Chapter *.*: European observations...

This did not happen at some particular instance of the trip. Rather, they were observations and lessons learned over the course of the trip as a part of various experiences.

European cities hold a very prestigious position in world history since European countries were the first economic and trade centres of the world before the American and the Japanese sub continents took over in mid-twentieth century. As such, these cities hold a very rich tradition and in most cases, these cities can be dated back a couple of centuries. Walking along a European avenue enables one to relive the times when the world was taking the economic shape that it has now transformed to. Yet in these times of the twenty-first century, these cities retain their old world charm.

This is not entirely unlike the situation back in the Indian sub-continent. Most Indian cities can find rich traditions dating back to the colonial British times and as such, one can see traits of the same in areas like South Bombay, Pune, Bangalore, Calcutta and the various other cantonments and hill stations set up during the colonial rule. As a result, both the Indian cities as well as the old European cities share attributes like mid-nineteenth century architectures, narrow streets and old-style eateries for grabbing that snack. However, its the European cities that have managed to hold onto this identity of theirs and even allowing them to thrive while the cities in India are losing their old world charm because of which the edifices are now being replaced by sky rising vanilla glass structures, the streets are crammed with endless traffic jams of slow moving traffic and the sense of life itself is of commotion as against the leisurely European paced life. So where did the plot go awry?

One must back up the European situation with a couple of advantages before one rolls on: The economies are backed up by a very powerful currency, they do not possess problems prevalent such as large scale illiteracy, infant mortality, population boom and access to health care.

Though these problems address the problems at grass roots, one cannot turn a blind eye to the chaotic situation one encounters in the Indian cities and blame the presence of the above mentioned factors as the sole causes. The biggest problems in the Indian cities can be attributed to causes like complete lack of public transport, unchecked growth in ownership of vehicles and the absence of a green culture.

Europe has, en masse, accepted the green way of life to such an extent that in cities like Amsterdam, the primary mode of personal travel is the bicycle. That is not to mention the presence of quite a comprehensive metro link in all major cities supported by regular bus/land routes for areas that are not covered by the metro. The cost effectiveness of a metro in an Indian city can and will be a topic of a separate post.

All said and done, the sheer pleasure of talking a walk down the cobbled streets made me realize what it is that one misses back in the daily traffic jams in India. But there is something that we share a lot in common with the Europeans: the civic attitude. One feels in India among the sidewalks littered with cola cans, cigarette butts and in the flowing river filled with refuse and rubble. Even though the levels might not match the levels we see in India, rampant dirtying of the type we observed in what are considered as the tourist capitals of the world quite shocked us.

I know what you are thinking: nope.. its not the (Indian) tourists responsible for the large scale despoiling of the European landscape.. Not yet, at least...

Chapter One.Eight: Au Revoir Paris.. for now..

The next day dawned too early for us. The hostel was a dark and a quiet corner of the earth when we hurriedly got ready to catch the train for our trip to Rome. The greatest tragedy of the entire affair was not that we were leaving Paris without spending much time there; it was that the hostel had not yet opened up their breakfast counter which is usually functional from 0700 hours.

We cast a hopeful eye towards the cafétaria before heading out of the door to the cold Sunday morning. A short walk back to the metro and changing the lines a couple of times before we came to Gare de Lyon eventually. The geographic convenience of housing the metro and the Eurail lines in the same complex helped the cause considerably and we commended the wise and the natural choice of such a construction. The Eurail lines can easily be found by chasing the escalators to the highest level possible till you reach what can be described ground level and you come across the terminal bank.

The next task is a bit tricky but can be surmounted by some quick observatory practices. First, find which terminal platform your train leaves from. This is combined exercise of scanning your boarding card (which is assigned to you when a reservation has been confirmed) for your train number from among the other undecipherable jargon printed therein and then matching that against a similar number printed on one of the innumerable screens displaying the schedule. If you could do that much, finding the platform number is a matter of child's play.

We were travelling to Roma via Milano as there were no direct trains available from Paris. Bags laden, hungry stomachs non-withstanding, we boarded onto the assigned coach on our way to further unknowns. The train was, as expected, more punctual than Mr.X ever was...

Chapter One.Seven: rue Rivoli, Our Lady and a good bye..

