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.