Last weekend our group of three set out on our first major weeekend trip, to Italy. We left for Frankfurt in the wee hours of Saturday morning and took a flight for Rome at 7.40 am. Reached Rome in about 1 and a half hour, checked in to our hostel (which was very near to Termini Station) and then started our tour of the city. Italy seemed far more foreign than Germany did to me.

I’ll let the pictures do the talking from now on.

We walked for 10 minutes through the streets and saw huge roman buildings and ruins.

It was amazing how there was so much to see in just a small compound.

The Colosseum was also conviniently located right next door. There were hundreds of people there and very few of them were Italians. Atleast 60% of tourists were Americans. There was a fairly large number of Indian tourists everywhere we went.

After having a pizza in one of the famous roman roadside restaurants, we headed towards the Spanish steps (the only place in our trip that I didn’t care much about) which were extremely crowded and then to the Vatican. Needless to say, The Vatican was truly amazing. The Piazza was huge. We tasted our first Gelati there as well.

Our last stop for the day was Trevi Fountain which was swarming with people. We managed to find a place near the fountain to throw the customary coin though.

Day two of our journey started with a train ride to Pisa. The whole track ran parallel to the beach and if you remember this post, this was the closest I’ve ever been to a beach.

Our first and only stop in Pisa was Piazza del Duomo because all the attractions are inside one walled area. Somebody must have thought of tourists while constructing these buildings. The only low point of my trip was when I got to know that we could only go up the Leaning Tower at 4.40 pm as only few people are allowed at a time and that wasn’t an option for us as we had a flight back to Frankfurt at 7pm from Florence.

The cathedral (Duomo) is spectacular on the inside but since it was dark, I couldn’t get too many great pictures out of it. Outside, hundreds of people kept taking pictures in the cliched pose and we went to the base of the leaning tower to atleast see it properly from the outside.

A 1 hour train journey took us to Florence but we didn’t have much time left to see the city properly. We just went aroud the station which is pretty close to the famous Duomo and quickly caught the shuttle to the airport. From whatever I saw in the 2 hours that I was there, Florence seemed like a really great place, very modern and clean and the only place in Italy I can imagine leading a normal life in. Others are just worth a short visit, in my opinion.

We soon got into a really small plane and left for Frankfurt. The view from the flight window was beautiful though. After an hour and a half, we reached Frankfurt and all of us felt relieved to be back home.

In the end, it was a really successful trip and I was doubly happy since I was the one who planned it and made all the arrangements.

I took a total of 338 pictures in 2 days out of which I’ve uploaded 85 on flickr. So if the pictures posted here look good to you, go take a look at my flickr page.

There are lots of things to write about but I don’t have much time so I will only list down the important ones.

• My colleagues from India who are accompanying me have a tough time with the lunch served in the office even though vegetarisch (i.e. vegetarian) main course is served. But I like the food here and have totally no problem at all. So all of them complain about the food and all I can do is sit and sympathize with them even though I enjoy the food.

• We didn’t do much over the weekend. The only noteworthy place we visited was Heidelberg. It’s a beautiful city. It looks like a typical European city one sees on those postcards. Mannheim, my host city, on the other hand, is very modern. We basically just went to two of the biggest attractions in Heidelberg, the castle (Schloss) and the main street (HauptStrasse). The place was full with tourists even though all the shops were closed cos it was a Sunday (which seemed a little strange). I mean, why would they not want all the business from the tourists? I have uploaded lots of pictures of the place as well as few others of Mannheim (More pictures will come soon). So go take a look at my “Trip to Germany” set on flickr. There are some 50 photos right now.

The first pic you see right here are of the view of the city from the castle.

The second pic is of one of the walls of the castle.

• We passed through an area outside Mannheim called Kafertal Wald where there was a huge US army base. The place was full of Americans, American military vehicles and most of all, American flags. There was a Wal-Mart nearby as well. It was weird.

• The weather here right now is just like the weather in Bangalore. Complete with the wind and unexpected rains. So its very comfortable for me.

• As you might have noticed, I have picked up quite a few German words. Not sentences, just few common words and names of places. It can be helpful at times even though most people here do understand English. I haven’t faced any major language problem yet. Lets hope things stay that way.

Its only been few days since I bought my new camera and since I don’t get time to go to some picturesque locations for a shoot during the week, I had to limit my experimentation around the office and home. I still have to learn a lot of tricks because the camera offers a lot of choices and it takes time to figure out when to use what.

Edit: I posted the pic of my dirty shoes I talked about in the last post on the request of two people but then decided to just give a link to that pic on flickr. Go watch it there and if you find it gross, don’t complain.

Anyhow, here are some of the pictures I have taken with my new digicam.

