Day 1

With very less sleep, and very wide anxiety, we left home with 6 baggages in the trunk. The procedures took some time, but I was flying before I realized I'm leaving my dear people behind. Confessions of a shopoholic, Bride Wars and Marley and me... three movies that I badly wanted to see since their release. What a splendid place and time to see them! And we zapped down to Dubai in no time at all.


The UAE airport is a paradise for people who love chocolates, perfumes, cosmetics and alcohols. Most people know about my fascination towards chocolates. So, imagine me roaming around in a place where there were around a lac snicker bars. If you're a guy, imagine roaming around a nude beach in Bahamas. If you're a girl, well... I don't know what girls are crazy about... cosmetics, guys or crazy health consciousness? But, hope you get what I mean.


I ain't crazy about perfumes for the only reason that the rare nice ones cost a fortune. But, one day, when I get really rich, I sure imagine myself using the best of the rarest perfumes, the glimpse of which I witnessed here.

Food was only OK! A simple Veg Surprise Burger costed around 6 Dirhams. Almost equivalent to a 100 rupees. But it stayed true to it's name. I was surprised to find a supposedly-cutlet with a yuckie taste, some chopped onion and a spoonful of ketchup tossed into two halves of a burger bun. So we ended up converting 3 dollors and 2 euros into 20 dirhams and a filch (or something?) and we spent it on a McChicken, VegSurprise(!!) and a bar of snickers (which saved the day).

The food on the flight was OK. And I stole some sanitary napkins from the flight. OK, OK, and two pillows too. We reached Zurich around 9. The sky was still alive... blue, cool and refreshing. My mama had come to pick us up. Took a taxi to the Zurich railhead, furthered to Basel by the rail and taxied our way home from there.


The clean up and down roads, the roadside bands, the youthful atmosphere, the trams and the sexy taxis were a visual treat. And oh, the trains were wonderfully empty and way too classy compared to our mumbai locals, though I secretly missed standing in the door. And guess who I saw at the Zurich station - Emma Watson!! The atmosphere was already so jazzed up, nobody cared who passes by then. And strangely, I didn't feel it too. I realized, I had successfully grown out of mumbai by now. This is Zurich, baby!! Emma can wait! (or had I not?)

I was pleasantly shocked to see a Kokanasta Brahmin family in our compartment - Navra-Baaiko-Saasu-Saasre-Naat, conversing in a language and an ascent which was music to my ears. How I wished I would have got introduced to them somehow. Maybe I could go upto their place to have Varan-Bhaat-Bhaaji-Poli, some odd day I feel home sick. Anyways... So, we get down the train, up the taxi and down the taxi. Some Indians passed by speaking in a South Indian Hindi. Was I in Basel or Bangalore?


Ania, that's my mami who had just delivered a son, was waiting for us to have dinner. So we started off with soup, me, the only one having the vegetarian dishes, proceeded to some red wine and ending up with some 7 varieties of cakes they had brought for the welcome.

All in all a tiring day, I went to the warm and soft bed they had arranged for me and as I was about to get lost into my dreams, this tooth started paining. It troubled me the whole night, until morning when I consumed an antibiotic and a painkiller. And then, the new day started.