Hoschie's Blog

Sandra, Day 5

Thanks to Kevin (a student from Koenig) i got invited to join an awsome sightseeing trip. Our Guide named Rajan picked us up at 9am in front of the hotel. First we wanted to go up the hill to visit a town called Mussouri aka “Queen of the Hills” which is 2003 meters above sea level. On the way there we stopped at a Shiv Temple. Like in all temples you have to take off your shoes outside before you can enter. The people that entered rang a bell and then walked up to some kind of tacky looking altar, doing prayers, offering flowers and moving on to the priest to get blessed and some holy bread. It was great to watch this holy procedure.

Shiv Temple

Blessing Procedure

After that we continued our tour up to Mussoorie and stopped the car once more to take some pics of a monkey mother and her baby sitting on a tree next to the road (not surprised anymore why you should get rabies vaccination with all those wild animals running around).

Mommy Monkey and Baby Monkey

When we finally arrived in Mussoorie we went the shopping mile up and down. Comparing the prices of the different shops you could clearly see who wanted to rip off the tourists and who only wanted to earn money by selling to the tourists Anyhow in the end i found a nice shop to buy some Souvenirs. The view from up here is amazing and you can see a nice dust cloud of pollution over the valley. Worst thing in Moussoorie was the public toilet which almost made me puke XX( Lesson learned, less drinking on the next trip.

Shoppingmile

Shopping !

Fully loaded with bags of goodies we continued our journey, next stop “Kempty Falls”! This place was developed as a tourist destination by John Mekinan, after 1835. The name Kempty is coming from ‘Camp-tea’, as the Britishers would organise their tea parties here. When we arrived we had to go down through a small market passage and then use a trolley (which was kinda scary) to get down to the falls. The Kempty Falls are really beautiful, just a pitty the people throw their trash into the water and everywhere around. The citizens seem to use the bottom of the falls as local swimming pool. It didnt exactly look like a place i would like to have a tea party these days

Kempty Falls

Indian Swimming Pool

After another scary ride in the trolley to get back to the car we hit the road again, next stop “Dhanaulti”! A dreamy, misty mountain retreat in the Garhwal Hills 2286 meters above sea level. To get there was an adventure itself and felt like a hellride in a rollercoaster upside down. The “road” (dont think this would be called a road in Europe) was very small and winding with loose chippings all over and no protections at the cliffsite. It got even more exciting when another car came from ahead or cows standing/lying on the road. Once we even saw a homeless looking man sleeping on the street and had to try to drive past him. When we got closer to Dhanaulti the air became clearer and much colder and the view was amazing. When we finally arrived we had to pay to go into the Eco Park which turned out to be a view point and nothing else. We were supposed to see the Himalayas but there were clouds over the big mountains which was a bit disappointing after going through hell to get there. Well back to the car and back on the hellway again heading home :-/ And like our Joyride wasnt fun enough already “BANG” we got a flat tire, somewhere in the Himalayas far from civilisation (well real civilisation). Luckyly Rajan had a spare tire in his trunk. Well on the positive side we had some more time to enjoy the nice view and take some more pics before we finally got rolling again.

Flat Tire in the Himalayas

After around 90 minutes drives or so (i had made some flat tire comments) out of a sudden it went “BANG” again and we had another flat tire again. Fortunatly we ran aground in a place with an Ashram and a Buddhist Monastery so we used our opportunity and visited both of them while our driver was organising a new tire. Was a bit weird to see monks with cellphones, since i was always living under the impression they had to live free from all material goods. Well guess thats the new generation now In the Ashram we saw people getting blessed and eating happy pills errrr holy bread again. I have also made a nice video of this procedure, which i might upload when i get back home.

Visiting another temple

New Generation Monk

The 3 Stoodges chilling in front of the temple

Finally the car was repaired and we were brought back to the hotel. That was really enough excitement for one day B)

Marcel, Day 5

As the driver screwed me last time and showed up a quarter to 9 and letting me wait for 30 minutes, i decided to try the new time and hey it worked. Not as it was supposed to, since a different cab from Koenig picked me up, but so what ..
Today i was asking my trainer about her name again and even got her to write it onto the board but unfortunately not in one of the corners, so we could keep it there. So it was like usual for teachers, “here i show you”, scribles at the board, “this is my name, got it? cool”, and then swiped it off the board again. So everything i can remember right now was something like Swali. For some reason it reminds me on How i met your mother.

