Driving to Paris

We weren’t supposed to go to Paris at all. The original plan was to visit Salzburg, the beautiful Austrian town surrounded by mountains and dotted with impressive palaces.

But there is an aura that surrounds Paris. Many would not consider a visit to Europe complete if their itinerary did not include this city. So when my parents raised the topic of visiting Paris, we decided to change plans. Salzburg out, Paris in.

Wife and I had been to Paris twice, once by flight and once by train, both in winter. Memories of those trips are filled with attempts to shield ourselves from icy winds; we had preferred the warmth of the museums to the chill of a trip along the Seine.

This time we intended to drive down, and it was summer.

We have driven through a few countries in Europe; the odometer reads a little over 60,000 kilometres, which is a decent figure after three years of living next to your workplace. (Unless you are from the US, in which case you would probably cover that distance in three months of visiting the neighbouring state every weekend.) But this six-hour drive to Paris was for us the most beautiful drive through all plains we had covered so far. (Drives through mountains hold a different charm, and cannot be compared with any other terrain.)

It came as a surprise. After driving for about an hour and half in Germany we crossed into France where two things happened: the highway, patched and irregular so far, transformed into the smoothest surface I had ever set my wheels upon, and the landscape opened out to rolling meadows with fields as far as the eyes could see. It was a sunny day, with very few cars on the road. Ingredients for a perfect drive.

The Autobahns of Germany are famous for the absence of speed limits; tourist brochures and guides invite people to rent cars and drive as fast as their engines – and wives – permit. Heavy usage in high speeds and the absence of toll are the main reasons behind the poor condition of these highways. Countries like France, Austria, Spain and Switzerland – who charge a fee for using their roads, and are thus not as heavily used – offer a much smoother driving experience.

rolls

Along the way we encountered those rolled-up balls of harvested crop that stand like relics from an ancient world – some would say, an alien world – waiting to roll down at the slightest disturbance, resulting in reports of Unidentified Rolling Objects in the news-headlines next morning. But no such thing happens. They patiently wait without stirring until it is time to set them on fire.

rollsOnGrass

Entering a big city with printouts of driving directions – from sites such as mapblast.com – can be tricky. (Ask Patrix, for instance.) We had intentionally chosen our hotel in the outskirts of the city, hoping that getting there would not prove too difficult even if we missed a turn or exit. But as we entered the maze of roads that circles around Paris, I knew that one miss and we would be in big, big trouble.

It was around 10pm, and nightfall was almost upon us. We had less than 10 kms to go when an exit listed in our printouts showed up before the distance that had been predicted, and we missed it. I continued driving straight, with no clue how to get back.

(My navigational skills are such that I find difficulty in reaching home from office on days Wife is not sitting next to me. She, however, more than makes up for what I lack. On one occasion we received a phone-call from a friend who had lost her way in the network of streets that surrounded her house, and the first question Wife asked her was: “On which side is the moon?” It didn’t take her long to get this friend back home, and I decided that in her childhood Wife must have swallowed a compass.)

So I drove on, awaiting further instructions. “Take the next exit and get back on this highway in the other direction”, she said. I followed, but the pattern of the roads was different and we couldn’t get back as intended. The traffic was heavy, and it was getting darker by the minute. Parents were tired after the long drive, and wanted to reach the hotel soon and rest. Things were not looking good.

As I drove I thought of alternatives. We could call up the hotel and ask them for directions, but that would be of little use (we had failed to follow clearly written directions, so how could rough guidelines help? Further, we did not have a city map). We could also hire a taxi and follow him to the hotel, as a last resort.

Our only lead was A3 – the highway on which we had missed the exit – and we used that as our guide. Taking prohibited U turns, reversing in private parking zones, sudden shifts between lanes – acts I would never commit on a normal day – were part of our exercise towards getting back. Once on A3, the tall buildings we had crossed earlier served as landmarks and we located the point where we had missed the exit. From that point on, things were easy.