Walking down from the Louvre on rue Rivoli, we decided that the next historical monument to visit would have to be the Cathédrale de Notre Dame (Kaa-they-dhraal the Nau-thr Dhaam). Rue Rivoli is magnificent, to say the least, and is a pleasure to any Paris first timer. As with any other quaint European street, it is lined by old stone monuments, some downright absurd in architecture, but you would find any of the modern era business establishments, especially the ubiquitous haute couture establishments and the some more affordable ones.

At one of the street corners, a steel band was performing a percussionist number and there were some accompanying gestures directed towards the legal guardians. They were very clear in their general like of the keepers and the keepers were kind enough to smile back in mock from their horses. Some shouting followed after which the band disbanded and started to march across the street, banging away at all times against their instruments. The vehicles respectfully waited while the members crossed amidst cheerful clapping and encouragement from the mustering of tourists which included us as well.



Crossing the Seine to the Île de la Cité (Eel the laa Si-they), the tiring mass of us came upon the Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris. It is markedly different in its Gothic architecture as compared to the other monuments that we had come across and were spellbound in its magnificence. That we were to encounter an even better exhibition of the said architecture in the near future was as yet an mystery to us.

Tired that we were of the cross city walk that we had executed and in keeping with the body clock that was still adjusting, we decided to call it a day and head back to the hostel. An additional pressing reason being that we had to catch the early morning express to Rome at 0745 from Gare de Lyon.

We caught the metro to Porte de Bagnolet, bid goodbyes to our visitors from London and then made our short walk back to the hostel. The last essentials of the day: food to fill our stomachs and rations for our travel the next day on the train.

We debated various options of restaurants based primarily on the economical damage that they would cause and the relative ease that we could adjust to the food. We finally settled on a Chinese restaurant at the junction of rue Davout, short walk from the hostel. Mr. X was in an extremely bad biological shape with an sharp pain in his legs caused by the long walks that we had undertaken that day.

Chinese restaurants, outside of India, typically serve the food along with chopsticks and steel cutlery is provided solely upon request. I challenged the devastated Mr.X to a trial by chopsticks which he refused unenthusiastically. Must say that Mr.X was winding down way too quickly and his very survival for the remnant of the trip seemed suspect. Having staffed ourselves with the basic fruits, breads and beverages for the next day, we wound down very late in hopes of waking up on time the next morning.

Chapter One.Six: To the Louvre

The metro ride to the place de l'Opera (plaa-s the lope-ay-raa) was ridden by multiple hub points being closed (for maintenance) due to which we spent close to an hour getting to a place which we could walked over from the Eiffel Tower in a lesser time. What gives eh?

Having eventually taken a circuitous route to the place de l'Opera, we met up with the acquaintances and exchanges the necessary pleasantries before we set out on out first marathon walk. Destination one: Musée du Louvre (myoo-say dyoo loo-vre). It was close to 4PM when we decided to walk the walk. Kindly note the time; its relevance will be enlightened later.

Getting to the Louvre from place de l'Opera is just a matter of walking down the mammoth avenue de l'Opera. The avenue is lined by structures depicting some awesome baroque architectural influences and offers plenty of opportunities to capture them into frames like the fountain with the angelic fountainhead depicted here.

Walking on cobblestonened paths can be an extremely painful experience especially if you are wearing footwear with soles that boast of widths next to nothing. And I was one of the exponents of the said experience which made the situations about to follow that much more difficult to swallow.

A cursory glance over the leaf of the map we were carrying spoke about the visitor timings
for the Louvre. Taking special interest in the same (since we were aware that Louvre grants free access to tourists for a certain number of hours on certain weekdays), we realized that the museum closes entry at 5:15 PM. That when we were approaching the rue de Rivoli (roo the Ree-vo-lee), the intersection at which the Louvre is located.

We staggered into the Louvre grounds through the impressive arched gates and were confronted with the enormously grafted, thoroughly architected Louvre palace which now serves as the home to the museum. The palace is grand in the real sense of the word and is shaped as a rectangle with one of its sides knocked off in its plan view. The ugly beauty spot in the scheme of things therein is the glass pyramid that serves as the entrance to the museum.

