My parent's first Euro Trip!

Hi Guys,

2015 just zoomed by! What a year it was ... So many things happened in my life that it is hard to recollect everything while writing this post. A lot of travelling, a lot of family visits and my new married life! Everything happened all at once this year. So in this blog post, I am just going to talk about my parents visit to The Netherlands. The rest of the stories will be covered in separate posts.

The talk of my parent's Europe visit started more or less just after my wedding. The first step was off course to get their Schengen visas stamped. Thankfully they both had their passports ready but if you come from a small town in Bihar, getting your visas can be a herculean task. There is a severe lack of travel agents in Bihar who can process your visa for you. Most travel agents only work with group tourism packages (like SOTC and Cox and Kings). So my father had to collect all the documents and go to Kolkata (which is an overnight train journey) to submit them only to be returned because the size of the photograph needed was different than what he had!! The whole process of getting a visa became so tedious that at one point we where thinking about cancelling their trip. I have to say that most of these difficulties were logistics related. If you live in one of the metros in India, all these things become relatively simple because of the available infrastructure (and proximity to consulates). Finally we found an agent in Kolkata who was willing to process my parent's visa. So my father couriered them all the documents and they submitted those documents, collected the stamped passports back and couriered them to my father. One good outcome in the end was that my parents got a 2 year Schengen visa which is quite rare. It allowed them to spend 90 days in Europe in the period of its validity. 

Welcoming parents at Schipol Airport! :D

So finally the visas were stamped, flight tickets were booked and my parents were all set to visit us in Netherlands. This was my parent's first real international trip so they were rather excited and nervous. I had to tell them each and every detail about what to pack, how to pack, what will happen after they board the flight and after they land, what question can they expect from the immigration officers in Europe etc etc. After a lot of preparation and excitement they landed in Schiphol on 1st of August 2015. In the following 20 days we extensively traveled around Netherlands and made trips to Brussels and Paris. Coincidentally Sayantani's parents also visited us in Netherlands around the same time. So the Bhawsinka's and the Chatterjee's could make some trips together as well. 

Bhawsinka's and Chatterjee's group pic in Amersfoort ;)

It was my parent's first trip to Europe but it was also a new experience for me to host and travel around with my parents in Europe. the learning experience was immense and i would like to share them with you. Your experience of hosting your parents will depend largely on whether your parents live in a small town in India or a big city and how much they have traveled before. In my case, my parents come from a small town and have never traveled abroad before so the whole experience was a bit extreme for them and for me. If you are thinking of inviting your parents to visit Europe, I think you should keep the following in mind:

1. If you plan to travel around with them then do not invite them when its cold (below 15 degrees) and or when its hot (about 25 degrees). In European cities, you have to walk a lot and Indian parents (and middle class Indians in general) are not very accustomed to walk. So if its hot or cold, they are not going to enjoy it at all. If you live in northern Europe then the only recommended months to invite them are July and August.

The mandatory 'we were there' pic! Sun is already annoying them :P

2. Never book flight tickets for your parents using a European travel agent because if you have to change anything in those tickets at a later stage, you will also need to pay a hefty processing fees to the agent other than the normal modification/cancellation charges you pay to the airlines. I made a mistake of booking via www.wtc.nl and I regretted it till the end. Their customer support was horrible and slow! Each time I called them, they made me wait for 30 minutes before anyone picked up the phone. Then offcourse they had to transfer my call to the right department which meant I was again on hold for next 30 minutes!! So frustrating!! Do yourself a favor, just book your tickets via the airlines website.

3. Plan your travels with them carefully. Stay as close to the center of a city as possible. This reduces walking time to most of the attractions. Plan regular breaks in between. 

We stayed right next to the Grand Palace in Brussels and we had an amazing time in the city!

4. Have a list of 3-4 centrally located Indian restaurants in hand in every city you plan to visit. Most Indian parents have eaten dal roti chawal their entire life (specially if they live in a small town in India) and this is what they want when they are in Europe! Don't do the mistake of trying European food with them. All you will get is weird faces and irritated hungry parents in return. And you know what, its not even their fault. If you expect them to like European food in their few days of stay, then you are expecting too much! I have been living abroad for so many years and still when I come home from work, nothing makes me more happy then the sight of spicy flavorful filling Indian food.

