Day 04th November 2006:
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Again the last minute delays… do not blame me.. It was karthick.. He got some call from one of his US friends and started his katha kalatchepam.. The plan was that the bus would start at 08:00 PM, but it was already 06:00 PM. Atlast I somehow managed to push karthick from the office. We reached home at 06:30 PM. Once entered the room he locked himself in the toilet, acting as if he was completely unaware of the delay. He came out fresh and shaved at 07:00 PM. He looked at me in an expectation that I wouldn’t take bath in due resp. of the delay, but I didn’t want to give it up jus like that and entered the toilet to delay a bit for my part(he he.. can u see two horns and a red tail growing over me)..( meanwhile I had steamed the rice for the supper.. ). I came out at 07:15( I didn’t take bath ..hehe). some how finished the dinner and reached the station at 07:25. We had to reach vaihingen by 08:00. Ive heard it from kumar that it was on the way to the airport and might take some 20 minutes, depending on the availability of traffic at S bahn. “Man..We are not gonna make it” I said to myself “If not, I’d make this senseless idiot pay for this..”.. That mindless faggot was still blabbering something over phone( I think he was then a middleman to some love problem of one of his friends). That lucky bastard escaped, we caught the bus at 07:50. It was cold out there and I’d give anything to get into the bus, and this faggot saw a booth and started scratching his calling card.. I had to stand beside him for the next freezing 10 min.(coz ofcourse he had the ticket..and those ikarus guys were germanically systematic allowing none without their tickets) It seemed that the guy on the other side was not interested in talking anymore.. and thanks to the driver for starting the bus Atlast we boarded the bus
I started scanning the bus for any Indian faces, a sardar, two tamilians from some fucking automobile related company, and some other faces I didn’t recognize( ofcourse they were Indians.. and I couldn’t find what I expected.. L ). We settled on our seats and this maramandai was blabbering mindlessly over his phone.. wow! Ho! Two german girls on the seats infront of us and they were looking at us… ( read this twice). I tried to respond and exactly at this time, karthick finished his big brother activities and looked at the bus suddenly coming to his senses that he is inside a bus( It must be a wonder that he didn’t cry over in astonishment). Those two german girls had another two friends sitting in front row.. . Other than those four girls, Indians and us, others were with their opposite sexes. Suddenly I remembered pre.( Man its been so long since I left) and I don’t know why.
The bus started once everyone got settled into their seats. Me..ofcourse with my ipod. Karthick started talking something which I couldn’t understand even a single word, I had to shake my head for every word he spoke. Suddenly I realized the bus was too crampled. “This journey is going to break my neck” I said to myself. One advice guys.. if u want a comfortable journey.. ikarus is not for ya. After some thirty minutes I switched off my player and tried to catch some sleep, but some fucker started his own version, that too at full sound.” Inniku sivarathiri thaan pola”. They stopped the bus at a highway inn for supper. It was freezingly cold when we stepped out of the bus.. might be sub zero temp. Those girls gathered and started smoking. I looked at karthick.. and he went inside the inn. I followed him.. Inside the inn(Inn is not suitable.. must be said a buffet hall). I was thirsty and I liked to have some thing hot liquid. I ordered for a hot browny( I didn’t know what it was.. but ordered it to the burger king man as if I’ve been having this for eternity J ). I saw the two drivers of our bus having the dinner of their life time(it seemed to me like that..) and I wondered “are we in safe hands?”.
My hot browny arrived..damn it.. it was a chocolate pudding(that too perfect black with very little sugar)..Karthick seemed to be smirking peevishly at me.. again I didn’t want to give up.. I started eating the cake as if I am enjoying every crumble of it( it really sucks u know.. I had to empty half a bottle water to wash it down ). They started the bus half an hour later.. thanks to the hot browny I didn’t feel sleepy thereafter, otherwise I could have missed some real scenarios( I meant the natural one.. J not the ones that happened in the bus..).
The road that we were traveling on was a real high highway.. getting over the alps.. valleys of the mountain.. beautiful. Atlast I caught some sleep when the bus reached Brenner( I don’t know it is Italian or german or Austrian). The raod we travelled was one of the tracks we used to play in NFS 5( to the NFS buffs..The one with lot of tunnels and turnings..I think it comes after the Normandy track, and I felt stupidly proud for this thing)..
