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Time for some random musings on India…

Austr(i|ali)a: Let’s face it, nobody knows Austria. It usually goes like this: “Where are you from?” – (Oh no, not again…) Austria.” – “Ah, Australia. Good country! Cricket!” – “Uhm, yes. Australia’s a good country, but I’m from Austria.” – “Yes, Australia. Good!” – But then, only a few days ago, it seems as if the word “Austria” suddenly registers with my conversation partner, he concentrates deeply for a
moment, smiles and then asks: “Arnold country?” – There is no god.

Buckets: Indian hotels led to my newfound admiration for buckets, the most useful tool mankind ever invented! Why? Because they are incredibly versatile. You can wash your clothes in them, use them as showers, puke into them, sweep floors with the water inside them, turn them around and use them as chairs or to catch cockroaches, the possibilities are almost endless. In bucket we trust!

Cricket: India is cricket country, full stop. The sport is everywhere, and although I fully agree that aliens must have brought it to our planet (who am I to argue with Douglas Adams?), I lately feel a
strange attraction to it, watching quite a bit of the new Indian Twenty20 league together with good old Spyro. In our defense, it is a lot more interesting to watch than test cricket, and – as an
Australian guy explained to us yesterday – it’s as close to backyard cricket as you can get. Wait, backyard cricket? We’re in! Because playing cricket is even more fun than watching it. Especially when you play barefoot with a bunch of Indians on dirty streets, where you are out after one bounce and a boundary doesn’t get you 4 or 6 points, but evil looks from everybody around ‘cause you just lost the ball…

Transport: Auto-rickshaw – done. Bicycle-rickshaw – done. Non-AC bus for 15+ hours on horrible roads – done. Sitting on the floor in an overcrowded train next to an open door – done. Riding on top of a
truck to the amusement of the Indians around us – done.

Movies: Indians are crazy about their cinema. And Indian cinema is crazy. In fact, it’s crazy enough to let bums like Spyro and me play business men in a Tamil movie. Yes, business men! We got casted (“You guys wanna be in a movie tomorrow?” – “Hm, why not…” – “Can you maybe shave?” – “No!” – “Ok”) in our lovely Mahabalipuram and went to the movie shot in Chennai the next day (and yes, they paid our ride there, which was quite handy since we needed to catch a bus from there anyway), arrived at the set around 9:30, got great food and then…sat around for a while. After a couple of hours we got more great food and were told “Relax over there in the shade”. Relax? Sure, we are good at that. Anyway, eventually they made us wear suits (it’s good that there are no pics, Spy looked like a 16 year old forced to wear a suit for some relative’s wedding or something), and gave us our great lines. Originally I was supposed to be Man#1, who had an impressive 15 words of text (“Okay, Mr. Krishna. We have decided to start three new companies in association with you.”), but after we told the producers that we couldn’t make it back to Chennai ten days later, the stuttering
African guy got promoted and I was relegated to become Man#2 (“You have to make them the best companies!”). Spyro starred as Man#3 (“Not only the best, but also number one!”), but later managed to sneak another sentence in. Overall a very cool experience, the male lead and the other guys were all really nice and funny, we got delicious food and 500 rupees. The movie will start in South Indian cinemas around August 2008, but if things keep going at the current rate, we’ll be living in Hollywood by then. I wonder if the food is as good there…

Travels: After the last big update (sent from Bangalore) we went on to Pondicherry (nice, but a bit boring) including a day-trip to Auroville (according to Wikipedia it’s an “experimental township”, according to us it’s…weird), Mahabalipuram (a relaxed backpacker town), Chennai (from here to fame) and Rameswaram (impressing temple, great food and close to an eerie post-Tsunami ghost-town). Last stop in Tamil Nadu was Kanyakumari, where the Arabian Sea meets the Indian Ocean and the
Bay of Bengal, and where the food is terrible. Right now we are in Kerala, a state ruled by the first democratically elected communist government in the world. We spent a couple of hours in the state capital Trivandrum, before coming to Varkala (another very backpackery town) where we are
currently hanging around like a bad smell (literally). Our future plans are – as always – tentative at best, so if you have any suggestions or want to meet up somewhere, shoot me a message!