The structure has come in for a lot of flak from purists who argue that a modern artifact has no place among things so serene and artistic. All said, it does add a contradictory notion of beauty the way rightly placed moles seem to make some faces that much more desirable!

With entry denied to the Dan Brown-made-populous monument, we continued our walk after some necessary levels of photo-capturing.

Coconut Grove, Samarkand and Queens..

Team lunches, in the recent past, have turned out to be à la carte affairs as against the famous buffets that Bangalore is really famous for. An à la carte experience just goes to show you how much you end up missing out on when you treat yourself to a buffet. And the magnitude is a notch up if you are in a city like Bangalore where luncheon affairs tend to buffets thanks to the no-brainer experience [in terms of choosing from the menu] and the time-based factors.

Coconut Grove (no relation to the Pune based eatery of the same name) is located on Church Street and primarily caters to the Keralite, Mangalorean and Coorgi cuisine. Keralite cuisine tends to be very generous in its coconut base while Coorgi cuisine is pork-based and tinged with various spices. Paying heed to the specialty that the restaurant boasted of, we feasted on Mangalorean fried prawns and Kodagu Pandi Masala for starters. Kodagu Pandi Masala, which translates to Coorgi Pork Masala, is a preparation of marinated pork in various spices. The preparation is essentially dry and the meat is extremely well cooked and tender, which is a feature of the Coorgi cuisine.

Entrées were a sea-food and pork affair as well, with Karimeen Vevichathu and Kodagu Pandi Curry. While the pork curry shares qualities with the starter in terms of the cuisine that it represents, Karimeen Vevichathu is a Keralite preparation which is, surprisingly, not prepared on a coconut base. The gravy is a thin onion tinged, tamarind-based gravy with the fish being baked/boiled while the gravy is being soaked into the fish. Coming from Kerala, this was a welcome change personally and I highly recommend the same to be sampled with some plain steamed rice.

Samarkand is located on Infantry Road and caters more to the Awadhi and Moghlai taste buds. An interesting conceptual theme encouraged here, eating with one's own hands! Cutlery is available solely upon request. That set the tone for the lunch to follow. Samarkand does not boast of a very comprehensive menu but one must sample the choice of the day that is the chef's specialty. That said, the meal consisted of Galawati Kebabs, Moghlai Dum Biryani and a Gosth Rann preparation which was the chef's specialty. Galawati kebab consists of minced lamb meat served on top of a fried cake, probably wheat based. The kebab is spruced up with a range of chutneys ranging from spicy onion to mayonnaise. Once sampled, the cake melts in your mouth forming a spicy paste with the chutney and the minced meat. Highly recommended!!

Dum Biryani was interestingly served on a pan covered with a coating of atta which keeps the dum warm ultimately leading to the hardening of the atta covering. Serving the biryani requires one to break open the pan covering. The biryani and the gosht rann (lamb served with yogurt and spice-based gravy) combination was plentiful in spices like cloves leaving us wanting for more.

Queens' is again located on Church Street and for once, is known more for its North-Indian vegetarian options than the non vegetarian ones. This was reflected in practice as well wherein we sampled the some heavenly stuffed capsicum with murg palak (Chicken served in a spinach based gravy). The stuffed capsicum beat the meat hands down making sure that a recall was definitely on the cards.

Chapter One.Five: At the Eiffel Tower

Rounding a couple of street corners from the public scene, we chanced upon the monument of steel that has now become the face of Paris on any travel brochure or Bollywood flick. People were roller blading and jogging around on that calm May day. Families were smiling their brilliant smiles which were in turn being captured by the multitudinous point and shooters.

The monument is perfect in its symmetry and foolish in its sheer size. One can't begin to fathom what could possibly have possessed Gustave Eiffel to design something so mammoth and beautiful. Standing under the extremely gigantic structure is when you begin to realize that there is absolutely no way a human hand can touch the surface.

The bases of the tower are a consortium of your friendly souvenir stores and ticket counters. Long snaking lines filled with chattering humans waiting to get onto the lift that will carry them to the top so that they can see what they could have seen up close at ground level. Boards claim information that the average waiting time in the queue is 20 minutes. I do not suspect that estimate at all.

