Home & Away - a new home and a new start...

Finally my efforts to shift to Henrik Ibsens Vej bore fruit in January and finally I belonged to 'the place' - in the close company of all others. There were some not-so-foreseen settling-in blues initially but then life went on.

February saw the arrival of Lord Pijush - affectionately christened 'Goba' by mama... February also saw some cold days and heavy snowfall .....



February was also when I made my first trip outside Denmark. I made a trip to Paris with Chattis. Paris is beautiful - the most fabulous place that I have ever seen. Someday I will upload all the pics to another blog - but for now here is a one that captures it all !

Then came the trip to Italy (March 24th to 30th)- my first of two trips with Koushik-da, Jayanti-Boudi and Diya. All in all an unforgettable experience .... and three memories stand out. Firstly, the hotel we stayed in Florence left a distinctly bad impression. Referred as always by one of Sanjay-da's friends (more on this topic in another post), we never imagined that it was capable of setting such an unbeatable standard in hospitality :-)

My favourite memory of Italy is being awestruck by the sheer beauty of Michealangelo's work inside Cistine Chapel, in particular The Last Judgement (below)

The other thing to remember for ever was going to the top of St Peter's Basillica and marvelling at St Peter's Square below. The view is amazing as you can see below. For more pics of this trip, please visit my other blog http://italy2005march.blogspot.com

Then came the trip to Switzerland, again with Koushik-da and family. The trip was from 7th to 8th April, 2005 and you can see the travel party in the picture below, which was taken on the train from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen.

The earlier part of the trip was marred by wretched weather, but the last day more than made up for the time lost earlier. That day we made the trip to Jungfrau which is called the "Top of Europe".

Jungfrau at a height of 3571m or 11,738 feet was the highest place I had ever been to. The reduced oxygen certainly took a toll on my delicate constitution as you can probably make out from the photo below.

The next trip was to Athens(Greece) with Sanjay-da, Debasri-boudi, Arya-da and Sharonee-di's parents. The most important place in Athens is of course The Parthenon on the top of Acropolis Hill.

The place in Athens that we frequented most was definitely Syntagma Square. There were two reasons for this - firstly we got hooked on to the lovely succulent 'Souvlakis' (somewhat similar to our very own Mutton/Chicken Rolls) sold by a shop in Syntagma Square; and then Syntagma Square was a major hub for Metro & bus connections - wherever we went, passing through here seemed inevitable.

The after-effect that this trip left on almost all of us was the acquired taste for Frappe - an amazing Greek concoction of coffee, milk, ice and froth. Unbelievably refreshing - ahhhhhh !

All the above trips saw me in murderous mood...I went berserk and turned into a trigger happy nerd. Each day I took around 200 or so photographs and captured everything from arches to monuments at night. This earned me the epithet of 'chhobi pagla nanda' from Koushik-da and Jayanti-boudi.

So that was January to May - a time where I saw much and learnt much .....