Update: It’s Swati!

Well, either way i got to ask her a few questions that bothered me and here are the results:

- It’s unbelievable but Indians have to make a driving license too, yeah, even a test. They can also take classes to LEARN driving. I suppose that is no real business tho.
- It is not a law or in any way mandatory to sing in indian movies. Even though they do it all time because people like it.
- Power is not stable and power sockets suck a lot because the plug keeps dropping out all the time.. but at least the european plugs work without any adapter in between. I still think the multiple socket bar i got from the LIDL with extra overvoltage protection was a good invest.

Indian Power Socket

- Oh and thanks to some friends of mine, i got a hint regarding my Lufthansa seat problems. If you ever need to fly, here is a plan for almost every seat and its type (good, bad etc.), every plane and every airline. This one is for my Lufthansa Jet: — See what seats you gonna get — . Thank you Ralf & James.
- At the 28th october, India is celebrating Diwali, a festival compared to europeans christmas and i am really looking forward to it. I found out it is the festival of light and they celebrate the victory of good over evil. People will have lights around their houses, you will hear firecrackers and people trying to dye your cloth on the streets Btw. I am happy to let you know they don’t sacrifice virgins, sheeps or any kind of creature for their gods… just candy will do! awsome religion
- In combination with the fact above i was talking about the breathtaking fire some indians make in front of their houses to burn something. My trainer said it is either still stuff from the last festival which was on the 9th october or already preparation for Dawali. Well we dumb europeans again, we still believe indians just sweep their garbage together and burn it to get rid of it.
- I was also asking about the Cows standing around everywhere. Are they coming from the wild? being holy creatures, do they live in the wild, get born in the wild? Of course not, i was told they have a real owner which cares for them

Holy Cow

- The last info i got today was, that we could also book trainers from India and have them come over to Germany to teach us. Since noone ever has enough time to attend a full day training because we are usually too few to get the current work done, this could be an option. On the other side we would probably need to split such a training over a couple of days and sacrifice 2-3 hours a day of the normal work schedule.

The rest of the day was pretty fine. We went to Mc Donalds with a group of dutch students we met today. The McDonalds in India is kind of funny, it has only a very short list of burgers and its basically all either vegetarian or chicken. It also seems to me that diet coke does not necessarily replace sugar with sweetener, but you can also just use less cola and add more water! It wasn’t even black anymore! On the positive side it kept us from drinking too much of it, because it had ice in it which should be a XX( NOGO in India. The chicken burger were pretty much ok, at least for now, i can’t say for sure till tomorrow Then we went upstairs to the famous black pepper again for the usual drink of disinfection in the evening

Black Pepper Bar

The day of my wife was a complete different story. I heard her using the word. LEGENDARY.

DAY1

We started by taking a taxi to the Airport which was surprisingly expensive.The fun started by the Lufthansa Quick Checkin Machine that welcomed us with an error message and refered to the Checkin Counter with real humans. Here we were at least able to drop off our 2 bags and were told to hurry to gate C14 which was a 30minute trip to a complete different corner of the Frankfurt Airport. Having tickets, but not having our booked SEAT numbers on them we were kinda worried and walked as fast as we could to find our gate in time.

Finally there, it already looked very funny. Having hundreds of indian people waiting there, with lots of fancy clothes on. We went to the counter, trying to get proper tickets, just 2 seats close to each other, freedom for your legs… Then the stressed Lady at the counter said the words that destroyed our dream of having a nice relaxing flight :

“Mr. and Mrs. Kühn, we don’t have seats for you. Would you mind flying tomorrow?”

As everything was booked and organized (well now i know we could have rearanged things), we didn’t take her bribe of 650€ per person + hotel + dinner and had to wait in the lounge for our names being called again. Sitting there for 30 minutes waiting for other people to take that opportunity didnt make us less nervous. Finally our names got called and we got our tickets with the freaking worst seats in the entire plane. Thanks Lufthansa, last time flying with you!

