a small Thai restaurant near our hotel which was being run by a single person who took turns playing waiter, chef and cashier. For all of 15€ we had a delicious, hot meal that we’ll remember as much for the taste as for the setting.