Just after arrival at Brussels Central station

My dad and Sayantani @ Grand Palace in Brussels

5. Book Hop-on Hop-off buses! This is a life saver advice. Don't let your backpacker's ego come in between! Your parents would love it, it will be very convenient in terms of travelling and you will yourself see places that you have always ignored.

My dad, fairly amused by all the beer in Brussels

6. My parents enjoyed most simplest of things in Europe that we don't even notice after living here for a while. People eating on the terraces, old women riding bikes, the municipality trucks picking garbage, all the different kind of dogs, the central heating in the apartment .. everything is so amusing for them. They made me think of the first time I went out of India!!

Pic with a guy from a marching band in Brussels, my father obviously was feeling proud to have this opportunity :)

7. Stay close to where things are happening. Their stay became so much more fun just because my apartment is smack bang in the middle of Amersfoort. If you live in the out skirts, the silence that you have become used to will haunt them. My parents would just sit next to the window for hours and observe all the things happening in the centrum. The parades, the live music, people with shopping bags, food, rush, this is what makes them feel comfortable, and amused.

A rare moment ... my dad sharing a drink with Sayantani's dad! Cheers :)

8. We visited several places in Netherlands. Our Geithoorn trip was a special one as both mine and Sayantani's family went there together and stayed there overnight at D'Olde Smidse Hotel (http://www.deoldesmidsegiethoorn.nl/). Highly recommended hotel! And highly recommended destination to go with your parents, or with friends.  

At a beautiful spot along the canals of Giethoorn.

We got a bit cold during our boat trip along the canals :) :)

Posing among the greenery and the flowers!

Dads smile while moms go nomnomnom on their ice-creams :D

The best pic ever! @ Bovenwijde lake in Giethoorn

We also celebrated Sayantani's 26th birthday!

9. Other then that, we went to Amsterdam, Utrecht, Scheveningen beach, and Zaanse Schans. So we covered a large part of the country in the limited time they had. A point to note about Zaanse Schans is that you have a walk a lot in this wind mill village and there is no short cut to that! So keep that in mind before taking your parents there. Avoid going on hot and sunny days.

Soaking in the charms of wind mills at Zaanse Schans

The one with the wooden shoes ;)

@Scheveningen beach with the colourful parrots 

10. We went to Paris from Amsterdam by Thalys train and my parents enjoyed the journey. Sitting on a train travelling at 300 km/hr was rather exhilarating for them. We stay in Hotel Paris Louis Blanc while we were there. The reason we chose this hotel was because it was right next to a metro station (tough quite far from Eiffel Tower) and close to sarvana bhawan. I thought that this would make it easier for us to travel in Paris. But I was wrong. The hotel itself was quite nice but Paris is a huge city, not like Amsterdam or Brussels and there is no real center. All the monuments are spread around the city. As we didn't had car, metro and taxi were the only way to travel. If you travel from Netherlands, the metro stations of Paris feel like they are from stone age. A lot of stairs with no escalators make them very hard to use for elderly people. Because we were always traveling, we could only manage to eat a couple of times at Sarvana Bhawan. It is a highly recommended restaurant for Indian food lovers!! Probably the best Indian food I have had in Europe ... but we should not have decided our hotel based on its location. Its in Gare du Nord area of Paris which is an Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani ghetto.    

You have to pose when you are there!

My dad called my grand father from under the Eiffel Tower to share his feelings. My grand father had visited Europe many many years ago and now my father was standing under it with me ... all 3 generations! It was a proud moment for me.

And this is the romantic one :)

Above the Louvre Museam which houses the Monalisa painting! 

My parents few back to India from Paris. Its was a memorable time for all of us. I am very proud that I could manage to travel around Europe with them. My dad is usually quite busy with work and my parents in general have become quite used to their daily life in small town India. So making this trip possible was no small feat. It shook them off their comfort zone and we all learned a lot from it. They were amazed by the cleanliness and the organization in Netherlands. They were also quite impressed by the physical fitness of an average dutch person. And they also realized that life abroad is not filled with roses and that it comes with it's set of struggles.  

Picking blue berries at Oostvaardersdijk in Almere

A beautiful pic of my parents looking over IJsselmeer ...

A beautiful trip came to an end with their departure. I and Sayantani came back to Netherlands and got busy with our routine life. We look forward to our parents next visit! This time, we plan to take them to Switzerland :)

That's all for the moment. I will be back with our travel stories soon. There is lot more to share!

Love,

Karan