Lufthansa Seats suck

Well after some more waiting, slow boarding, a whole lot of chaos because the indian people weren’t happy with the Lufthansa seat plan either and made their own arrangements in order to get their somewhat huge families sitting together, the plane finally got started. The flight itself was ok, besides the fucked up seats where you cannot really eat (not like the food was any good) and your knees start to hurt after an hour being stuck below the front seat. On a positive side, the indian neighbour to the left was a nice guy and even understood some german. He helped us filling out a “register form” which was given out by the lufthansa personal. This little form needs to be filled out by you in advance to speed up things on Arrival Counter in New Dehli, so dont put your ticket and passport too far away. If you plan to fly to India some day pay attention now. The Form is full of weird checkboxes (with explanation on the backside) like (NRI, OCI, and some other i cant remember) … it is “NONE” for you.
In those 7 hours of flight, we have been watching some Becker Episodes on my mp3 player and were trying to ignore that kid 3 seats ahead, crying, whining and shouting with passion for hours! We could have also used the headphones to watch movies they show on the plane TV. One was a really new movie with Eddie Murphy (think it has just been in the cinema) and the other one was a Bollywood movie with english subtitles, which you couldnt read from 5m away on a 14″ screen. Anyway, something really nice on such a huge plane is that you won’t even notice you are flying. Even tho we started through rainy clouds, we never experienced any turbulences or this weird feeling in your stomach when starting or landing .

DAY2
We arrived in New Dehli at like 1am in the morning and the airport was way better than expected. This was definatly not a third world country airport, it met european standards and everything was clean and new. Our indian seat neighbour was telling us something about moving somewhere downstairs to find the registration counter. Here we had to stand in line and wait again. Then they checked our Passports, Visa and the Registration Form. You are getting kind of worried when this customs officer isnt talking to you for like 10 minutes and then starts a discussion about the spelling of your surname. But after a hard time understanding this guy (obviously he was just asking if this was our first time in India) we finally managed to pass his station and moved on to find our luggage. There is no much difference to Frankfurt here, except you wait longer. Our first bag appeared very fast which made the 30 minutes of waiting for the second bag a pain in the ass and we started to get worried that they might have lost it.

Dehli Airport Arrival

At the exit there were millions of indians waiting with signs that had names on it. Luckily we even found our pickup guy, who then gave us the promised letter from Koenig with further instructions and money in it. We stepped outisde of the airport and were stunned by the dust and smoke Delhi was surrounded by at 2am in the morning. It smelled like burned down woods and houses. Following our guide to the car we had to pass a parking place with millions of motorbikes and a soldier with a machine gun protecting another parking place with cars. Once we found our car, he woke up the driver and handed us over. Now we began our journey to the serviced appartment where we were supposed to stay until the morning. And here the real adventure begins. If you ever thought, the Crossroad at Hanauer Landstrasse on a friday noon is insane, you should try Delhi at night. The driver started the car and locked all doors. We searched for seatbelts but there were none. Then we passed a last control station where he had to pay for the parking place and moved on the streets. From what i’ve read somewhere, you don’t have to pass a test to get a driving license in India, you just buy it, which explains alot … I’m usually pissed when one truck tries to overhaul another one and blocks a single lane, but try to imagine the following picture: Driving more or less blind in Delhi’s dust and suddenly there are 4 trucks showing up in front of you driving next to each other on just 3 existing lanes without any kind of lights on It was really amazing and scary. You were also hearing horns all the time coming from everywhere. When our driver came to crossroads with red traffic lights blinking, he just used his horn a couple times to ensure the possible cars coming from other sides would recognize him in time and wait even if they have green traffic light. And thats how they do it all the time. For foreigners it looks like everyone is driving on every side of the street, they always blow the horn for every occassion… when they drive into a curve they blow the horn to signal they are coming. They also blow the horn shortly before a crash is about to happen and everyone seems to know what to do…
We reached our appartment at like 2:45 am after passing soldiers or security personal which was sleeping in chairs at some corner of the street. The appartment was ok for us, enough for the night and we got the promised 2 bottles of water and almost instantly fell asleep for the huge amount of 3 hours. At 5:45 am our cab was waiting outside to bring us to the train station. We made contact with another nice english guy there, who was also a student for Koenig.

