Eurotrip

Eurotrip Index

2009-01-11T11:34:00.000+05:30

Hello Dear Readers,

Although already very late but I am going to write about some of the incidents which happened during the 3 months stay in Europe. Following is a short list (Not really that short but likely to grow more) of such incidents. The posts would be made in back dates - the dates when the incident really happened and I would be updating the hyperlinks in this post.

Paris -The Arrival

Sarkar falling of the escalator in Paris

Met an old friend at Helsinki airport

Amsterdam Trip

Sarkar and the wine bottle cork

Sarkar running off before the show

Missed Train # 1

The difference was in the air - Women commoditised

Nice Trip

The beautiful beaches!

Bordeaux Trip

A dead city but a nice beach at Arcachon

Austria Trip

The Ice Caves

The Turku Junta

2 hrs to tour

Budapest Strassbourg Italy Trip

The train to Milan - Reserved to a non-existent seat

2 Euros at Milan station

The time crunch to tour

Rome Spain Portugal Trip

That beautiful girl (on the way Toulouse-Barcelona)

The Aquarium

Give up in Madrid

Scandi Trip

Shopping at the last moment, literally!

Beghar in Paris!

Missed train

Lalla @ Paris

The inefficient ticketing system

IIM A junta Bergen Fjord trip

The snow games at Myrdal

The inefficient ticketing system again!

The Burger King at Oslo

The chaos at Stockholm - 1 (before reservation)

The chaos at Stockholm - 2 (just the time to board cruise)

Meeting with 3 IIMA and Rajat Gupta and Rajatdeep at Helsinki

The Soumolina island

Rovaniemi - Snow all around, -10°C Santa ki zabardasti Got frozen, almost!

Aurora Borealis

Paris Trip

Planning is such a bullshit - Swiss and Belgium

Planning is such a bullshit - Eiffel top

Swiss Trip

The Reservation drama - It always happen in France

Phir se dhokha!

Kapil Barve

Luzern trip and the amazing Lion monument

The Indian couple (Hotel businessman) on the way to Engelberg

The notice at Mt. Titlis

Fell in thigh height Ice @ -16°C at 3300m altitude!

Fell again but this time on hard ground and the chased by a dog!

Meeting with Gaurav and Sushi in Interlaken

Atul Sethi

Free night travel for the first time!

Germany Trip

The sweeper at Frankfurt

Berlin (Tourist office, tours and S-Bahn)

Almost missed another train!

IIMA and IIML junta @ HHL Leipzig

Who says trains in Europe are not delayed?

Prague Trip

The search for hostels

Night life! :P

The Punjabi shopkeeper

ABSINTHE: 2 Litres of Beer, 1 shot of Vodka and 1 shot of Absinthe

The bartender The drunk guy and the free shot of Vodka

Toulouse

Flink Nina

IIMA junta

Sarkar and ek chhoti si love story

Sarkar and beer

PGP Office and the fines!

Aniket - new Indian friend in Toulouse

Yainik and his gang!

~AbhiTaneja

2.4 Difference in air

2008-09-29T12:29:00.002+05:30

~~Private Post~~

If you are eager to read, leave me a message

2.3 Missed Train #1

2008-09-29T12:29:00.000+05:30

The phenomenon that started from first week on never really ended. This was the first weekend and I missed the train back to Paris. We stayed at Rishi Ghosh's hostel room in Amsterdam. After a nightout the last night, all of us got up late the following morning when we had to catch a train to Paris. We were a bit late while leaving from Rishi's place but also had to buy some stuff for the journey back from the nearby supermarket. So, Avik decided to go straight to the railway station while Rishi and I went towards the supermarket. However, it took us a bit longer than we anticipated to get to the supermarket and decided to rush towards railway station without getting those items.

Realising we were still getting late, we ran and reached the station with 3 minutes for train to leave, only to find no information about the train leaving for Paris. Panicking I ran here and there, asked a few people about the train but with rush comes bad luck - none of the people I asked knew English. I tried my best looking for the train but could not find. The TV displays showed a hell lot of train but the information about this particular train was not there on any of the displays. About 5 minutes past the scheduled train departure time, I found a help desk on the station, asked about the train and rushed towards the platform to check if the train is still there by any chance. All the efforts went in vain and I missed the train! Meanwhile in all this I realised that actually none of the international trains are displayed on the display screens. Well that was surprising and shocking!

