Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Ich liebe Duestchland!

Sorry I feel remiss in not blogging more on this trip. So much happened its hard to find time to record it all. I promise I'll do some make up posts when I get home tomorrow. For now though a quick update...
I'm in Germany visiting my good friend Laurel. It feels so strange to just be stopping for a few days for a visit. Normally if I was coming to Europe I'd stay for at least a week or two. For this trip since I'm flying through Frankfurt I'm visiting for just four days. It so awesome to just be a part of German life and not be in a hotel! I've loved going to the grocery store and buying fresh crossaints in the Backerei (Bakery). I keep joking that its a gastronomical tour of Germany because each day its "what are we going to eat?"!
So the first day we had Spargel soup. Spargel is white asparagus that is in season and a local specialty here. It is SO good, I'm making Laurel take me to get more before I leave. I've had fantastic bier (beer) und wein (wine). We had eis (ice cream/gelato). We had fantastic Italian food. Then on Sunday I went to chapel with Laurel on the US military post here and after we had a very "American" bbq. So its been all over the map for us. I loved every minute of it!
New picture of Spargel soup...mmm...mmm...good!!!


Wednesday, April 9, 2008

There are only three flavors of India: Spicy, Spicer and SUPER Spicy

Every day for lunch in the office the manager I work with here has food ordered and delivered for us. Its nice to have it just show up and helps us stay productive. The first two days they got us some fairly "American" food so today when the suggestion was Indian "Veg" as they call it or something more my normal I decided lets be adventurous and go Indian "Veg", mostly because the India team eats what we eat. Many Indian's are Vegetarians because of their religion so there are vegetarian or "Veg" as they say options and "Non-Veg" options on every menu. I did end up with some more mild chicken brisas (I'm guessing at the spelling) for lunch and then I decided to try a little dab of the curry that came too. Bad idea... I tasted it and then proceeded to have my mouth feel like it had been numbed with Novocaine for the next 30 minutes. They were all laughing at me. I've been trying small portions of Indian food since I've been here and its been really good so far, but I've steered away from the more standard spicy food. But really there is nothing here that isn't spicy! We got pizza yesterday and the vegetarian pizza had a ridiculous amount of spices on it. I was so surprised at the first bite. Tomorrow I guess we are getting Mexican food for lunch. Who knew there would be Mexican in India?!


I did discover that one of my new favorite Indian foods is called Masala Dosa. Its essentially a sort of whole wheat crepe filled with curried potatoes and onions. It is SO yummy. Its a breakfast food and I order it every day. I also discovered Caffe Coffee Day, the local Starbucks if you will. Their lattes are quite a bit smaller than the huge sizes we have in the US, but its been pretty good. Today I did the conversion and realized I got a latte for about 1 US dollar. Seriously, that right there is a reason to move to India. Cheap coffee. But believe me there are many reasons not too also. For example the power goes out in the office at least once maybe a few times a day randomly. Thank goodness for laptop batteries and auto save!


Another observation... There is a servant to do every little task in India! There are guys who sit in the elevators and press buttons all day. There are guys who do nothing but clean the bathrooms all day. They are always lurking in the hall near the bathrooms. Yesterday I tried to clean up the lunch pizza boxes and got in trouble for doing so, because there are people to clean up after you. I feel like such a lazy slob here, but its just so ingrained in the culture. I mean people even expect the waiters to serve the meal to them in restaurants. I just reach over and serve myself and the waiters rush over try and take over for me. Seriously a different world here. I laugh because in the US they won't even empty my trash at work now!

The autorickshaws (which consequently are not allowed to come in to my hotels driveway and property area).


You can kind of see the cow wandering through traffic (this is rush hour). Every one just honks and drives around them because cows are sacred to the Hindu's. Many have their horns painted and decorated. They just wander the city. Some might have homes and others might be strays.

The night life in Bangalore... We went to this hysterical club on the top floor of a large office building that was totally empty because apparently we were there on the wrong night. Its extremely busy on Bollywood night (Indian pop music of sorts) but on our night it was 80's music and that obviously doesn't draw a crowd!

This is MG road, there's an MG road in every major city. Stand for: Mahatma Gandhi

Monday, April 7, 2008

Landed!

I'm in Bangalore India! The flight was over 24 hours to get here and thank goodness it was just two flights. Lufthansa is pretty nice and I watched three movies, two TV shows and slept a good portion of the time. The service doesn't compare with Singapore Air, but it was still nice. A huge chunk of frequent flier miles added to the list.

The airport was quite an experience (apparently a nice new one has been built but it wasn't open in time for us to go through it) and thank goodness we had a driver because on exiting the airport it was complete and utter insanity. Cars and traffic everywhere! The traffic here is insane. Here's a pic of our drive in to work today, no lanes really are used and apparently we were on a one way road but people were coming from the other direction for a while! There is absolutely no order and we've seen quite a few fender benders. People just bump into each other, back up and keep going. Tons of motorcycles and of course no one wearing helmets and auto rickshaws (I'll take a pic of this for a later post).

Since arriving we've been with a co-worker from the States who is from India which has made our transition so much easier. He essentially gets us everywhere and speaks to the drivers so we are just along for the ride, its fantastic! We had a little tour of the city Sunday and have done some shopping and started work in the office yesterday. Everyone is hospitable as always.
For breakfast there is this yummy Indian food called Dosa. Its like a crepe that is filled with curried potatoes and onion and it is just FANTASTIC. I tried it on suggestion from a co-worker who was here months ago and its so good.
I'll write more later. Here are a few pic's of our tour of Bangalore on Sunday. It reminds me a little of a city you'd see in Mexico or South America. The heat, the crazy driving, the extreme switch from nice new buildings to total poverty.

Karnataka Federal Building (Bangalore is the capital of the region/state of Karnataka).


A botanical garden we visited, Bangalore is known as the city of gardens (and the Silicon Valley of India).

Boys playing Cricket (the national past time) in the street. They loved talking to us and finding out we were from America. Very cute!