Welcome to Smog Delhi at night

Somehow the train station and trains kept reminding me on the “80 days around the world” movies. The train station looked more like third world country and so did the trains. We had tickets for the “business class” with AIR condition, but we still didnt have the trust to accept their breakfast. While traveling for 6 hours you can see alot of the wonderful countryside india has to offer, of course along with very poor people living in very small boxes next to the rails. Now and then the train had to stop for cows which were crossing the rails. Even though there were some loudspeaker announcements telling the current destination, we were worried of never finding the proper station for us to get of the train. Asking the train personal was of no help either, because its probably one of the jobs where they use cheap workforce which has not been trained to speak english. Either way, in the end another passenger told us that DehRadun was the end station anyway. After 6 hours of noisy traveling we finally reached our destination DehRadun.

Business class seats

In DehRadun we stumbled over our new english friend again and together we looked for the exit. The exit area was crowded with indians trying to convince you to drive with them or buy random stuff they were carrying around. Our cab driver from Koenig spotted us and brought us to our hotel. The streets were overcrowded with people and vehicles of different kinds and the traffic was a complete mess compared to european standards. Everyone was driving on every side of the road, motorbikes sneaking through every hole they could find and people crossing the streets on top of that. After some driving along the streets we were shocked when we saw a huge sign with of our hotel name on it and a huge ruin behind it, but luckily we drove past it. Fortunately it turned out to be a new building of the same hotel which was still under construction. When we finally reached our hotel we were happy because everything was better here. It was less noisy, well protected by lots of security personell and even though by far not german 4**** standards, it was still pretty nice and clean. After some dinner (chili potatos awsome!) in the hotel restaurant for european prices, we went upstairs to finally get some sleep.

Yummy Hot Spicy Chilli Potatoes

Day 3
At 7:45 am my mobilephone interrupted our sweet dreams and we went downstairs for some kind of breakfast. While waiting in the hotel lounge for the cab driver to pick me up at 8:20am i made contact with 2 more Koenig students. Shortly after 8:45 am the cab finally showed up and we were driving to the apartment house to pickup a few more students. Driving towards Koenig we have seen alot of people on the streets, trying to sell stuff, carrying around things or making fire in front of their houses. I am not sure what or whom they were burning there or for what reason, but the smell was totally breathtaking. Here and there you see dogs running around, looking for something to eat in piles of trash and garbage that is lying around everywhere. Further we saw a cow on the street and everyone trying to drive around it. Koenig’s Building seemed to be in a nice area where lots of companies were building their own houses.

Koenig Location Deh Radun

At Koenig i met my trainer in lab 17. I still cannot remember her name properly, but she seemed to be a very nice and helpful person. She started by teaching the first 3 Oracle lessons that day. In between we had someone asking for the type of lunch we wanted, and i choose something unspectacular — fried rice again. In the dining room i met alot of other students, mostly from the UK, one from the netherlands and a few indians. I think there were people of every age from 20 to 50 and all very nice guys. Once we finished that day at like 4pm, my cab driver brought me back to the hotel. The Koenig students meet once a week in a restaurant called “Black Pepper” and i was invited too. We met up with the other two students who live in same hotel as us to travel to the Bar. Here we made first contact, bargaining with Tuk Tuk – drivers to get us to the restaurant.. 30 rupees seems to be the upper limit, you shouldn’t pay more.

The evening was great fun with lots of nice european people and some indians. We had a blast and i think it was one of the best experiences here so far

Here we go. After month’s of preparation, vacination, lots organizational todo’s, emails forth and back, i think we are finally ready for INDIA.

Today, we went to our local Maredo Restaurant for a last good tasting delicious piece of beef.

We’ll start tomorrow at 13:45 Frankfurt Airport. Trip is around 7hours direct flight. Alfred is still transcoding videos for the iRiver mp3/video player. 3 Seasons Becker should make this flight a short one

Expect some pictures here soonish >:XX