Here I am, at Munich airport, 6 hours before the scheduled departure of my flight. Yeah, this is what happens when you confuse the check-in time with the departure time! To make matters worse (or better if you are a sadist!), yesterday I had quite a day of mountain biking and hiking and have slept just 3 hours after that. Anyways, this huge chunk of useless time has finally given me time to update my blog again.
It has been a wonderful last couple of months for me. Be it working in an awesome lab, visiting some very beautiful places (mostly alone), cooking or walking half and hour to fetch groceries and stuff; I have mostly enjoyed it all. After the first couple of days here, I had never imagined that I would actually feel bad about leaving this place. But the first thing that crossed my mind after getting up today was “Oh shit! I’m going to leave today.”
In fact, when I come to think of it now, the first couple of long days here was a perfect foil to the last day that I spent here. For Friday I had planned of leaving early, get getting laundry done and then waiting for my flight back home. Then I receive this mail informing about a mountain biking tour which the members of the group were planning on. There I got an opportunity to screw up all calmness which came with my plans with a lots of chaos. And I grabbed it! So all the plans were made and after returning from lab at 8, getting the laundry done having food and some related wastage of time I went to sleep at 1 only to get up at 6 for a mountain biking trip!
Now the people over here are generally absolute fitness freaks. I was informed that this trip was going to be too tough towards the end! Well the trip was tough. But, from pretty much the beginning itself! While initially there were occasions when we would get slopes after some intervals; later on these just dried up. After I struggled to barely reacha place where others were waiting for me, Thomas (the prof I was working under) declared “now it is going to be quite tough”! After some time it turned out that I was virtually just hiking up with the bike! So I locked the bike and started hiking instead. It was suddenly so much easier and comforting! We (I mean in different batches of course!) reached the castle where we had aimed to reach. Had some rest, enjoyed the sight of valley, mountains, had a tour of a really small castle, had something to eat and were back on the trail. The ride on bike downhill was awesome! Excellent view again and the bike sending some shivers down the spine every once in a while. Downhill too, I was the slowest one. (The reason will follow shortly) This was pretty much the end of the trip and I was in my room at 00:30 hrs. Then I had dinner, took a bath, packed my stuff and was asleep by 05:00 hrs.
Now a few interesting things that happened enroute:
- While reaching the train station, our underground train was delayed and we reached the train panting (after having a nice run) even before the trip even began!
- In the middle of the way uphill, while I had almost started giving up, Tobias (a PhD student) showed the “other” gear (to the existence of which I had somehow managed to turn a blind eye!).
- A little while ago I had mentioned of some slopes giving relief intermittently. Well, as I was especially keen on taking all such welcome opportunities, I usually went quite fast. Unluckily one of these slopes turned out to be too steep and too long. Hence I lost control of my bike with the back tyre locked and me zooming past everyone. As I was crossing Thomas, he asked me to slow down. And I did slow down; albeit a bit too fast! This sudden halt sent me flying with the bike flying over me. (It was mentioned to me later that I had managed to put up a cartoon type show!) While I was happy at being all right, Thomas suddenly mentioned that my specs were not on my face. After a minor search operation I found my specs too. It was repeated to me quite a lot of times that I was very lucky to have come out virtually unscathed. :)
- After I shed my bike for good, it started raining. I got this funny rain-bora from Thomas and we went to a hut nearby to take shelter. There a funny bearded guy was quite excited on seeing an Indian. He had a nice long conversation with me. He managed to put up a nice little monologue! Later on I was told that he was talking in the Bavarian dialect of German and that his brother too had visited India sometime back. The trip to the over crowded hut was one hell of an experience.
- While having the dinner it was almost decided that we would not be able to take the 21:37 hrs train any more and hence had a lot of time to spare. But, suddenly one of us had a sudden realization that if we could catch the train, IF we hurry. And hurrying is not always easy! Still we did hurry and after a lot of running were able to catch the train. Quite a fitting way to end given the start!
Add to all this complete exhaustion, some ridiculous bhaat, the striking beauty of the place, biking (downhill) next to the sound of gushing river, rain, being in half pant in chilling cold and similar stuffs and what I got was a day full of fun and nice time pass of an hour and fifteen minutes the next day! ;)
A Frust Mind 