The whole detour cost us around 45 minutes. Mother joked that we had already given them a tour of Paris. For me, it was a miracle, sheer good luck; I do not know if we could manage it a second time. Father, who had been asked not to interrupt the communication between Wife and me during this phase, looked very relieved. He thought Wife was the only reason we had managed to find our way back. That dosage of compliment was perhaps a little in excess, but I anyway told him about the “where is the moon” incident.

“Looking at the moon to find the way?” he said. “Columbus must have been one of your ancestors, then!”

“If Columbus were my ancestor, ” replied Wife, “he would have reached India and not the West-Indies.”

The way out of the maze – after the weekend in the city – was easier. And the drive back was lovely again, until we reached the German border.

e-baggage

The whole family – mom, dad, sis, wife and me – is about to leave for Amsterdam in a short while. Apart from things travellers have been carrying over the years, our list includes the following:

3 Mobile phone chargers
2 Digital camera chargers
1 Laptop charger
1 USB cable

eBaggage

Strange times, these.

Belgian weekend

facade1

Last weekend – a long one, spanning four partly-cloudy days – was spent at Oostende, a lively coastal town in Belgium. Nearby Brugge, a town that appeared sleepy even when crowded with tourists, offered an amazing variety of facades that adorned the rooftops of almost every structure we saw.

facade2

FIMU 2004

We just returned after a nice weekend at FIMU – a music festival held each year in Belfort (France) – and since the different thoughts about the weekend refuse to coalesce into a well-structured form I shall write them down as they are.

Somehow last year seemed more fun (the novelty factor, perhaps) and nothing of what we attended this time created the magic we experienced in 2003.

The Chinese have a strange way of presenting introductions. An extract from the brochure of the Art troupe National Music and Dance of South China Normal University: “The troupe is composed of ….associate professor Ning Yong who is praised as the Chinese Great Master of Ruan, the associate professor of dance Wang Haiying who is praised as the Rising Star in the Educational Circles of South Guang Dong…”

The French simply do-not-know-or-do-not-want to speak English. In other European countries you may encounter a willingness to communicate – through a few words or monosyllables of English the natives may know – but the French, no sir. They are either wholly ignorant of the language or are resolute in their determination not to speak it.

There are few things in this world that can offer as much relaxation as an hour of listening to violins and cellos.

FIMU is not the best of places to listen to western classical music. Since all concerts are free there is always a thoroughfare of people walking in and out of the halls, frequent whispers between people, and even the occasional ringing of mobile phones. When I express this aloud, my wife says:”It adds to the charm of the place. If you want a perfectly silent environment go to the Vienna music festival and pay a handsome price for each ticket.” Hmmm…..

Wife also says that Anu Malik would have a field day at this festival, hopping in and out of concerts, pinching tunes for his forthcoming movies.

Digital Dilemma

Every picture may tell a story, but there are stories behind the pictures too, ones that could have led to a very different set of pictures. Simply put, we could have ended up returning from Venice without most of those nice photos.

The constraints of memory

A week before we left for Venice, we decided to buy a new digital camera. We already had a pocket-sized digital camera, and our earlier plan was to carry it in addition to our bigger SLR camera that used film. Then, after discussing the pros and cons of upgrading our SLR to a digital one (with which we could still use the lenses of the old SLR), we decided to go ahead.

So with three days to go, we bought the Canon Digital Rebel.

Digital cameras come with a price (apart from being pricey in the empty-your-pocket kind of way): you need to be equipped with enough storage capacity to last the length of your stay. Our usual strategy with the older digital camera was to carry our laptop on long trips, and upload photos to the laptop before emptying the memory card for a fresh round of photos. This time, as our luck would have it, the new camera’s software refused to work with the laptop (it worked with our desktop, however). We had purchased a memory card that could carry around 150 photos, which, by our estimates, was not enough for even two days at Venice.