Some small different colored flowers in the office campus.

Some plants in the office campus.

A giant cloud as seen from the office terrace.

Hope you like them. You can see these and few other new pics on my flickr page as always.

Note: I do not plan to turn this blog into a photoblog so I won’t be posting pictures here unless there’s some special reason. You can always find all my pics on flickr.

I think that delaying my long impending post on the “mystery” weekend trip would be wrong so here it is.

Last Friday, we were told that we’d be leaving “towards” Mysore by train on Saturday afternoon. This was the first time I was going out of Bangalore by train so I was excited cos I love watching cities from a train. Plus trains are much more comfortable and enjoyable than buses.

But before all this, we all were sent a mail informing us that all of us had been divided into four teams and we all had to participate in a theme-based group dance event. So rehearsals began on Thursday. As you all probably know by now, I hate dancing but am open to choreographed dancing so I happily joined the rehearsals. Now, it sometimes bothers my colleagues (especially Lucio) and me that all of us are divided into teams every time we go out which makes everything competitive and takes the fun away but the truth is that I’ve been on three company outings so far and I’ve always had lots of fun. The reason lies in the fact that I’m extremely over competitive and had it not been for the sake of winning an event, I would have never even talked to half the people on the trip. So I kind of, secretly, like it.

So anyhow, we even had to come early on Saturday for the dance rehearsals. I had to dance on one Punjabi and one Kannada song. Ya, we were going for the clichéd ‘Unity in Diversity’ theme. The train journey was okay. We had one full coach to ourselves and Bangalore did not look too good from the train. Also, there was lots of noise pollution because of numerous people singing at the top of their voices and calling it playing Antakshari. We reached Mysore on time and were directed to exit the station though a side gate and then made to board a bus after some wait. Oh, and Mysore looked much better from the train.

The bus ride lasted for about 20 minutes and we soon found ourselves outside a water-cum-theme park. My first thought was “They brought us so far for this!” but since we were already there, I decided to let it go. The first event after we rested for 15 minutes was Treasure Hunt and since it was already dark and we were new to the place, it was difficult. Our team found five of the eight clues. After everybody was tired after running in the dark, we were told that e had to come back in 20 minutes for the dance competition. My team again did great. I forgot one step in the dance routine but since everybody used to follow me, they all did what I did and so a tragedy was averted.

After the dance competition, dinner and drinks were served and dance floor was thrown open for everyone. This meant that it was my turn to sit and watch all the drunken people make fools of themselves.

The next day in the morning, there was a tug of war in the pool. And guess what, my team won!! But before everyone woke up, Lucio and I went for a walk and I took two snaps with my phone cam. (Not having a digicam sucks!)

The first picture is of few birds sleeping on the pathway:

The second picture is of a fising scene from an embossed mural (if you know a better term, let me know) on the wall:

After that, everyone was free to try out all the slides. The most fun was to make a colleague go on a particular slide she was afraid of. Then we moved to wave pool and spent some time there. After that everyone was invited to the pool for free for all dancing and I thought that fun was over for me. But then something miraculous happened. One of the teams had hired a professional choreographer and then had brought her along on the trip so she was asked to stand out of the pool and give us some great steps and we just had to follow her. A godsend. So I danced to all the latest songs.

After all that, we ate lunch, went on the remaining rides and then we left for the station. We were booked on a passenger train this time and it stopped at almost every station. And then it stopped at a station for 45 minutes because of the supernatural house that Lucio wanted for himself. We finally reached Bangalore more than an hour late.

The aftereffects of the trip were that my body was badly aching on Monday and I am severely suntanned even now.

So what do you think of this “mystery” weekend outing. Not bad, huh?

Update: I forgot to tell you all that my team won the whole thing. We would soon be going out for a victory lunch.

Even though I’ve always been a movie enthusiast, for the past few years, the number of movies I watched reduced dramatically. But ever since I started living alone, away from family, the number of movies I watch has again gone up.

So 2005 started off well. I saw Swades on 1st Jan 2005 and it was pretty good. I saw 30-35 movies in the year gone by and the best among them were Sin City, Parineeta, Black, My Wife’s Murder, King Kong and Yahaan. The worst were Jo Bole So Nihaal, Cursed and Lucky. The biggest disappointments were Mangal Pandey – The Rising and War of the Worlds.

Lets see how this year’s movies fare.

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The house with the red dot on it is where I used to live till February last year. Since I don’t live there anymore, I think its safe to publish the pic here. What you can’t make out from the pic is that the houses are located on a hill and we had a fabulous view from the balcony. Also, the round white structure that you see is a chimney from World War II which gives this place its name, Chimney Hills.