Getting Nostalgic

Getting nostalgic, not about India though :D My darling husband is in Berlin for 2 days on a short business trip. Which makes me remember all those lovely moments we spent there. Berlin was the first European city I visited with him, about 3 years ago.. I remember being charmed by the European architecture, ornamentation on walls, the history of Germany and the lovely street performances. I Loved being in Germany, and Germans are the most communicative species when it comes to no-common-language discussion!! I was amazed by the amount of effort put in by most people to understand me and answer my query, mostly by gesturing and moving their fingers, even though i would end up not-understanding-a-single-thing.. :)

The first thing i remember about Being in Germany was its Weather.. My husband was there a week before me, n told me not to pack too heavy woolens, since i was going only for about 10-12 days. And well, what would i know of the unpredictable weather.. When i reached Berling, Weather was slightly cooler than expected and the next day, there was chilled winds blowing and continue to blow till the end of my trip.. I wore (my hubby's) body warmers underneath my jeans & tops!

And believe me, its not a good thing to have ALL your pics clicked in only a couple of woolen tops.. And to make things worse, one of them was white and I was not carrying scarf/muffler to match the other one.. aaarghh... I still cringe at the memory of those chilled winds blowing on my neck!! I always HAVE to wear a muffler/scraf, even in Delhi winters.. My white top looked like it has seen the worst of dust storm when it came back to Delhi :D

Some clicks from around Berlin -

My favourite of all places - This chain link is Huge! & its built in between very busy road.

The first fountain i saw in Europe! I was smitten by the detailed designs.. sadly, i dont give a deep look into fountains i now see across every place in Europe.. 

I loved this style of gates :D 

Old vs New :)

The remains of Berlin Wall.. Some part of it still kept as a memorial.. 

A distinctive marker runs through all roads, marking the place where Berlin wall used to lie.. 

A very Beautiful Church - 

 The Guardian Angel of Berlin :) Goldelse -  

And this is the place i spent most time in when my husband was away in office.. There's a HUGE craft store called Idee in the basement that you'll literally go mad inside! 

And the most exciting part, the street performances! Fairly common sight in rest of Europe, not seen anything like this in London though.. 

Sorry for the pic heavy post! 

My longest 24 hours

 Its a very very long post. Read at your own risk. Here I am rambling about my life's longest. 24 hours.

Everyone asked me 'How was the trip?' And i always just replied it was gr8! And why it was great, well, for starters it kept on raining & raining & raining..  ALL the while...
On the day i had my early morning flight from Delhi, I woke up at 5 am, did some left-over packing and left hurriedly for the airport. On way, it drizzled with the soft plup-plop sound. Reached airport on time, and was really really surprised by the revamped look. Delhi Airport looks so much better now. :D
Reached Jammu on time too, & *smiles* it was raining.. caught a cab via puddles & some jumping over them. Our Hotel in Katra was already booked, rested for a while there, took our lunch at a famous Dhaba called Manoranjan (means  entertainment) before starting our 12 km uphill trek.
We were enjoying the rains when it dawned on one of us that we have not taken any umbrella or even a raincoat with us! Thankfully our Pithu ( A man that treks along with you and carries your stuff, massage your legs, sometimes even carry young children ) provided us with raincoats for 20 bucks each, which were of very bad quality by the way, made of plastic-carry-bag-stuff. But then we couldn't complain for what we were getting for 20 bucks.
We finally started our journey at 3:30 pm, it was like a leisurely walk for us. we kept taking a break after about every 15-20 minutes, for lemon water, for chips, for chocolate, for anything. So,we managed to cover only a km in half an hour or so, we were definitely not prepared for an uphill trek, its difficult to walk upwards on a slope. To make things worse, our shabby raincoats started to tear, mostly from arm joints. one extra pull and it would tear like paper.. Then it was easy to get drenched for water would invariable seep in through torn parts. We all bought new raincoats after 3 kms :D After 4 kms, I decided I need two raincoats one over another.. I am sure I looked damn funny but WTH! i wanted to keep myself as dry as possible. Plus another nuisance being its lightweight, it slowly became very difficult to keep its hood steady on your head, slightest of the breeze would take it off. I tried to keep it place by holding the corners, somehow it always managed to get torn from the neck.. :(
By 7 pm we had covered only 6 kms, as the cold set in, we started having hot-chocolate breaks instead of lemon water ones ( coffee breaks for others :D). After 6 kms there are two ways to reach Vaishno Devi, one of them 1 km shorter, we obviously took that one. After walking for 6 kms, its easy to decide we dont want 7 more kms :D
But unfortunately our chosen path had a lot of small-small landslides in past week and our Pithu would always push us to travel risky areas quickly. I remember we were passing under a tin-shed  & its roof was broken from middle and we saw a big stone beneath. Pithu urged us to walk faster in that srea, we were all tired by then, so ignored his advice & kept strolling. Suddenly there was a noise of small pebbles on the tin shed, which btw feels louder for ppl just below. And We RAN!! literally!! so much for tiredness..

