Off to the Land of Chocolates,Watches and the Alps

Mit der Eröffnung des Zahnradbahn-Betriebs Alpnachstad – Pilatus Kulm am 6. Mai 2006 beginnt dieses Jahr zum 50. Mal die Saison für die begehrte.....
Confused?
This is how it was exactly when me and my college mate Jayachandran landed in Zurich,Switzerland. Yes. The people hardly spoke English.All they knew was either French or German..74% of them are German and they have their own slang called Swiss German.
But before I proceed,let me begin from how it all begun....

I would have preferred to have some say on the reservations, tamilnadu elections or Indian cricket but couldnt really resist from putting this swiss trip on the blog. Now my blogs are looking to be travel centric....But I really dont mind when I have to record such an amazing tour to the Alps.

We had our tickets booked through lastminute.com( well in advance,if you are getting misled by the website name...)Once that was done,our flights and hotels were taken care off.. Half the job done.. But thats not all.. The most difficult part of such a trip is to take care of all the internal travel in a country that hardly speaks English and for two guys who hardly knew to say Thank you in German.

Thanks to the minimised work during the last week in office, I was able to browse through websites and decide on the plan. I found that taking a Swiss Youth pass to travel for four days anywhere in Swiss was going to be the best option to cover all the places..Once the plan was in place, the day it had to be executed was also there quickly.Friday May 26th...

I left office at 4 o clock and reached Heathrow Airport directly. This was going to be my third flight journey and third country I would be visiting. So it was kind of exciting.The very place made it look more exciting!! The flight was at 7 45. I met this college friend of mine in the airport. We then did some minor purchases like electric pin converters(minor point to be added here but it turned out to be very important since we had to connect to the laptops and charge our camera batteries very often) at the airport and left at the scheduled time. Wow..things were going on track..

Zürich Airport,Switzerland

It was around 11PM when we landed in Zurich. I had thought of getting the Swiss Pass then and there but it was too late.. So got a ticket to the Zurich Haupt Bahnof( means Main Station, in German).Was there enough info given in this blog about the Swiss specific terms that you might come across? Ok.. Anyways..
The currency...Swiss Francs.. ~2.2 pounds~Rs.36
The Capital-Bern---nothing to see there though
The people-French and Germans.. with a few Italians
Thats all i could gather. For more,Click here

But then after we got into the train,we realised noone really knew English.Not even the TTR. Once we managed to get out of the train,we were in a soup again.Good that I took the map print out,we could atleast point to the place and ask from which direction we get out of the station.Somehow managed to reach the Hotel with the help of the map and by playing dumb-charades with the locals there..

The Hotel where we were supposed to stay for the next 3 nights was called The X-Tra was a very good 3 star hotel with all the facilities required. With the cozy beds in front and the tired travel, we went to sleep hoping for an exciting journey to Mt.Titlis next day and praying that language shouldnt really pose a threat....

Mt.Titlis..A pre-cursor:

Just a precursor.. Will be continued in the next blog..

Lake district Unleashed

It was 8 o clock in the morning.. Yet noone had still got up from their tired sleep... three of them had had hangover after the previous day's drink.. and the remaining two of us wouldnt just get up.. from the cozy bunk beds.. But things were different after 20 minutes.. everyone was at their feet.. and the room was abuzz with activity.We were all set and ready to leave at 9 30. After a morning tea with blackforest cake and some breads, we begun our journey down the hills of langdale into the beautiful city of Ambleside.It was a small city but a beautiful place....


After speaking to the tourist centre there, we decided to cover the best of the lakes in the district. We had already covered the Windermere Lake. The next was Keswick. After travelling for sometime, we were soon near that beautiful lake.It was truly beautiful and a treat to watch.. It was slightly cloudy and the lake below the valley was picture perfect.


The next spot we went were adventurous all the way.. parked our car below the valley and started walking up.It was a good climb and slightly steep and slippery. I had to literally sit and climb for some part of the trek. And when I couldnt go any further,just stopped there ,took this pic and came back...


All we saw after that was lakes,lakes and more lakes.They say its got around 200 lakes in there but we were just on a 2 day visit to this place.So we saw the maximum number we can. We just saw a few on the way and some of them which forced us out of the car to take a break and then a pic.It was one such location where we had our lunch.


The road back to the hostel was definitely on the list of the most wonderful routes....Clicked some pics here and there and went back to the same Langdale hostel....