So on the day of the trip, a few hours before we left, we bought a compact hard-drive into which we could insert our memory card and store our photos. It was a flimsy looking device with an LCD display that indicated the file transfer from card to hard-drive. The transfer of files from this hard-drive to our computer could not be tested – we had no time on our hands – so when we left we were feeling rather uneasy about our decision to go completely digital so late. What if the photos we transfer to this hard-drive cannot be retrieved?

I decided on a backup strategy: at the end of each day we would transfer all photos from the memory card into the hard drive, but instead of emptying the memory card we would retain the best photos in the card and delete the rest. This would leave us, at the end of the trip, with at least 150 good photographs (which was the capacity of the card), even if the hard drive refused to work when we got back.

The idea sounded reasonable, but it had some interesting consequences. At the end of the first day, I deleted all but 25 photos. After day two, I had 50 “good” photos preserved in the card. Now that meant on day three there was space to take only 100 more photos! We exhausted the limit before day three ended, so I had to fish out the hard drive in the middle of a bridge, transfer from the card to the hard-drive, and then clean up the not-so-good ones from the card before we could go ahead and take more photographs.

As the days went by, I had to be more ruthless in deleting as many as possible and retain only the “masterpieces” (relative to the other ordinary ones). I also had to stop more and more often to perform the transfer-and-delete operation.

The deletion was not always easy – amongst the photos were many taken by my wife. I had to be objective, of course, but since different people have different notions of beauty there was a good chance that what I found a candidate for deletion was thought to be otherwise by my wife. Fortunately, she let me do as I wanted.

The last day left us with space for only around 25 photos. We spent a lot of time that day simply absorbing things around us without worrying about the best possible angle to capture something.

In the end the strategy turned out unnecessary – the hard-drive worked well and we were able to retrieve all of the 700 odd photos we took in Venice. And some of the ones I had deleted turned out better than the ones I had retained. “So much for your objectivity and aesthetic sense”, I almost heard my wife saying.

The auto power-off mystery

Very early on our trip, I noticed a strange behaviour of our new digital camera: every now and then the camera would shut its power off on its own.

My first guess was that it had something to do with the auto power-off setting, which could be set at different intervals (or even switched off completely). I verified the setting – it was at a comfortable two minutes, which was fine with me. I let it be.

Along the drive to Venice, when my wife was at the steering wheel, I would try to capture elements of the surrounding scenery whenever possible. On a few occasions, during the short window of time where I had to click, I found the camera off. I was almost sure there hadn’t been a gap of two minutes since the time I used it last.

After a while this got a little frustrating; I decided to probe further. It was clear that the auto power-off was not functioning normally. Further, I had noticed another curious aspect: once in a while the camera would switch on automatically, as if the power-off was a temporary phase. Was there a pattern in this strange behaviour?

There seemed to be a pattern, I thought. The interval between the camera switching itself off and then coming on automatically seemed to coincide with the auto power-off interval that was set. I decided to verify this: I set the auto power-off interval to four minutes, and waited for it to switch itself off. That happened soon, and I noted the time on my watch. Then, four minutes later I lifted the camera to check if it had come on, and as I had expected, it switched on before my eyes! I tested this behaviour again by setting the interval to two minutes, and the pattern repeated itself.

I told my wife we had received a freaky piece of equipment, with an inverted power-off logic programmed into it. She didn’t believe me; she thought I hadn’t learned how to use the camera.

After we switched driving-seats she tried it and fared no better – the camera went off and came on irregularly (and I allowed myself a short laugh). But even my hypothesis about the inverted logic failed when she tested it – there seemed to be no correlation between the setting and the time intervals with which the camera went off and came on.

Initial frustration slowly turned to resignation; we decided to make do with whatever photos we could capture when the power was on.

It was during lunch on the first day at Venice that I decided to take a closer look at the troubleshooting section of our camera manual. (The first attempt had revealed nothing more than some description about the auto power-off setting, but I wanted to check again). It was a bit of a struggle deciphering the contents of the German instruction manual, but after a while I came upon a point that seemed promising: check whether the battery compartment has been shut properly, it suggested.

