Travelogue 1

The flight was late and that meant some more time to sleep. We left home at around 3.30 – 4’ish. Lots of bags and all of us (Sanju Mama, Mami, Aai…) At the airport, we went in quickly saying our byes. As we were checking in, we realised that Pam’s bag was too heavy to be accepted. So we had to buy a new one and transfer some of his stuff. Phew !! After emptying our pockets for that cheap quality bag, we went straight to the business lounge (Advantages of flying business class) There we had breakfast and a lot of time to spare.

Around me were people. All trying to look very important. Some tired faces were watching Kareena Kapoor on Channel V, in an attempt to keep themselves awake. Whenever I come to the airport, I see the same set of people all around. Some teary eyed ones saying good bye to their loved ones, some grinning to have arrived back home, some anxious about the whole flying experience, some so confident as if they have flown the plane so many times…Been there and done that attitude…Hmmm…Okay !! So now it was time for us to board the Turkish Airlines (Turk Hava Yollari) plane. The Flight to Istanbul was sleepy, what with almost flat recliners. Didn’t feel as pampered as I felt in Jet Airways business class, still this wasn’t so bad and trust me, once you fly Business you never want to fly Economy. But Economical people like us, you know what the choice has to be !

After almost 8 hrs we landed in Istanbul (Temp -3 ^o C) Went to the lounge and had breakfast and went to board our flight for Hamburg (another 3 hrs) The only special thing about this flight was the lovely aromatic rice served in our special asian meal. The sad thing was that this lovely aromatic rice was only 3 ½ teaspoon fulls. Some more sleep on this flight and we felt fresher on landing in Hamburg. Took a taxi and went straight to Grindelhof (where our apartment was) In that bitter cold (Temp -8 ^o C) we pulled and pushed our luggage around till we finally found our tiny little apartment. We gorged on the home made parathas for dinner which we were carrying with us from India….and crashed. I’m sure I must have dreamt of a lot of things that night….We woke up very tired the next day