Lots of love and licks to body parts of your choice,
M

Since I get the same questions over and over again, I decided to do this update in the form of a little Q&A session:

Q: How long will you be traveling for?
A: Don’t know. Until I’m done I guess. I don’t really want to go back to Austria before summer 2009 though…

Q: So you got stuck in Istanbul. What’s her name?
A: No girl involved, honestly. For once I’m doing something stupid out of my own free will.

Q: Do you speak any Turkish yet?
A: Well, I picked up some random words and phrases in the last month, but since I want to learn quicker I’m now taking a course (12 lessons a week).

Q: Is Istanbul safe?
A: Yup, definitely, at least if you have some form of common sense (e.g. showing huge amounts of foreign currency in dark side streets at 2am is probably not a smart move and the random guy who starts a nice conversation in Sultanahmet will at one point try to sell you a carpet). People here seem to be really afraid of terrorism though, so you see loads of armed cops and have to pass metal detectors every time you want to go on a subway or in a mall (or other public building/sight). And since they don’t have trash cans in the city center because somebody could hide a bomb in them, I came to detest all kinds of wrappings.

Q: How’s public transport?
A: Okayish. There’s busses, ferries, trams, dolmuş (minibus taxis) and subways. Of course the subway lines don’t meet, so changing between them is not an easy feat. The busses however go all over the city (if they manage to go at all because of the insane traffic), but whoever designed the bus stops here must be a strong believer in Darwinism and the survival of the fittest. Why? Because it can be damn hard to find out which busses leave at any given stop and where they are headed.
Schedules are unheard of (well, they can be looked up online, but that’s almost like believing in the tooth fairy) and intermediate stops don’t get announced on the busses. So once you figure out how to go to a place, you make that knowledge your best kept family secret, because at one point it may turn out to be a competitive advantage (‘My kids know how to get to the university!’). Ok, it’s not always that bad and people are actually very helpful, but on several occasions walking was way faster and less annoying than being stuck in a traffic jam on an overcrowded bus.

Q: How are the people in Istanbul?
A: Awesome! Their hospitality puts us all to shame and the young people are well educated and very interested in topics like world politics, religion etc. Of course my perspective probably is a little
skewed because I mostly hang out with students, but I fırmly believe that if everybody in Austria would be so welcoming and helpful to foreigners as people are here, that country of ours would be a much nicer place.

There’s some more questions, but I can’t really be bothered answering them right now, so I’ll save them for a future update.

Görüşürüz.

Here we go for part two of my “amazing” adventures. And despite Istanbul being only the second stop on my trip, it seems like I’ll already throw my plans overboard here. In theory I will board a plane on Monday morning and go to Muscat (Oman), from where I’d head to Mumbai on the 29th. My friend Josiah already expects me there and we
have a road trip to Goa and Bangalore planned.

The only problem is, I don’t see myself leaving Istanbul right now, and I don’t even really know why. Sure, there are some pretty amazing sights, but that’s definitely not what fascinates me. Plus I’ve already been to a lot of them (Hagia Sofia, Blue Mosque, Topkapi palace, Galata Tower, the Basilica Cistern and so on). It’s more about the whole Asia meets Europe and tradition meets modernity thing I guess. And the fact that I never before stayed in a city which seems to exactly have my pace.

So? Honestly, I don’t know. The current idea is to find a cheap room in a shared flat and stay there till end of April/end of May and learn as much Turkish as possible in that time. In all likelihood India will still be there in a couple of month and my visa is valid till mid-July, so this part of my travels can easily be postponed.

Hope all of you are doing fine, keep me updated on what you are up to!