I turned the camera over and gave the cover of the battery compartment a gentle push. There was a small click. My heart almost leaped.

The loose battery compartment cover turned out to be the cause behind all the unpredictable off and on behaviour. It also explained why my initial tests surrounding my theory had worked: after the time interval I had set passed and I lifted the camera to check if it had automatically come on, I probably put enough pressure on the battery compartment lid to ensure an electrical contact that resulted in the camera receiving power from the battery. If you are looking for something, chances are good you’ll find it.

The episode reminded me of what I sometimes hear at my workplace, when developers are irritated by customers who report trivial issues: always read the f***ing manual!

Depicting Venice

We recently got back after a vacation in Venice.

Everything one can say about Venice – past, present, future – appears to have been said by Italo Calvino in Invisible Cities – his masterpiece that defies classification (and even, perhaps, description). After reading those pages, anything I can put down seems hopelessly commonplace; I wonder if it is worth attempting a sketch of either the city or the book.

When words fail, pictures come to the rescue. We captured images of Venice in plenty; the albums listed below offer a thematic view to this city of all cities.

Temple Visit

We visited a temple in Stuttgart last Sunday – our first temple visit in Germany. The chance came when my wife learnt – while talking to a relative – that they were visiting this place; she immediately jumped and expressed her wish to join. Me, the chauffeur, had no choice but to agree; absence of religious inclinations do not play a role in such decisions.

It was a thirty-minute drive to the relative’s place (where their six month old baby greeted me with a warm, wet feeling as soon as I carried him), and another hour to the temple (which was prolonged further by the exit we missed in the middle of a conversation). When we reached our destination, it was around seven in the evening.

The street was in the middle of what seemed like an office district, with tall, closely spaced buildings wearing a deserted look (it was Sunday, I told myself). The temple itself was in the basement of an office complex: an open area with pillars in between, it wore a look of a car park hastily converted into a place of worship. Despite these initial impressions, the place felt like a temple. I was filled with the same sense of devoutness I experience when I enter a temple in India. The melodies playing on the speaker were loud yet soothing; it somehow felt calm and familiar.

While the others were offering their prayers to different gods, I took a look around. Apart from us there were only a few other people. Mantaps – crude, but patched up with colorful paint – had been erected at different places, each hosting a different murti. On some mantaps rough figures of gods were carved out of the cement structure. The place was clean and well maintained, however. It appeared to be the result of dedication and commitment towards building all this and keeping it going. Funds were clearly lacking, but devotion was not.

After aarthi, teertha and prasada, we proceeded towards the exit to collect our shoes. There, my wife struck up a conversation with a lady who seemed to be from the family that managed the temple. After a few questions and answers in Tamil, the lady said something that made my ears turn alert.

“Would you like some vadas?” she asked.

I felt my tongue turn wet. My wife hesitated, but even she couldn’t hold herself for long; she nodded. The lady passed on a word to a temple caretaker, who soon returned with a large plate of hot vadas. He packed them neatly and handed the packet to us.

The drive back was faster. There was little conversation, and we missed no exits.

A festival par excellence

We were in a queue for a while, after which we were let in. We walked through a passage to reach the center of tower No.41, where, through the enveloping darkness, we heard the mellifluous strains of saxophones in the air. A little further, around a pillar that divided the area into two sections at right angles, we saw the source of the enchanting music : four Mexican saxophone players were playing in a corner, watched by people sitting in perpendicular directions. As we took our seats, the piece being played came to an end and the players stood up, bowed. Applause followed, and we joined in.

They sat down immediately, and began their next piece. The ambience, dimly lit, brick walled, and narrow-spaced, seemed perfect for the instruments being played, and we were drawn into a trance by the magic of the pipers. Sitting there, feeling the music seep in, one felt this was how life ought to be – a dreamlike existence filled with music. It was a moment in a million, a moment one would cherish for eternity, a moment, the mere thought of which would be enough to relive its ecstasy.