Atlast we reached Venice at 6.45 am Sunday. Some 800 km covered at nearly 8 hrs.. man.. that was real fast..I didn’t owe to that fact of the NFS track..
We finished our kaalai kadan at the tourist information centre( ofcourse we paid in euro.. all these information centres are similar atleast in this aspect). One thing was puzzling. I’ve heard that Venice is city on water, and till now we’ve been traveling only by bus..no traces of houses having their doors flooded with water..
Atleast that was what I had pictured Venice in my mind. My imagination was shattered when I saw Venice as a normal port city with the smell of the fuel and fish.
But then I tried to condole myself that there are some real nice historical places to visit.
We bought a day ticket( 12 €) valid all throughout the Venice for 24 hrs. We boarded one of those Vaporettis or water buses . San marco is the main tourist attraction of this city. There were two ways to reach it, one was short and another one floating around the city. I suggested we should take the one that goes round the city, as afterall we’ve come here for a tour. As usual my suggestion my overlooked by karthick and he sought suggestions from the sardar..( yeah he got stickin around those guys, and an explanation for this.. “ namma alunga”).. and that sardar,.. I think his name is kulwinder( or spell it with a big G as big as his mouth), never stopped talking except for the OC beer he somehow managed to squander from the kazhakhstan guy( yeah another character.. name is zhomart..z is silent as he was always.. doing his PhD in Rocket propeller science.. hmmm ) . Let me also tell the other guys with us. One is Rajesh, tamil, some f* motherson company, short, plumpy..quite bossy. I hate this when he started asking the khazak guy about his country’s position now and before. That guy seemed not to talk politics while on a trip and tried to divert him, but this bossy guy was relentlessly asking questions and at one point the kazhak guy stopped talking. And one more character in our group, pugazhendi, tamil, lean, I think married(coz he didn’t even spend a single penny that whole day in Venice). And we together started exploring Venice.
Our first stop was San Marco or St. Mark’s Square. It is the city’s main place with a large open concrete space surrounded by the St. Mark’s Basilica, The Boge’s palace and the king’s museum and a Bell tower. The buildings are mostly gothic with impressions of Byzantines.. atleast that was my perception. I decided to look at the Boge’s Palace. 12 € per head, but I’ve decided. Karthick was hesitant, but he agreed to come with me hoping to take some “see me” snaps in the king’s robe. The Palace was a monumental building, itself being built at late 15th century, completed by three boges. We visited the different sections of the palace. The noteworthy of the kind was the Armory, with diverse kind of the middle age weapons ranging from the British long Bows(I don’t know how those Goths being primarily infantry, managed to get the long bow, the specialization of British weapon wizardry..) and cross bows to the wooden spears, long handed swords, double handed swords, not to mention the plate mail armour. I was awakened to the present world by this moron ( who ofcourse karthick..) urging me to follow our Indian friends(coz, our luggage’s been in the same cloak along with them and he didn’t want to miss his precious sandwich and apples). I reluctantly left the palace. Our indissch colleagues’ final opinion about the palace was “ 12 € waste” as per rajesh, “ 12 € not fully consumed” as per kulwinder. Morons.. My party is going to be spoiled…
It was already 11:00 am. Kulwinder started suggesting plans for the rest of the day. I’ll put’em in his own words, “ Firjt we’ll have clear plain. What I am trying to jay ij we’ll go to that temple on the other jide of the island(thank god s is silent here), then we’ll cover janta della maria, jo that we’ll be here atlast to the plaje where we jtarted” Man.. its like thrusting a hot rod into ur ears whenever he speaks.. Karthick agreed immediately and I…followed. The first stop was San Giorgia Maggiore( I know its difficult to pronounce it), standing directly opposite san marco covering the entire island. A great architecture, heard it was built by palladio himself.. I entered the church.. awe inspiring one.. a separate section for the choirs.. I had to spend some 50 cents to lit up the choirs( one peculiar way to squander money out of the tourists)..any way it was worth seeing. I was again dragged by karthick coz those guys were not interested and they were leaving already.. I don’t know why they planned to visit Venice at the first place.. then we hopped to another island san zaccaria.. with a church dedicated to St. Zaccaria. I suggested we move into the church.. but as usual overruled and was lead otherway. We started walking for 10 minutes..then for half an hour, and it seemed like we’d never stop. Atlast, thanks to those engineering guys blocking the beach way.. our marco polos found that was the end of the island and started walking back, atleast to my relief. I was then feeling very hungry.. these guys never seemed to have a stomach( atleast not the sardar, coz he’d packed chips from Stuttgart for 15 €, man…). Then I suggested, no declared I was hungry and we should find a nice pizzeria. All of them pored their faces over the map and started looking for a pizzeria in a map..
