We took the first train from Walldorf to Karlsruhe, a big junction, changed from there into a two-storied( yes that's not a typo!) train to a place called Baden- Baden- supposed to be one of the prime spots in the heart of the Black Forest.
Now, our plan was to visit as many places as possible in the two days and see as many interesting things/sites as possible. The problem with Black Forest was that there was no concrete thing to see- the forests stretched over hundreds of kilometers, the sightseeing trail itself would take a couple of hours by car. We planned to see around the city, asked around and found a rather benevolent and more importantly English speaking bus driver and took the bus to the city center. Saturday is the day of the equivalent of flea markets in Germany and a huge museum housing the information center seemed to have the whole street in front blocked by peddlers selling everything from pajamas to spices to sunglasses. The museum had a beautiful corridor adorned by beautiful wall paintings followed by a porch leading onto a garden that houses one of the biggest casinos in Germany. While Bittu was busy taking random photographs in the casino, we both found a couple in wedding attire, posing for photographs. While I was smitten by a bridesmaid and also paused to wonder if we could manage some food from the reception, Bittu focussed on getting some more equally useless photographs of this and that. Finally, we strolled across a nice park, with something like a brook flowing through it and finally we rushed to one of the bus stops to board a bus to the station...that took so long that I had almost started cursing the supposedly punctual schedule of German conveyance. Two hours at Baden-Baden, well spent!
The next train was from Baden-Baden to Konstanz. We boarded a train that was packed, as mentioned by one of the fellow passengers. Actually all the seats were occupied. It was nice to find people sitting on the steps to the upper deck while others used the seats to rest huge trekking packs and bags. No one seemed to mind though..that's the best part about Europe. After half an hour of squeezing between the rails and the parapet next to the seats ( I volunteered my seat to an old lady..ask Bittu!), everyone suddenly got down at Offenburg. We settled into comfortable seats, unfortunately all the people who took the seats all around us were not even remotely eye candy. So we did what you can do in such a situation..after fifteen minutes of babbling about this and that, finishing half a bottle of Pepsi and trying to capture the scenery outside( mostly unsuccessfully) using my digicam, we started dozing off. I remember I was drooling, when I woke up with a start to find a kid on the seat next to me staring wide eyed. Then I found quite a few people staring ( haven't they seen someone drooling while asleep before?). Anyhow the TV screen showed that a certain Triberg was approaching. I woke up Bittu as I remembered that this place was house to the largest waterfall in Germany. As the train approached the station, we decided to get down, with the assumption that there would be a train every one hour in the same direction. When the train screeched to a halt and we alighted( still not sure what the hell we were doing) I was spellbound for a few minutes by the station itself. It seemed right out of a postcard...vertical cliff on one side..tall coniferous trees on the other.
We rushed to a bus again and thankfully the driver again spoke English. The journey to the waterfall took us less than five minutes..a ride on a spiralling road upwards, picturesque views on both sides. When we got down at the foot of the waterfall, we had to complete the journey in less than an hour or wait for another hour for the next train. As it turned out we did wait one hour more..but it was quite a hike to the summit of the waterfall. The muddy road, slimy and treacherously steep at places added to the fun. Photographs delayed our ascent, every second junction ended right in front of the gushing rivulet. I got bored after the third time..in any case the camera was Bittu's property throughout the trip. Most of the places were barricaded beyond reach, a wooden bridge across the waterfall looked adventurous to walk upon, but its entry too was blocked. Then abruptly a cabin announced that the waterfall trail ended there. A bit disappointed, we walked down. Bittu Singh managed to find a spot to stand amidst the water and the moss on the rocks for silly photographs, but apart from that the journey downward remained pretty uneventful. Oh yeah, we saw a species of squirrel quite different from the ones seen in India.
As an afterthought, waterfalls are pretty romantic places I guess, something that we people from severely uncouth habitats( read undergraduate institutions) had given little thought to. Thus the scene of people at least a generation( or two) older than me making out besides the teenagers, did unsettle me a bit. Bittu cited the weather as the reason for the difference in culture, but that again is the topic of another article. Arriving at the station, amidst finding out time schedules for various trains, unsuccessfully trying to explain what a knife is to a restaurant owner (who seemed not to catch even a word of English), gorging half a chocolate cake with bare hands in absence of the knife, trying to explain what a rubber band is and ending up with cello tape for tying up loose ends, we did precious little else. Then we boarded the train to Lake Konstanz, finally reaching there at five in the afternoon.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Travelogue:Prologue
It's been a long time...let's start typing!
