Oktoberfest!

A festival fro just drinking beir... these people are crazy. 14 days of atmost fun. no coming to office, univs closed 12 hours a day in one of the tents drinking, drinking again, vomitting and drinking again.

i was there in Paulaner tent for 5 minutes, proabably the only group with cola in hands, dancing to "Smoke on the water" with i dont know who, Miss somebody.

then comes the rides... the usual giant wheels are taken by 3 year olds here, so i decided ill try my luck with Free Fall, a 13 floor high tower, u r seated in a chair handing in mid air and gravity does the rest. -2G. its actually scary when u drop from such height. but the float is good.

Behind the tents are lawns and drunk people could be insane when they r with their girlfriends. so <>.

with still no results with the memory module and a GRE and a Paris trip scheduled for this weekend, guess updating my blog wont be my first priority!

West Park and Kartofel Bajji

machi, these people cycle 50-60KMs a day... u got cycle rooms in all offices, where they park their "bikes" take a bath and walk into the office. so lets try a german weekend on sunday. we took out our bikes, got the kela in the petrol bunk to fill air. poor aghu had to pedal a damn cycle without air.
why wud they not cycle? special routes, cycle lanes on all roads, 30 odd gears tireless cycles!
West park, for those of u who know englisher garten, in the south equivalent of it, just that its smaller. the usual artifical lake with fountain, the bier garten etc., i guess it wud have been 10kms of cycling, all that i remember when i reached there was 1 hour sleep and "... vunoduu naan konda bandham, mannodu mazai konda sondham, kaaindhalum adi-neerum minjum..." on an infinite loop in my mp3.
Hari gave me 2 options a) to go to stanburger see (25kms from there) and bring back the cycles by S Bahn trains or b) make bajji. obku jump over b)
On sundays there r zero shops open, we had to travel another 1 hour to find a kilo of potatos (kartofels) and onions. making bajji is the easiest. Gram flour, rice flour in 9:1 a litttle backing soda, salt + red chilli powder, mix it to neat paste, put potatos in them and then in oil, take out and eat. i guess the 5 of us there ate atleast 100 bajjis (note: chief cook, chief eater, idea, concept realisation: Raghuraman).

night dinner with US Open at Anantha's: the superb rasam (ushhah) i remember firing at 2 and then sleeping :)

The Danube and the polickar

the usual 24 EUR Bayern ticket and the Regional Express to Passau Hbf. I did try to read a section of Word Power is crappy, but no hope. Whats special about Passau? Its just another German city, or rather a bavarian city, old roads and the Danube river... 10th std geography? yeah, the 2nd longest river in Eu, u can find ships waiting to take u to Ukraine! a pleasant walk down the old town (all these people have only buildings) and suddenly bang there r 3 rivers joining in 1 point. what a site! the danube, the Inn and the Iyl. A walk back to the station was all that we could do cause the last train back to Muenchen was at 8 26. We went in a cruise, thats a different story.

Scene 2:
Location : Inside the return RE in Passau Hbf
People : Me, Hari, police guy 1, police guy 2
Passports bitte...
me : (this was the first thing that came to my mind) appadina? (yes we didnt have out passports and when u r in a foreign country, they expect u to carry urs always)
******* things happened, but we were safe in Munich by the same train. >>matter chappunu finish ho gaya :( <<

Pongal on Aavaniavittam

Sama vedham... the best of the 4... nope its my chavanism playing again, each mantra is a song. Aavaniavittam usually comes a day before vinayakar chakurthi, and its quite enjoyable in Chennai in Ayodhiya mandabam. 4 years i took an offtrack, switched virtually to Yajur, cause majority wins (at times :) ) in BITS.

so here we start: came back from office early at 6PM quick bath, and start off. nethila patta, kezha vezti... what a costume! the short procedure, sandhi, 108 + yagnobavidham + abivadiyae... katham gatham. with iyervaalas all around there is no problems getting punal + veebuudhi. Anantha yedhukku irukar? there was much time left and never in my life have i had the mood to read for GRE, so start off with a new experiment...

its too simple, just add a cube of butter in a cooker, heat it till it becomes ghee. then 4 spoons of pepper, and i dont know whats jeeragam in english, 0.75 washed rice + 0.25 washed payatham parruppu alias ghram dhall (see www.arusuvai.com for pic) and ofcourse 3.5 glasses of water and cook for 5 whistles, i followed the procedure that my dad typed out exactly. 5 sounds later, + a little time, i tried opening and it was very watery... i tasted it, there was something missing... what people call salt! so add salt in step 3 u amature cooks... and i just put it for 1 more whistle. to eat it i guess u should have gone to kaasi for 16 times (punyam pannirkanum). it was wow!

bout it. btw that recepie that u just noted down was for pongal. :)

Salsburg, Austria!!!

A call from Hari, immediately in U6 to his house. 1 hour later we were in RB (Regional Bahn) to Salsburg Hbf.11:46 train. The tickets concept here is cool, we got a partner karte, Bayern, 24EUR, which means u can travel in any transport inside Bavaria till 6:00 the next morning. superb train journey... man Germany is beautiful!
Salsburg is not too far into Austria, its like Chennai in TamilNadu. we were greeted in the station by Mr ## W# and his girlfriend. (slight CBT) usually they say welcome, but in here, its usually "27 deg, no showers forcasted, we r lucky to have u on a perfect weather".
And then the walking started... Mozart's residence, Sound of Music, Mirabell Gardens, Castles on mountain tops. more walking, view from the top of cliffs, 5 * hotels on hill tops, photos coming soon. 5 hours of walking later (atleast 15 kms, pew) we ended up in a roof top restaurant. we ordered a seizi each, its fanta+cola, supera irundhudhu! Walner's gf ordered a choco cake, some Austrian speciality. looked good, so i ordered one as well, slightly costly(if slightly meant Taj range). We were talking for a while about Hari's excapades in Africa.
Another walk to his car, on the banks of Salsa... Bosco...!!! , we were off to aioo, i forgot the name, see. A beautiful lake with mountains all around. sights like this, and german imm remove everything, there were couples all around, me the only loner :(( :(( :(( . Later (about 7) we dropped his gf off (she stays in Salsburg) and caught AutoBahn 8 to Muenchen (Munich in German). Germany has no speed limits, and at the speed we were going, (avg 120 kmph, slow fiat car) there were cars, porche, BMW, Mercedes, which were over taking us on the parallel lane in pew speed. then there was the unusual traffic jam, because a car had crashed, but there were no signs of an accident when it was cleared in 20 min. so totally it took us some 1hr 45 min for 130kms.
Anantha's house straight, ketkave vendam, ahhh... keerai sambar + carrot curry, what taste!
Crash, up, brush, office, blogging!

photos up at http://photos.yahoo.com/raghuramanb_2000

Hari cut hungama

from saibaba to mottai (both on top and in the pocket) in 20 min. saloons (savaran) here r quite different. obku as soon as she touched my hair, btw, this she is a great looking "hair styler", she wanted to wash it before touching it again :) so first a shampoo wash (Rs 150). Then the usual cuttings of India. i said "kurz bitte" and supera cut panna. after a little talking about India and how i liked Germany, she said she will do hair styling for me kostenloss (free). cant say no u see... so 3 min later (and half a lit of hair gel later) <<>> im not joking here, but it looked amazing. Damn Indian culture, i had to wash it off cause i just had a cut. out contees got to good that she gave me a card which 4 times get a cut free offer, but totally it cost me 11EUR (Rs604.468, $13.81)... cause it was a cheap, appointmentless shop!

No pictures taken, sorry!