I decided that this aint gonna go anywhere and boarded a bus to santa della maria. We visited the famous basilica, but the guard seeing our way of dressing or some other thing, did not allow us into the church, though I had a peep into the church.. a real nice quiet place.. once common thing all these churches.. they are all ornamented with large organ pipes that create music as per laws of mechanics and harmonics..no electric or electronic stuff inside the church…
Karthick had now become the official explorer of our party.. Somehow he grabbed the Venice map somewhere.. he started leading us through the crisscrossing maze of Venetian streets.. at one point of time we seemed to be lost in the maze.. Atlast we found a café that served pizza as well, ordered three margarita. Karthick as usual suggested we’d order first two margarita and if the wasn’t enough, then we could go for another one.. I grabbed the first one and finished up the whole thing..hehe.. now they have to order another one.. then I had espresso ( really good). Meanwhile the sardar guy and the kazhak guy had vanished somewhere , I think to have another beer. After the lunch we started our walk again through the streets of Venice.
One thing I must mention that I met a road side musician, who was playing his lute.. being myself a music lover, started listening to his play.. our guys were getting impatient.. then I had a little chat with him. He said he was a Hungarian, did his studies on classical guitar in hungary and he was then in Venice for a world musical tour. I bought a CD of him, offered my best wishes and looked at our guys.. you must see their faces.. I was really happy you know.. Being brought down to lighter mood I started talking with karthick as usual..
Then again we moved back to square one, I am sorry san marco square. We played with the pigeons dwelling there. The time was then 4:00 pm and we had covered almost all of Venice. Now we had to kill the time.. so we went for shopping. As usual karthick bought a “Venice ninaivaga” souvenir and I joined him. What a surprise! Those were the same we met at Mt. Titlis, yeah we met the lawyer from Chennai and his wife with his precious onsite paris son . They were so happy to meet us again. His son, like every SE onsite, asked about our assignement and our daily allowance.. and that’s all. We xchanged a few pleasantries and moved on( kai valikuthu, so I am going to finish it soon). Mean while the pughazendi guy had taken his 100th solo pose. Karthick should be ashamed..
And then the real 7.5 started. I suggested we’d better take a round trip of Venice so that the remining hours caould be spent or killed whatever.. To my astonishment karthick agreed. So we started our round trip. The time was then some quarter past five. That was a nice trip..realized we’d missed a lot.. but it was too late than, so had to move on. At 07:00 pm we reached san marco. Suddenly karthick disappeared out of vicinity. I searched for him around the square for ten minutes and decided that there is no point in searching him in the darkness. Also I didn’t have a chrono, so I was never aware of the running time.. when I reached one of the vaporetti stations, man.. The time was then 07:15 pm and the next bus to the car parking was only at 07:19. I was already warned by karthick that those ikarus guys would not wait for anyone. So I came to a conclusion that karthick should then be in the bus assuming I would be following him, as I was all through out the day.. So I boarded the 07:19 bus( atleast the Venetian transport system is punctual).. it took around some 25 minutes to reach the car parking. I could see karthick waiting or panicking at the station.. man..cool.. Meanwhile I had thought of other options.. to get a ticket to rome,spend the Sunday there.. but this is how it goes..
So, we boarded the bus at 7.50 and reached Stuttgart at 0500 hrs Sunday.. Thanks guys for being patient to read my full nonsense..hehe..
1 comment:
thanks a lot.. update ur profile :)
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