Two days...less than 48 hours, well I have had a few eventful couple of days in the last three years of my life, but nothing could have prepared me for what was coming when I had started abusing Bittu ( one of the protagonists of the travelogue) saying that he had wasted one of the weekends lazing and we are a weekend short on sightseeing. He came up with a brilliant idea- let's see the whole of Baden- Wurtemburg in one weekend!
Before embarking any further, let me give some background. Baden-Wurtemburg is one of the states of Germany in which incidentally both the protagonists were residing at that moment. Nevertheless it is a huge region, home to the Black Forest, the Lake Konstanz, the Hohenzollern castle ( that would be another tale, maybe I will tell that some other time), numerous other scenic places and last but not the least, the biggest game park in Germany, the Europa Park. A few things that came to our help - a huge detailed map, with all the spots worth traveling marked along with the attractions they provide( we covered quite a few), a daily Baden-Wurtemburg Ticket (shared between 2-5 people) on the weekend, on the spot decisions and a crazy mind accompanied by another one willing to travel anywhere under the sun!
This will be quite long, so I decided to break it up into a few parts..please bear with me ( or don't, what do I care!)
Let's start from Friday morning. Germany has this amazing website where people driving from one place to another put up the information on a website, so that other people can contact them and share a ride. The cost of the gas is generally shared- amazing alternative to trains ( which are ridiculously expensive without some offer). It reduces pollution and is cheaper for everybody. So when Bittu called me up saying that I could travel with a XYZ(female), I was more than excited. We agreed on a 6:30 Pm meeting..she went so far to describe she drove a Merc, had brown hair, not so long. I told her..I am Indian. "Not bad!" I told myself. With numerous brilliant prospects brimming in my mind, I rushed home at five in the afternoon (already the lab was deserted..so much for Europe and weekends!), tried to polish up in fifteen minutes ( Yeah, for the unassuming ones, I have a very optimistic attitude towards life) . When I reached at the meeting spot huffing and puffing by 6:40, there was no Merc to be seen. A few college students stole furtive glances inquisitively at me, giggling among themselves. I didn't have a good feeling- until one of them came and asked whether I was waiting for XYZ. She was around in no time - the Merc turned out to be a city car and not a sedan and XYZ turned out to be a cute girl, all smiles. While we sped from Tubingen to Walldorf, we had a diverse conversation on numerous topics, highways of Europe, flashing speed cameras, winters in Chicago, why India is not safe for female foreigners, studying theology in Germany being a few of them. I was still trying to imagine all the brilliant possibilities, till she told me her boyfriend was doing the one year service in the army and didn't like it much. By the end of the trip, I knew what her parents and all her siblings did for a living, how her boyfriend drives a long way to come back home and numerous other details not worth disclosing here ( people knowing me should understand by now how interested I must have been during the conversation!) Nevertheless she told me quite a few interesting things about education in Germany- medicine and teaching being two of the most opted and competed for professions. All in all, it was a good trip and although none of the brilliant prospects materialized, I wasn't that disappointed.
Bittu Singh, characteristically, made me wait for forty five minutes in front of his office, while he kept searching for me at some remote bus stop, despite giving me his office details in a mail. So when I was giving him a piece of my mind, he gave me the grin( characteristic again) and we started talking of old times. We entered his place like thieves ( apparently he couldn't have guests staying over), cooked Maggi, ate sandwiches, drank Coke, packed sandwiches, searched for nightclubs in arbitrary cities for spending the next night, discussed Cantor sets and Countability ( and friends and girlfriends and future career plans and how we screw them up), surfed though TV channels ( there were three porn channels amongst twenty odd channels- those and BBC were the only one understandable), talked about Bangalore and Germany...let's leave that aside...it would be another account in itself.