Lunch was an Eiffel-side affair of cold sandwiches. The meaning of a cold sandwich took an entirely different meaning for me that day when I was chewing into my cold beef sandwich. My tortured mandibles were losing a battle against my screaming tummy when I realized that in Europe, cold sandwiches had every aspect of the raw materials cold, including the bread. Sitting on the lawn, gnawing on the bread and looking up at the looming steely beauty, noon passed us by and laziness crept upon us.

Having had our fill of the tower, we decided to move onto other eyefills. We had to meet a couple of acquaintances who were coming down to Paris for the evening which meant having to spend some time with them. The rendezvous was set up at the Paris Opera house from where a number of landmarks were walkable. Back to the dear Paris metro terminal where again I had a minor embarrassing moment when I could not find my metro pass while exiting the terminal. Mr.X again to the rescue and he found the pass conveniently lodged between the pages of my passport. Mr.X could not stop smirking at the prospective score: 2 - 0 to his advantage.

Chapter One.Four: A public embarrassment

Le Metropolitan, true to its word, stays underground unlike many of its pseudo-cousins around the world which cover only partial routes under the abovegroud. It rises occasionally to habitable geographies only to cross the river Seine; all such occasions are a welcome opportunity to feast one's sights on visions that are, subjectively, a lot better than those of dark and dreary tunnels.

It was such a sight that confronted and presented us with our first full-length view of the Eiffel Tower; which was looming besides when the metro taxi emerged and banked into the terminal serving the Eiffel Tower. We alighted to hostile conditions of threatening clouds and biting cold; all necessary conditions that, consequently, lead to a heavy bladder. Which eventually caused me/us our first public embarrassment.

Warning: A public restroom, the kind that we are used to back in India, is a myth in Europe. All such services requires one to part with at least a €uro.

Fact: Parisian sidewalks are dotted, at large, with free restrooms, which may be recognized by the boards stating Toilettes - Accès Gratuit (tuah-lai-th aa-ksai graa-tyoo-ee). One such board was sighted by me in the symptomatic condition that I described above. An added bonus was the complete absence of a queue, which was definitely an invitation considering the premium that is usually set on devices of such welcome nature.

Putting the fact and the warning together, I took the most natural action any sane human wanting to take a leak would. I ventured into it.

Having figured out a way of getting into the contraption, I relieved myself and came face to face with my predicament. The rest room showed no indication of a flushing mechanism save for a lever and a button. The lever yielded nothing. Then came the epochal moment when I depressed the button.

No flush responded but the door began sliding open. My willful attempts to halt its progress was all in vain and the door, purposefully, followed its tracked path. My concern at the opening door was circumvented by the immense relief I derived from my knowledge that the restroom was not being waited upon by other tourists. When the door slid open completely, I was presented with a long queue of French tourists, all exchanging friendly French exchanges. The lady at the head of the line smiled at me and waited expectantly for me to vacate, while I was at wits end; both at the sudden formation of the queue and the realization that the rest room was in an unflushed state.

Stupidity followed and I tried my anglicized French on the lady, asking her the needful procedure to perform a complete cleanup. She appeared confused and irritated now that I was blocking her entry. My master stroke: I called out to my friend, Mr. X, who also wanted to take a leak but was not among the queued people. He came forth and I explained the problem to him. I asked him to use the rest room so that at least he could figure out the flushing mechanism.

With that, I vacated and the rest room was then occupied by Mr. X. This was not welcomed by the enqueued tourists who exchanged glances of disbelief and annoyance. Mr. X seemed to take an eternity while the tourists were getting more and more pissed (pun intended) with incident. I was twitching nervously since my neck was only fingers away from the queuing members. Voices began rising and soon, someone began kicking on the door of the rest room. Eventually, the door slid open and Mr. X stepped out calmly with an amused look on his face.

We walked away purposefully while the kindly lady, who had smiled at me, eventually got to use the rest room. Walking away, I inquired of Mr.X as to the flushing mechanism to be followed. He calmly claimed that he, too, failed to flush the loo.

Walking away hurriedly to avoid any legal actions, my heart went out to that old lady who was presented the loo in that condition.....


P.S. - I still claim ignorance of the mechanism to be followed.

Note: The image of the free public toilets has been sourced from Master_Raik's Flickr profile.