We reached our destination at 9:30, last 6 kms clearly covered at faster pace, thanks to our landslide stints :D We directly went to the public ladies bathing rooms. Its customary to take a bath before visiting the temple, & my family even insists on wearing everything new, down to the basic garments. And oh boy, the chilled water took me by surprise. The kind you wouldn't even want to touch, taking a bath was like too much. I closed my eyes and went inside the shower, came out in about 10 secs with a shivering spine. And the lights were so dim there that everyone was changing in open, no one bothered to change in cubicles provided.
We took a locker to keep our stuff and stood in queue for the holy visit. We had some special pass whose queue was considerably shorter. The general queue was atleast a km long, could be more, um not good at guessing. My mouth was agape at that sight.
Once inside the temple, its a loooong path to cover before we actually reach the cave in which three goddesses reside. And the exit to that cave was through stairs overflowing with chilled water flowing in through all the directions.. I couldn't even close my eyes here, i would fall flat on someone..After coming out,  everyone was tying  a red fabric on railing of a stair, i did too. I guessed it was to make a wish as is associated with all types of things being tied in Hindu temples. I made a special wish there :D
It was already 11:45pm by the time we came out of the temple and started looking for food straight away. With so many people around, all the foodie joints were open. We started our downward journey immediately after dinner. It had stopped raining by now. We were relieved that we'll not have to bear those shabby raincoats again, but then our relief was short lived.
For the first hour, we were comfortable with no rains. And since downward journey is easier on legs, we did cover a lot of distance. Somewhere after one of our hot-chocolate break, it started raining again. ON came our raincoats, double ones for me! Soon it started raining not like cats & dogs but rhinos & hippos! ( Thats how a friend put it :D ) with heavy winds and more landslides. Soon, we were walking holding out raincoats together, heavy winds promising to blow them away. We were no good though, i managed to tear both my raincoats.. DUH! thankfully our Pithu had bought 2 spares already, he knew we wont get those so late in night. I was tempted to wear third one on top, but then realised i'll look like a funny mummy ( Those raincoats were white) So removed one and kept the total to two.

One more leg-wrecking experiment we did. We had already experimented with stairs twice, which were 50-60 each. Third time we took stairs, it turned out to be 526 stairs!!! YES.. 526 stairs in one whole go, thats about 37 floors!  my legs are still complaining for that.. And soon after electricity went off.. Damn!! We walked in darkness, no moonlight either because of thick clouds. We kept walking & walking and couldnt even think of taking rest, weather looked like its going to get worse. My legs started quivering, my legs shouted that they cant take one more step, but we ket moving, sometimes taking baby steps, sometimes long strides (only cos my hubby kept pushing me to be strong) . Never know from where did i gain strength to take those strides. Held my hubby's hand and just kept pushing my legs.
On the end of our trail, our hotel's cab was waiting for us. Each step from the point where we could see the car till we actually reached it, was a huge task in itself. We reached our hotel room at 5:15 am. It was a longest 24 hours of my life. If you remember the start of this post i had woken up at 5 the previous day. I was awake for continuous 24 hours with the maximum of physical activity i have ever done or will ever do.  I took a Hot Bath & slept like a log for next 4 hours. Why only 4? well, there's another long post coming..

Mumbai Trip - part ONE

Had a wonderful trip to Mumbai last week. This lovely & much needed break turned out to be an adventurous one.
We spent 2 days in Mumbai and the day i stepped out of my plane, i developed a sincere dislike towards unbearably humid weather. So finally ended up with a lot of time at home(my sis-in-law's) itself, within the comforts of AC. The good thing being, I visited a few craft stores in Mumbai and bought a LOT of nice stuff. My next post def would be about what all i got. I loved a store called 'Cheap Jack' for the amazing collection of buttons and 'Hobby Ideas' for stuff not easily available anywhere else in India.
We went to a museum called 'The Monetary Museum' by RBI. There are so many coins on display, from ancient India to modern times. Loved going through them, I don't remember much of it though. It was mesmerizing to know what different Indian rulers did to make their own 'style statement' when it comes to their dynasty/kingdom's Coins.And there's a place called Khau gali just opposite to this museum, It had amazing indian street food. The Bhelpuri was among the best ones, and i think this is what famous mumbaiya bhelpuri really is. The ones we get on Mumbai-beaches now is just rubbish in comparison. I always took a plate of Bhelpuri on beaches & ended up wondering, 'what's so special anyways?' .
Then we went to a the famous Prithvi theatre and watched 'Munshi ji ki gudgudiyan'. A play made from 4 stories written by famous Hindi short-story-writer Munshi Premchand. Loved the first two stories and somewhat liked the 3rd one. Last one was boring beyond comprehension. And I did saw 2 TV personalities amongst the handful of audiences the play had. One being Bumpy from MTV Roadies production team, he was there with a chinki girl, who, i recall, is also from Roadies Crew. I dont know the name of second guy. :D
The next two an a half days were spent in Matheran.

-- To Be Continued --

The Red Carpet

I was recently traveling by air to home for Diwali.. It was a lovely evening with some clouds on the sky.. But i never imagined this lovely evening was going to get transformed into a breathtakingly beautiful evening..
I got a window seat from where i could directly watch the sun. I was glad for the clouds which stood as guards against the glaring sun-shine and providing excellent view at the same time.. I could not click a snap, but the adjacent photo is pretty much similar to what i saw that day..
Our plane went over the smaller cloud and gave us a spectacular view of changing colors on the bigger cloud.. Watching the sun's play on this cloud was just spell-bounding.. from grey to illuminated borders to sizzling golden to absolute white..
I was about to close my windshield since the sun was directly shining on my eyes.. But i guess it was a lucky day.. I noticed a red Carpet below the plane. A soft furry red carpet. At first i din realized what is it. The plane's wing tilted a bit & i saw the sun, just about to set, at extreme corner of the earth. Dimmed by clouds surrounding it, emanating a dull yellow sparkle .. The color slowly turned into Red as it moved away from the golden ball hung at the horizon.. The clouds directly below us were reflecting the afterglow and were giving the illusion of velvety soft red carpet..
The pic i have shown here is a bit different. What i witnessed was a little more yellow near the sun, a little smoother cloud-surface and a brighter shade of red on the clouds.. but this was the only pic i found on google which had sunset above clouds :D (I wish clicking snaps was allowed while flight takes off, It would have been soooo gud)