Hello hello lovely readers! How are you? Como estas? Hoe gaat het met jou? :P
I am back again with stories from my last few months :) A lot has happened recently .... I made a trip to India to attend Ranjeets wedding, I went to Hanover to visit Iris and I went to Spain for the christmas new years holidays! On top of that, Arvind Kejriwal became the chief minister of Delhi!! So I thought its a good time to share some pictures and experiences from past few months. So, I was in India for the last 2 weeks of November. During this time, I attended Ranjeet's wedding in Patna. I am super happy that I was there, with him, on Ranjeet's special day.
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| Meeting him after 2 years on his wedding :) |
It was a great experience for me in some ways. During the wedding, I realised that I have never really attended a real bihari wedding before. This realisation shook me a little as I realised that all my life, I have mostly attended marwari weddings! The amount of influence your caste and community can have on your life as an Indian is quite remarkable. Throughout Ranjeet's wedding, I could not help but compare bihari marriage ritual with marwari rituals. I was quite shocked to see that in the baraat, no girls were allowed. It was a kind of culture shock for me to see an all male baraat! But after enquiring a bit, I realised that this is quite common in most bihari weddings (and also in many weddings in UP area). Regardless, I enjoyed Ranjeets hospitality for 2 days with non stop food, chai and whisky :) And, I also got to meet couple of his cool friends (Sumit and Shashwat) and his loving family.
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| Ranjeet with this weird hat during one of the ceremonies :P |
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| With the newly wed couple :) |
After his wedding, I went home to Sitamarhi. This time, I celebrated my birthday at home after many many years. My parents organised a small party with some family and close friends.
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| With my grand parents :) :) |
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| Cutting the Cake for my 28th! |
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| Mom organised Satyanarayan Pooja on my birthday |
Then it was time to come back to Holland. In December, I had few exceptionally busy days at work. But then it was time for Christmas-New Year holidays again :) Working at MARIN has an advantage here.It closes from 24th December to 2nd January for holidays! This is quite rare even for dutch companies. For this holiday, I went to Spain with few friends ... first to Barcelona from 24th Dec to 29th Dec and then to Madrid from 29th Dec to 2nd Jan. Spain is an amazing country and we had a blast during our trip :)
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| Smile please :) |
We reached Barcelona on 24th late night and checked in our hostel HelloBCN (highly recommended for its location, friendliness and cleanliness, it's also quite cheap). As 25th and 26th December is a national holiday, the whole city was closed. Hence we decided to see nearby smaller cities for first couple of days.
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| @Sitges |
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| LOL :P |
We had an amazing time in Barcelona! I met Jaume, my spanish colleague from MARIN, had some amazing spanish food (although its hard to be a vegetarian in Spain!), did a lot of Dali and Gaudi stuff (sagrada familia church in Barcelona is awe inspiring... a must visit monument if you are in the city ... buy your tickets online tough, we had to stand in line for 2 hours) and took a free guided tour organised by Sandeman (look below for details).
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| eating tapas and drinking sangria :D |
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| with Jaume, eating paella in Barcelona :P |
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| @ Girona's old town |
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| Oh yeah! :P |
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| Main ramta jogiiiiii, Main ramta jogi :P |
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| Priyanka eating Dali's egg at Figueres ;) |
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| The Royal Heart by Salvador Dalí! |
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| Me @ Dali museum in Figueres |
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| Roof top of Sagrada Familia church .... a mesmerizing structure |
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| Priyanka and Jasper @ Park Güell |
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| Mesmerising view of Barcelona from Park Güell |
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| In spain, they sell meat (ham) as we sell peanuts in India! Quite amazing ... |
Now for those of you who are unfamiliar with Sandemans, look at this:
http://www.neweuropetours.eu/. They have free guided tours in 18 cities. I took 2 of them (one in barcelona and one in madrid) and it was an amazing experience! I highly recommend you to try it. Both times, we had a big group (around 45 and 75 people) and very energetic and interesting tour guide. This tour is a nice way to get the feel of the city and learn about its interesting history (and quite a lot of random trivia) while walking around it for 3 hours. Sandemans organises these tours for free as a publicity for its other paid tours. Dont forget to pay a tip to your free tour guide!
After the Barcelona trip, we went to Madrid. For those who don't know, Madrid is the party city in Spain! Specially during new years, hoards to international and local tourists visit Madrid to eat 12 grapes at puerta del sol (one of the squares in Madrid). So when we reached the city on 29th, everything was already looking crazy ... jam-packed streets, people everywhere and everytime of the day! Here we boarded in Hostal Sotileza (recommended for location and cleanliness ... was located 2 minutes from puerta del sol, but the staff speaks no english at all ... also super cheap). On 30th, we went to Toledo, the old capital of Spain (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo,_Spain). Its a extremely touristy town filled with souvenier shops, but it is very pretty ... and hence a nice option for a day trip from Madrid.
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| Toledo during sunset ... a mesmerizing old town |
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| Me and Jasper on our way to Toledo |
On 31st, we took the Sandemans free walking tour during the day time. It was another amazing experience. I now know a lot of weird things about Madrid :P ... On 31st evening, we decided to join Sandeman's new years eve pub crawl -
http://www.newmadrid-tours.com/daily-tours/new-years-eve-pub-crawl-madrid-2013-2014.html. It worked out great for us as we didn't had any pre arranged plans and everything (from restaurants to pubs to clubs) was either completely full or was charging insane amounts of money (i saw a club with door charge of 250 euros :O)! It was a fun night for all of us. Tough I wouldn't recommend anyone to go to puerta del sol on that night. In Spain, people welcome new year by eating 12 grapes. Thousands of people gather at puerta del sol to eat grapes and it is telecasted all over the Spain so that the rest of people can eat grapes by watching this live telecast on their television (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Grapes). It was so crowded that I was fearing a stampede any moment. It was not comfortable at all and we had no idea when to eat our grapes (it was so noisy that we didn't even hear the bell ringing). I got so frustrated that i didn't even ate my grapes :P and on top of that, priyanka's new and expensive phone was stolen right around midnight! Next day when we went to police station to report this, there were many other people who had their documents and phones stolen at puerta del sol on 31st night. So take my word of advice and avoid this square on 31st night. Go to any other place in Madrid ... the whole city is buzzing with parties this night!
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| @ Puerta del Sol in Madrid |
Another recommendation in Madrid ... go to Teatro Muñoz Seca to watch Ballet Flamenco De Madrid (
http://www.balletflamencodemadrid.com). Just amazing one and a half hour flamenco performance with live orchestra .... definately a lifetime experience for us.
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| Teatro Muñoz Seca |
Overall, it was a great trip. We came back with smiles and souveniers for our loved ones ;) :P
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| Wishing you a happy and prosperous 2014! :) |
Bye bye for now and see you again soon!
Karan
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