A li'l more joie de vivre

Hello and welcome aboard Flight RJ 108 from Barcelona to Amman. Take off was scheduled for 1835 Central European Time. Six minutes past already and passengers are still boarding. All in good time I suppose...

Sweet Irony
In over a month of travelling across Western Europe, I lose exactly one pen, one comb and one belt. Congenitally unpunctual as I am, I miss exactly zero trains and seven classes over a whole term. The more I travel, the more I pat myself on the back for being a schemer and scheduler nonpareil.

And then right at the end, my keys to our swanky penthouse flat on Calle Pavia vanish into thin air somewhere between the master bedroom and the kitchen. Another delightful meeting with gracious Landlord, I think.

But it gets better. I get back home at 1530 after desperate last minute shopping to find that Evil Landlord has acted Mr.Punctual and made away with Xxx Euros in lieu of the other sets of keys in my possession. It was either the money or the passport and Rohit has played the valiant knight in shining armour.

Destiny
As Arjuna makes his way back after the Ashvamedha Yagna, he comes across a city being looted by bandits. He, the wielder of the Gandiva, conqueror of Bheeshma, Karna and other stalwarts is reduced to another common archer as all the astras and powers obtained prior to the War desert him at this juncture. Sage Vyasa explains that the astras had fulfilled their purpose and would no longer be at his command. As with Arjuna’s astras, so with my astras: the keys get lost right at the end. The three month TMB pass obtained at a 15% discount under the guise of an under-21 student, after serving diligently on tram, bus and metro fails to work for that one last time, as I insert it into the turnstile at Catalunya.

First Love
1830, 22^nd September, Barcelona welcomed us with a pleasant evening breeze. The city beckoned to be explored and lived. 1600, 22^nd December. Back at the airport and just a feeling that I am as much an outsider as I was three months back. Just another visitor who came, stayed and left.

Nevertheless a long distance has been travelled – from MTR and margheritas to sabji and sambhar, from Lisbon to Vienna and from Amsterdam to Rome, from blank hard disk to fifteen ripped DVDs, and from hola brownie to adios amigos. A little more purpose (less surfing and more listening in class), a little more intimacy (with other ESADE students, Barcelona, and fellow backpackers) and Europe would have been even fonder a memory.

But these have been the days, 23, alive and footloose on the Continent. There’ll be other times, and there’ll be more fun, but like a first love (I imagine), the days chronicled in these Diaries will remain close to heart, forever.

Extras
DVDs come with all kinds of extra content: trailers, interviews, computer games, music, outtakes, commentaries, the works. With a movie that connects with you, the extra content is a treasure trove. With other movies, the extras are just so much more trash.

Well, the analogy is so flawed it isn't one, but like so much more trash after the real thing, the last few entries in the Diaries will fill in the missing pieces – accounts of the Austria-Germany trip, the Madrid-Lisbon trip and other sundry ramblings.

Boring, because the lights of Barca fade away even as I write and life back at B awaits impatiently, but it’s got to be done, ya know, just for the completeness of the thing. In the meanwhile Bye, Bye Barca...

For want of a paper...

... peace was lost.

Final fling happened. Not a ski-trip to snow-clad Andorra but capital hopping to sunny Madrid and sunnier Lisbon. International Economics, Second Edition, Sawyer and Sprinkle, Prentice Hall was carried in backpack. So was laptop. Book was read on trains. Further reading in Lisbon was avoided by engaging in more honourable pursuits. Laptop remained powered off throughout. Still two-and-a-half chapters to read and a whole paper to write before this term is officially over. An hour shy of 48 left for take off from Barcelona on Royal Jordanian Flight 714.

Travel weariness, unfinished travel accounts, withdrawal symptoms, unfinished souvenir shopping...

Ich bin ein Berliner

It's a Friday today and it was a Friday a week ago when I took the train out of Barcelona. Six of the seven nights in between have been spent on dorm beds in youth hostels: in Montpelier, Munich, Innsbruck, Vienna, Freiburg and Berlin. The Orient Express served as sleeping quarters on the fifth night, en route to Freiburg from Vienna.

Blogging on the go hasn't quite worked... composing posts against the clock isn't my favourite activity on the Net. But there are enough things to write about: the places and the backpackers, the cuisine and the freezing cold, drunk Aussies, Alpine Zoos and Nazi stories - all in this space very soon!!

Another night in Odyssey Globetrotter's tonight, and then back home... or maybe I'll stay on for a bit longer... the class is only on Tuesday...

* * * * * * * * * * *

Q: What do you call a chicken, plucked, skinned and roasted over a slow fire?

A: Value for money, at €3.50 for half the bird, first discovered at München Hauptbahnhof.

Q: What do you call a stop at McDonald's when you order nothing and eat nothing?

A: A toilet break.

Allo...

In the immortal words of a mere mortal called ID, "this trip has been as much a Eurail trip as a Europe trip". I 've spent another 12 hours on the tracks, finding my way from Montpelier to Munich, through Lyon Part Dieu and Strasbourg. The journey is more scenic than usual, with traces of snow on the fields bordering the tracks.

On either side of the train journey were another essential feature of the Euro trip - nights spent at youth hostels. The one at Montpelier put me in the company of a Yorkshire lad and a Vancouver girl, both students of English literature, the former in France teaching English and the latter holidaying before heading out to Korea for a teaching job. Both spoke fluent French, and thanks to them, I had my first real European dinner at a French restaurant.

Touring cities with other B junta is not bad, but alone, one has a more authentic foreign experience - especially if one cares to interact with fellow tourists from all over the world.

Hmmn.. off to walk around München now, and a night train to Innsbruck.

Live from Montpelier

Because I'll get back to Barca only on 11th December and because I'll be busy with an exam, a presentation, a report and a paper, I'd planned to blog on the move on this Austria-Germany tour. And now because the train from Barca reached Montpelier half an hour late for my connexion and because the only way out of here today is by 1st class train and 44 €, I am stuck for the rest of the day and the night in this mid-sized French city. And thus I sit here surfing and plotting my next move...

Au revoir, hasta mañana.

p.s.: Is the use of 'because' at the beginning of a sentence grammatical?