The saxophone quartet programme was the perfect ending to an amazing Saturday at FIMU, Belfort. This music festival, spanning over three days of a long weekend, is held each year in this quaint little fortress town in France, with groups from all over the world coming to play music of different varieties and styles.

None of the concerts had any entrance fees, and the venue for each concert was either an open stage erected for this festival, or indoors, inside regular or makeshift concert halls, and all of these venues were located within a radius of around 2 to 3 kilometers. Where ever one went, there was music in the air, and with so much choice available there were times when one couldn’t make up one’s mind about which concert to attend. For a lover of music, there was only one word for this setting : paradise.

We were introduced to this festival by Stefan & Uta, who have been participating in this event since the last six years, and this time they suggested that we come along. It turned out to be an unforgettable weekend; we’re already looking forward to FIMU 2004.

Some pictures of our trip have been collected in the photo album FIMU 2003.

To India and Back

We recently returned from India, after a three and half week vacation. It was after two and half years we were setting foot on our ‘motherland’, and on our way in I was assailed by doubts about how my perception of India may have been altered by our stay abroad.

It turned out that India was just as it always had been… like India. Back in the familiar surroundings of Bangalore, one felt there really was no gap at all – it was as if I had always been there. Then, the thought that I had even nurtured the possibility of things being otherwise made me feel foolish.

There were changes, yes, but nothing that was out of India’s character. India was growing, progressing, struggling with issues that come with growth and progress, and finding its own unique ways of resolving these issues.

Among of the different complaints I had heard from expatriates returning to the country for a brief vacation, the ones most frequently encountered were related to traffic and pollution. It appeared to me a case of misplaced comparison – these people were probably comparing the traffic and pollutions levels in India with those in the west and concluding that these had increased to unbearable levels back home ( at least in Bangalore, they said ).

I found that traffic congestion and pollution levels were more or less what they were around 2 and half years back, when I had seen Bangalore last. What was new in Bangalore was an initiative from the Bangalore Development Authority to construct flyovers in select areas – something that should have started a few years earlier, but clearly welcome at least now. These constructions had, in places, made the traffic situation worse, and BDA had erected boards displaying the reassurance “Bear with temporary inconvenience now, and reap permanent benefits later”. ‘Temporary’, of course, conveyed no definite timeframe.

A welcome addition to the city : Baristas. These coffee houses offered a concept common in Europe but unique back home : a cup of coffee for unlimited time at the cafe. The Baristas on St.Marks Road – introduced to us by Ashwin – turned out to be a place frequented by the younger generation of the city : some were chatting away as usual, a couple of girls were playing scrabble, a group of boys and girls were slouched on the sofa – almost on top of each other, it seemed – and treating the place like the drawing room of their house, another girl was writing something into her notebook…. you get the picture. They also served coffee, and the Cappuccino I had was among the better ones I had tasted. Ashwin said he came to the place – which was a 10 min walk from his office and next to his music school where he took Piano lessons – a few times every week, and at times did his music homework, which included composing pieces, sipping a cup of coffee or an ice tea there. I now have a nice story ready for the day Ash becomes a famous composer : “Making music at Baristas” goes the heading. I envy Ashwin and all those who have access to a place like that.

Shopping was fun. Everything was clearly more expensive than it had been back when were there, but we couldn’t help dividing the amount on the tags by a factor of 50 and feeling good about the price in Euros we were shelling down. Clothes and books were our main items, and we picked these in plenty. ( Among the books purchased were a few collections of R.K.Narayan’s works, an anthology of Indian literature edited by Amit Choudhury, a new translation of The Ramayana published by Penguin, the complete set of Tintin comics, “White Mughals” a work on 18th century India by William Darymple and a couple of others I cannot remember offhand. So I now have a handful more of books on the ever-increasing ‘to be read’ list ).

Travel in India was…Oh ! Wife’s calling. Must stop here. Will continue in my next entry….