Anyways I lost my money and took a reservation for the next day. Another incident worth mentioning is about the lady at the service desk, whom when I asked about any possibilities of rescheduling the reservation after I missed it, started shouting at me for coming an hour late for the train without realising that all that delay was due to their inefficient service processing system which contributed to over 55 minutes in those 60 minutes! Man.. those guys were damn slow! Do the same thing in India and you will have a Km long queue within 15-20 minutes.

2.2 Sarkar running off before the show

2008-09-28T12:29:00.000+05:30

~~Private Post~~

If you are eager to read, leave me a message.

2.1 Sarkar and the wine bottle Cork

2008-09-27T12:29:00.000+05:30

Well if there is Avik Sarkar, there have to be some interesting incidents!

On the first weekend in Europe, we planned a trip to Amsterdam but could not get any connection from Paris and were kind of stuck in Paris. Anubhav Garg / Ankit Pawar / Akhil Jain 's appartment served as a second house for us as anytime we were stuck in Paris, that used to be the place where we go. This was our first visit to them and luckily they had just done their grocery shopping. [;)]

So, we decided to have some red wine with the dinner. Pawar tried to open the cork but did not really know how to do and he handed it over to Garg, who had almost opened it before Sarkar took over. Sarkar, with all his enthusiasm and foul language, takes over the bottle and shouts at everyone for the delay they were causing. As soon as he took it over, all of us had a feeling that something has to gonna go wrong now. No surprises! In a few moments, the whole room was red! wine all around! It was on the table, on the floor, on the walls, on the roofs and also everyone's clothes.. everywhere!

Shit man! I wore that white shirt for the first time! [:(]

Any guesses what exactly happened? Well rather than pulling out the cork, he pressed it in and the cork was inside the bottle now. I cant even imagine what kind of force did he put on that cork to push it in! [:O]

1.2 Met an old friend at Helsinki airport

2008-09-23T12:29:00.001+05:30

Sometimes you really cannot anticipate what's gonna happen! This is yet another of those incidents. I can only remember such incidents from movies but this time the filmy incident was real!

During the flight transit at Helsinki airport, I ran into an old friend from DA-IICT, Atul Sethi. Surprisingly both of us were on the same flight for more than 10 hours but never realised that and it was only at the flight transit time that we ran into each other.

However, we had different flights to catch from there. He was flying to Zurich while I had my flight to Paris, so we just chit-chated for around 20-25 minutes and then went our way.

There is nothing particularly great about this incident except the way it happened and the surprise element which made it surprisingly beautiful experience. I am gonna remember this one for a long time.

1.1 Sarkar falling off the escalator

2008-09-23T12:29:00.000+05:30

22-Sep-2008

Well this one is definitely very interesting. At St.Michel Notre Dame RER (underground metro) station of Paris happened one of the most interesting scenes of the exchange program. Damn! I did not have my camera with me to capture that site. I can bet that video would have become the most popular video in IIM Calcutta campus. [:D]

So here's what exactly happened:

It was our first day in Europe. We arrived at the Paris Charles De Gaule airport and had to catch a train from Paris Austerlitz station. To reach there, we took an RER to St.Michel Notre Dame and changed to a metro line from there. All those who have never been to Paris should not that St. Michel is a multi-floor station and you need to take an escalator up to get to the Metro from RER. So, as Mr. Sarkar (apna Avikwa) gets on the escalator, people around gather to watch an amazingly amusing scene - Avik and his suitcase looping around on the escalator.

Looping around?! Well he fell off the escalator and fell down but while he tries to regain balance, the escalator takes him up from where he falls again! [:P] Same for his suitcase. So, what we see is a person falling off from escalator while also moving up the escalator at the same time. It looked like it was gonna continue in an infinite loop before I finally grabbed his suitcase and also helped him stand up and move up the escalator [:P]

Sorry for the insufficient description but even after a lot of effort, I found out it was not possible to describe that master-event in words [:D] It was simply amazing and among the best sites I saw during Eurotrip.