EuroTrip - Day 51

Bruges Once More?

It was a long night. Italian, Swiss and German police do not leave anything for chance. So you go through passport checks at least three times in one night. If you are lucky you might get more of such encounters with the police (even if you had not asked for it).

Roma to Munchen is a busy train so our 9 euro reservation was worth every penny (or should it be cent?). We did have a place to sit this time. It's ironic that so far whenever we traveled without reservations, we got more than one seat per passenger and the journey was full of comfort. However, last night we just had to sit in a jam packed compartment (i.e. all the 6 people present).

There is nothing more interesting for me these days than to put on my ipod and write my blog while in train. Sleeping, of course, is favorite too but comes handy only when either me or my mobile is tired: Today, I was too tired to miss an opportunity of a long sleep. So I slept. A long, but not so peaceful sleep. It was a night filled of realizations. To know a lot of new things and to think about some of them. Reality check in my dreams? I don't know. What I know is that I am well on my way to change certain things. It's inevitable now.

Our bad luck with reservations on train to Paris continued and three of us (Me, PooCh and HotTiii) got stuck in Strasbourg. Instead of reaching at 2pm, we were now to reach only by 9pm. That too by changing a couple more trains. Nothing can beat luck and some hasty decisions. Suffering was inevitable.

With five hours to spare, we decided to do some random sightseeing in the town. The old town of Strasbourg has done well to preserve its heritage. Houses there are a testimony to the rich culture that this city inherits from the past. There are a couple of canals that flow through this side of the town. The beautiful reflections (of the buildings and the trees) that you see in the clear water of these canals should be a photographer's delight. It so much reminded me of Bruges. Calm and serene.

As typical with any city in Europe, there is one big cathedral in the center of the town. If you want to take a wild guess on the name of the cathedral, place all your bets on Notre Dame. You have very high chances of winning the bet. Inside, it is like any other cathedral. But with one difference. It gives a very good description of the paintings and art work. The emphasis is on linking those to the teaching of Jesus. Interestingly, this is the first cathedral, that I have seen in Europe, doing that. The cathedral has a giant astronomical clock too. There is a documentary on the same shown every day around 11am followed by an opportunity to see the clock in action at the noon time.

The time seemed to have slowed down a bit. We were still left with more than two hours before our train to Paris CDG. I saw a Virgin Megastore and remembered my SRM classes. Prof PK Sinha had done an amazing job teaching us that subject. This was the opportunity to see some of those learnings in action. Virgin Megastores are huge shops selling everything from Music CD/DVDs to computer accessories to Books to stationary. It's a whole world out there and you can spend hours browsing along those endless isles. Guess what did I find? They had K3G playing in one of those terminals for listening. SRK and Yash Chopra rocks, I must say. :-) With their scale and format, it was very difficult to soak up a lot about the retail aspect of their business in just an hour or so. So after putting some effort, I had to give up and resort to the window shopping mode. The new compilation 'This is it' on Michael Jackson's work is superb. Do give it a try if you are an MJ fan.

The journey back home was to be done in two phases - first a TGV to Paris CDG airport and then an RER from there. Thanks to our EuRail, we won't have to pay anything for the RER. We reach home in night. Hopefully warm homely food will be waiting for us at home (thanks to TARDi and Bansi).

Let us see if we are really that lucky?