Herinneringen uit België – Week III

This is coming after a long long time…I hope to be more regular from now on!

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The week started with an unsuccessful trail at scanning some parts of a book at the college. There were three of us who wanted the scan and so went to the library to check it out….but guess what? All the instructions were in Dutch and so we could hardly make any head and toe of it. Only common sense seemed to be working…the button enclosed in the green box must be ok! At the end we were able to take care of it

By the way the best thing that happened was that I was able to locate an Indian store. Even better that they have ready to eat stuff from Haldiram! So no more fries (on a regular basis that is!) and burgers! Now I have dal makhani, chhole, aaloo matar et al for food. Yippieeeeee

Another good thing was that I figured out a way of calling India. Thanks to very decent wi-fi connection I bought skype credit. And it feels awesome to talk home. Without it catching hold of dad was a task in itself! And it did help me a lot when I had to call travelocity to advance my ticket…and so I am coming home early now. If everything goes to plan I would be in Bombay on the morning of the 3rd of December!

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…to be continued…

What has the future in store for me?

Ever wondered how we always want to look towards the future even at the cost of neglecting everything we see in the present?

It is the classic case of contentment versus ambition! Most people maintain that it is this desire of trying to see beyond what we see, that propels us forward in life. The effort we make to get what “others” can’t, sets us apart from the “crowd”…

My simple argument is…till when?

Song on my mind -

Que Sera, Sera. Whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours, to see. Que Sera, Sera. What will be, will be…

Herinneringen uit België – Week II

One thing that is common between the place I was studying in India and Antwerp is the fact that nothing is open on a Sunday. Call it a day for the family all the shops are closed! Just can’t understand how the retailing industry does not make use of that fact and close some other day of the week like we have back in Delhi!

The important thing was that I did not have any stock of things to eat and it was a Sunday. Luckily I, along with my friend, was able to locate “Quick” near our place of stay which was open and therefore able to survive that Sunday!

Some people eat to live but with me it is the other way around, I live to eat. I was excited about coming to a new destination so that I could try a lot of things however it just went away because I think they simply survive on junk. I actually googled what they exactly called food here and it was interesting to come across a lot of what I would call snacks and no major meal as such. By the way did you know what the world calls French Fries is actual Belgian in origin? So here it is just called fries and it sells like fries (I think I will use this new phase from now on…so instead of hot cakes it has to be fries!)

I borrowed a pan from Chinese student to make myself Maggi. Can’t tell you how happy I was to have a warm dinner  Looks like I am going on and on with food…but if you have known me for some time you would know how important it is for me

If someone asks me how is Belgium treating me my standard reply has become something like this “Since I am not really a party animal nor into drugs, it is not as wild as you think!”. 

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…to be continued…

Time Pass…

Never before…

…have I been that regular at getting up early in the morning!

…have I ate, purposely, that little!

…have I tweeted that much!

…have I been that bored of cricket!

…have I been to a lavish Punjabi wedding and had nothing!

…have I been to an even more lavish wedding and had very little!

…have I given that much importance to what people have to say about me!

…have I enjoyed my loneliness!

…have I been that uncertain about the future!

…have I missed being me that much!!!

Herinneringen uit België – Week I

After arriving at the Brussels which happens to be the seat of power for the European Union we got on a train to take us to Antwerp. French is all I could hear around me…

I will give you a little background about Belgium. It is an interesting little country. It is divided into two zones – Flanders, which is the northern part & Wallonia, which is the southern part. Antwerp, city that I was in, is in the Flemish region. The official language of Flanders is Dutch while Wallonia speak French. The most peculiar part is that people don’t like Netherlands here and well it is a European thing to not like French so south doesn’t like French!!!

Upon arrival in Berchem station in Antwerp we caught a bus which was supposed to drop us at the hostel which would be out home for the next 80 days. But we did not know you had to make the bus stop else it just keeps going. Having overshot it and reached a hospital nearby, we took a cab. And as you can guess cabs are expensive!!! The smart thing we did was to ask that guy to call the hostel and find out where it is. 400 meters and 5 euros later we were at our “home”!

Week one was mainly trying to find out more about Antwerp. How a bus ticket on the bus would cost 2 Euros while taken on the station cost a much lesser 1.2! So to get to the University…with all the signs in Dutch it was a task for the day 1. Went to a pub one night but were smart enough to take help of a Belgian student so that we could get back home!

Next night was beer bowling. The idea is lots of beer and lots of bowling…though I was more interested in the latter! And I got to meet a lot of people from a lot of countries!! My fellow student was concerned his game would go for a toss with all the beer…but what was the highlight of the evening was a 5km walk home because he was high and didn’t want to leave. Hence we missed the last bus and therefore a long walk home…the temperature hovering about 7-8 degree Celsius!

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…to be continued…

Herinneringen uit België

The title literally translates to “Memories from Belgium”! After much thought and a lot of editing [ ] I decided to post my experiences while I was in Europe on an exchange program. These posts were weekly mails I used to send my close friends while I was there! Here they would be intermittently posted in between the regular ones!

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This 80-day trip to Europe was one of the most anticipated things of my MBA life. What started as a casual thought was close to being a reality!

But before I could embark on this wonderful journey there were a lot of things to take care of! Initially coaxed into it by filling just a couple of forms became a full-fledged preparation as time passed by.

After the admission to the university was taken care of I needed to work on the visa. And foreign currency. And packing. And what not! So these were some of the mountains I still had to conquer before I could step on European soil!

And everything boiled down to the last week! I was so zonked that there were times I slept while writing an exam! Beat that!!! So I would simply write whatever came to my mind and got back to my room to sleep! And it was the same thing the next day not to mention special exams that I had to write for some courses!

Cut to the day I was finally writing the final exams for Term IV.  The day was here. My friend, who coaxed me in this exchange program,  and I were at the airport only to realize the tickets we had to Bombay were actually tickets for the month gone by! Not a very auspicious start I would say. Booked new ones and there we were flying to the financial capital of the country. I did manage to see a lovely rainbow mid-air, probably nature telling me it is not all that bad!

International flight was decent. The planes were comfortable. We had a 4 hour stop at Istanbul where we had Turkish coffee which was pathetic but the only reason we had it was that we wanted to access the internet at that cafe! Mission accomplished @ 10 Euros!

Uneventful journey thereafter got me to Belgium!

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…to be continued…