I had misinterpreted that the Baden-Wurtemburg daily ticket could be used only from 9 AM. Thankfully that allowed us some sleep..something of which we would get very little in the next two days, before boarding a bus to mark the beginning of one of the most memorable weekends of my life.
Two days...less than 48 hours, well I have had a few eventful couple of days in the last three years of my life, but nothing could have prepared me for what was coming when I had started abusing Bittu ( one of the protagonists of the travelogue) saying that he had wasted one of the weekends lazing and we are a weekend short on sightseeing. He came up with a brilliant idea- let's see the whole of Baden- Wurtemburg in one weekend!
Before embarking any further, let me give some background. Baden-Wurtemburg is one of the states of Germany in which incidentally both the protagonists were residing at that moment. Nevertheless it is a huge region, home to the Black Forest, the Lake Konstanz, the Hohenzollern castle ( that would be another tale, maybe I will tell that some other time), numerous other scenic places and last but not the least, the biggest game park in Germany, the Europa Park. A few things that came to our help - a huge detailed map, with all the spots worth traveling marked along with the attractions they provide( we covered quite a few), a daily Baden-Wurtemburg Ticket (shared between 2-5 people) on the weekend, on the spot decisions and a crazy mind accompanied by another one willing to travel anywhere under the sun!
This will be quite long, so I decided to break it up into a few parts..please bear with me ( or don't, what do I care!)
Let's start from Friday morning. Germany has this amazing website where people driving from one place to another put up the information on a website, so that other people can contact them and share a ride. The cost of the gas is generally shared- amazing alternative to trains ( which are ridiculously expensive without some offer). It reduces pollution and is cheaper for everybody. So when Bittu called me up saying that I could travel with a XYZ(female), I was more than excited. We agreed on a 6:30 Pm meeting..she went so far to describe she drove a Merc, had brown hair, not so long. I told her..I am Indian. "Not bad!" I told myself. With numerous brilliant prospects brimming in my mind, I rushed home at five in the afternoon (already the lab was deserted..so much for Europe and weekends!), tried to polish up in fifteen minutes ( Yeah, for the unassuming ones, I have a very optimistic attitude towards life) . When I reached at the meeting spot huffing and puffing by 6:40, there was no Merc to be seen. A few college students stole furtive glances inquisitively at me, giggling among themselves. I didn't have a good feeling- until one of them came and asked whether I was waiting for XYZ. She was around in no time - the Merc turned out to be a city car and not a sedan and XYZ turned out to be a cute girl, all smiles. While we sped from Tubingen to Walldorf, we had a diverse conversation on numerous topics, highways of Europe, flashing speed cameras, winters in Chicago, why India is not safe for female foreigners, studying theology in Germany being a few of them. I was still trying to imagine all the brilliant possibilities, till she told me her boyfriend was doing the one year service in the army and didn't like it much. By the end of the trip, I knew what her parents and all her siblings did for a living, how her boyfriend drives a long way to come back home and numerous other details not worth disclosing here ( people knowing me should understand by now how interested I must have been during the conversation!) Nevertheless she told me quite a few interesting things about education in Germany- medicine and teaching being two of the most opted and competed for professions. All in all, it was a good trip and although none of the brilliant prospects materialized, I wasn't that disappointed.
Bittu Singh, characteristically, made me wait for forty five minutes in front of his office, while he kept searching for me at some remote bus stop, despite giving me his office details in a mail. So when I was giving him a piece of my mind, he gave me the grin( characteristic again) and we started talking of old times. We entered his place like thieves ( apparently he couldn't have guests staying over), cooked Maggi, ate sandwiches, drank Coke, packed sandwiches, searched for nightclubs in arbitrary cities for spending the next night, discussed Cantor sets and Countability ( and friends and girlfriends and future career plans and how we screw them up), surfed though TV channels ( there were three porn channels amongst twenty odd channels- those and BBC were the only one understandable), talked about Bangalore and Germany...let's leave that aside...it would be another account in itself.
I had misinterpreted that the Baden-Wurtemburg daily ticket could be used only from 9 AM. Thankfully that allowed us some sleep..something of which we would get very little in the next two days, before boarding a bus to mark the beginning of one of the most memorable weekends of my life.
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