a languid weekend-out

perhaps i should get down to writing my diary entry again. not only would it help this cause, which i m otherwise opening out to the world, but i would also find a place for my musings. but anyway, this thought can have a better abode than this blog. so here we go again....

okay, so back we were from a harrowing trip to austria. golden lessons learnt -- dont try to plan a weekend out if u dont have a place to stay or food to eat, and if u r miserly enough to reject them, be a little more miserly, dont go out at all.

so here we were, with no plans for the first weekend of june, and a little skeptic of planning another country, with the previous weekend still fresh in memory. days went and it was already thursday until an idea scooped up, courtesy one of ravi's office co-workers. the trip looked inviting, and essentially it covered east germany, 3 days, stay, breakfast, plus guided tours at specific places, and all for €60. u couldnt get better than that. continuous phone calls did not yield any success. but we had plans for the moive potter 3, and so we went off. by the time the movie ended it was close to 9, and we were walking back home, when we saw as phone booth. an idea struck, and one phone call later, which was not altogether very promising, we were standing near LMU on a bright friday morning at 6:30am. turned out that the bus had enough seats for the both of us (we anyway needed only 2), and off we were to the east of germany for a weekend excursion.

we stopped at merseburg, a quaint, medieval city, where we were told of some castle, some history, involving some guy and some crow. u must have figured it by now. yes, we were tired of castles, cathedrals, palaces and museums, and each one was like, 'oh no, one more'. anyway, we stayed there till the middle of the day, got a few supplies, had an ice-cream, and for the first time since landing in munich, started opening up to people who were not from infineon. we moved on to leipzig, another beautiful city in the east of germany. we checked in a hotel, refreshed ourselves a little, and cleverly enough, moved out without an umbrella. the weather gods, as if seeking to lay revenge, came down heavily upon us. ravi managed with the overcoat he was wearing, which, btw, was mine, and there i was, with nothing more than a handkerchief to protect me from the pelting rains. but thankfully, ppl were jolly enough to offer me a 'lift' under their umbrellas from time to time, as we went on seeing places here and there. we went to a church from where the 1989 peace movements used to start every monday, stayed there for a service (jeez! i almost slept off), and then in the evening, took time off to see various places within the city, until it was time to return to the hotel. all of the ppl were by now separated from each other, but while returning, we ran into the italian students' grp with the two really cute italian girls, one of whose umbrella i repeatedly kept on bumping to, inadvertently, i must confess. and the smile returned was like, wooooo, did that floor me!!!

next day we went to dresden, abt an hr and half from leipzig, and another nice city, ruined only by the stupid rain that just kept on falling and falling. although this time we were careful enough to carry our umbrellas!! dresden is the type of city that has an old character and a new one, both being distict and discontinuous in the city's layout. we saw a famous structure, more like a courtyard of a palace when it started pouring. we went out into lashing rains, out into the city to take a walking tour, after we were let off by our guide for 2 hrs. we could have, and should have chosen to go along with the italian girls, had not a chinki come in just at that vital moment, and decided to join the two of us, see museums and what-nots. we left her too, eventually :)) and decided to walk alone.

we converged at the decided place around 2:30 and then went into an opera house right there in the city centre. gosh!! it was so beautiful. i felt pity for the lady who was explaining abt the history, architecture etc (i hope) in german, and i was sitting right in front of her!! poor lady! little did she know that the person who had a vantage position to listen to her did not understand even a single word of what she was saying! one of the highlights, was the tour to the volkswagon glass factory. this was quite a thing to see. for the next hr, we allowed ourselves to revel at the technological marvels that this country has to offer. when i look back to this trip, this will be one single most amazing part that i will reflect upon. pity we couldn't stay there long enough for every minor detail to sink in.

from there on, we took the bus back to leipzig, and we were there by late afternoon. it was a nice clear saturday evening, and the city was swaying in its colours. the stadtfest was on, and it seemed the whole of leipzig was out into the streets. there were music shows, dance items, games and bier stalls all around, and we had a memorable time that evening, trying to fight our way back to the auerbachs keller, which was our meeting point. this place has a very interesting history, it was one of the settings of Goethe's Faust, and will celebrate 500 yrs of existence two decades from now!!! there was no way we could not have had a bier there, and we talked with other ppl until it was time to leave, and back to the hotels.

next morning, off to weimar, which might strike a bell if u have heard of the musician Bach. we spent some time there as well, left it around afternoon, and back to munich in the evening, around 7.

that completed the weekend. why languid?? becoz there hardly was any bhasad over three days, and more importantly, we had food to eat, and a place to sleep.