DAY 3 isnt going to wait for the next blog.Here it is......

The next day morning we had to immediately vacate the hostel and leave the Lake district to end the wonderful stint in the most scenic location in UK..No, not in the world.1. Because I still have a long way to go to compare with the locations of the world.2.Even if its going to be the best place after going around the world I would still call it second only to our very own Munnar,in god's own country.


The next on our itinerary was Manchester.We went to our collegues' friend's parents' house. They turned out to be very warm hosts serving us with very good home food. After a long chat,tasty food and a short stint at this beautiful house, we bid a grateful farewell to the kind couple. We then headed towards the Manchester United football stadium on the way going around the city and noting important locations like the Manchester University for management, Indian community shops and shopping malls.. By the time we reached the stadium, we had already completed a panaromic tour of the city of Manchester.The streets were all empty thanks to the national holiday for Easter.Since the match that was supposed to have happenned also got cancelled we were also able to go close to the stadium and click some snaps to record this moment and boast ourselves to football crazy fans though none of us were one.

We then begun our next long but scenic journey towards the Matlock where we were slotted to stay overnight and then leave for Sherwood forest next day...Reached matlock late in the evening,went around the hostel and the town and came back to sleep.. In all,it was a quiet day with a lot of travel.

I guess this blog is still goin to go on till Day 4 much to the agony of those waiting for the end for the following reasons..
1.I have some useful( useless?)time in hand.
2. A blog well begun is half done.. A blog which never seems to begin is better if its done.
3.The tour is more than a month old now.
4.When do I start writing about the current affairs,Himesh Reshmaiyya, review da vince code.. etc.if i keep on drooling over a flash back which now almost deserves a place in my other blog which is a walk down the memory lane..
5.Day 4 is a one-sentence blog which goes something like.....We then went to Sherwood forest to meet Robin Hood's Tree(Wat the?) which would ve been worth the say if we meet Robin Hood, or atleast Robin Singh but what can i write about a 500 year old( thats what they said.. but whats the big difference.. it was on crutches and looked like dead wood...) tree which was more like the adayar aalamaram handicapped.(easier said than done.. whew!!a one sentence explanation is much tougher than the blah blah narration)..

The End( of just the trip..the blog will still continue.....unfortunately)!!
If you are still not tired of seeing the pictures...Here is more..

Day 1- The payanam....

On your mark...
Get set..
Go....
I would not say everything went as per the plan.. In fact, it never looked it was going to..
It started raining on the morning we planned to start.. Moazzam and Vishal found the car rental shop with great difficulty and it was almost 11 when we started from Juniper Court.. Soon the weather was becoming pretty good.. This was the second time I was coming out of London and the excitement was exactly on the same lines.. The trip to Cardiff was a lonely journey enjoying the nature and the first expedition…the second one was an eager wait to reach a scenic locale called the Lake district. With a group of people around, this was a slightly different experience..But nonetheless enjoyable….

By the time we reached Lake district, it was almost 4 o clock..Truly this was a very good spot for a vacation. It turned out to be a perfect weekend getaway…We just went around it for sometime,took some snaps,did some boating and then started on our search to the Langdale youth hostel. I had seen the picture of the youth hostel and was eager to go there.. first to see it and then to rest after a tired day’s travel…

The road to the youth hostel was scenic with the sun setting behind the beautiful mountains surrounding Lake Windermere. But slowly as the sun hid itself behind them, the path was getting eerie.. and the youth hostel was nowhere in sight.It took almost an hour for us to reach the hostel. No wonder we couldn’t see it. It was nicely placed on top of one of the mountains in Ambleside. After heaving a sigh of relief on reaching the hostel, we managed to comfortably settle ourselves.. I guess I have not really given an insight into this concept of youth hostels. The main reason for choosing youth hostels are because of their exotic locations unlike the usual city- slicking hotels. Its pretty comfortable and you can cook your own food in their kitchens.You still can have ur own masala dosa with coconut chutney if you are a hard-core south Indian gourmand like me. The better thing about it is its pretty cheap… only £15 pounds per person.

So that day, we prepared our own food, played table-tennis for sometime.. ya that is another facility we got to make use of to the max… and then went to sleep in our bunk-beds all set for a heavy travel the next day…….to explore the remaining beauty of this much-hyped Lake district Thodarum.....