The Travelling Salesman's Problem a.k.a Sour Grapes

The ground for the walkways, I traded
some elaborately carpeted, others, naked
he a backpack, a goatee and a baseball cap
she a boycut, frisbee earrings and a map

I caught sight of them, ahead, about to board
A camera on her shoulder, a vaction on the road
through the large windows as they saw the red sunset
to take a picture they stopped, and our eyes met

I stopped as well, to take in the sight for a while
could use the time to rest, having walked a mile
fished out my phone and looked through its camera lens
beautiful in my head, why dwell in this posterity nonsense ?

The London Underground Blues ...

Heard on the Public Announcement System at London Bridge Tube Station: May the lady with the child not rush down the escalator please.

My conversation with the London Underground Security Staff, while trying to get from Bank to Monument Tube Station via the platform: My dear Good fella, as of Friday the 14th of November, you can not transit from Monument to Bank, due to escalator works. You need to continue your journey overground, but if you do wish to try this route then you must come back in 2 years.

And ofcourse today's random poem from the TFL web site
Western wind when wilt thou blow
the small rain down can rain
Christ if my love were in my arms
and I in my bed again

The borough of Eden

Readers are warned that this is my own spin on the etymology of Edinburgh and for the original etymology, one must refer to Edinburgh . Anyway here goes:

Edin: Eden; from the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve were created. Eden is hebrew for delight.
burgh: borough; area, fortress, walled area

And hence the title of the blog. Understated and a city very much at peace with itself, it's complex too, like blended whisky, a place where the distant sound of those haunting bag pipes can so easily fade into the screeching sound of police sirens. Most people talk about Edinburgh during Hogamanay, the last day of the Year and the Scottish tradition of celebrating this day - a time of the year when Edinburgh becomes a wild party place. Obviously, the city has more to offer than that and it is with this conviction that I decided to write about the charms of this city.

Defining Moment # 1: The McCondom

"Scotland ... No English ... Ireland .. No English ... England ... English"
I overheard this at Jenny Ha's Tavern, on the Royal mile, at the table next to mine. I was drinking a glass of single malt (think it was Ardbeg) and couldn't help but smile when this young, cute au pair from Turin was trying to give the man who was trying to chat her up her take on who in the United Kingdom spoke the real English.
Jenny Ha's was also the place where I came across the McCondom. Condoms in vending machines of toilets is commonplace across Europe, but the McCondom was special. It was the first whisky flavoured condom that I came across and as I tried to understand the enigma of those blessed Scots, I couldn't help but raise my arms in exasperation at their cheek.

Defining Moment #2: Holyrood Park

Holyrood is not a badly spelt scottish version of wannabe mainstream cinema but an anglicisation of the Scottish Gaelic words Haly Ruid (Holy Cross). The Holyrood Park is bang in the centre of town and gives you the best views of the city.

The Hyde Park in the centre of London may be bigger and the English Gardens in Munich may be more aesthetic but to find such an amazing piece of highland landscape, unspoilt, right in the middle of the city makes me wonder at the amazing odds. The highest peak in Holyrood Park is Arthur's Seat, named after the legend of King Arthur, though, I think it is one of those urban legends that the Scots invented to keep this place untouched. As I climbed and watched the sun set on the city I couldn't help but wonder if there was a better seat to be perched on while watching the day dissolve into night.

Defining Moment #3: Graffiti and Shortbread

When you have 3 defining moments to choose in such a wonderful city, you end up cheating by clubbing moments. Edinburgh by far has the most charming Pubs and the graffiti in the pubs are equally charming. Picture this at the Blind Poet which quotes Churchill's I've taken more from alcohol than alcohol has taken from me or the Irish Love Ballad The greatest love above all other loves is the tender, passionate love of one drunken slob to another. As I hopped from one pub to another I couldn't help but writing more and more of such one liners and wondered how I had never seen one repeated even across pubs. Fascinating indeed !!!

I always thought Amma made the best home made biscuits in the world. Every summer holidays as she baked biscuits I'd come running into the kitchen waiting for her to get them out of the oven so that I could lay my hands on them. I wouldn't stop and Amma never tried to stop me. I would end up having far more than I could eat and would invariably end up skipping dinner. That day when I ate Scottish shortbreads for the first time, I was very much convinced that Amma came from an old Scottish clan that had settled in coastal Andhra Pradesh. The shortbreads came very close to Amma's biscuits ...

My Roman Holiday

Rome at the surface is just like any other capital city in the world - The best directions for getting around the city are provided by policemen (maps by the way come a distinct 17th ... ), People on two wheelers think their grandparents built the roads they ride on and the best bet for fast food options is Italian Pizza.

Strike the surface and you have a city that is charming in its own way - a city with a great deal of character waiting to burst out of its seams. When the coins stop finding the floor of Fonata Di Trevi and the Colosseum closes at Sun set, when St Peter's closes it's doors and the Spanish Steps (and the boat fountain at it's foot) bear a deserted look, all we have left is impressions of the people we ran into. I can say, rather emphatically, that Rome gave me some rather vivid memories of the people I bumped into. I've decided to call some of these the defining moments of my Roman Holiday.

Defining Moment #1: The Sisters of Trastevere

As I walked aimlessly around Rome I entered Trastevere a hip, bohemian section of Rome that is never written about in any of the guide books but something most visitors must make as a part of their itineraries. Hungry and wanting to get something to eat at about 10:30 in the night I entered McDonald's (why ?). Out of the handful of times I've entered McDonald's all my life (Delhi, Bangalore, Atlanta, Milan, Paris, Dusseldorf and Zurich prior to this one in Rome) I've always tried being faithful to the Mac Salad.

As I concentrated on my Salad I noticed a table-ful of nuns (for a lack of a better collective noun for nuns) sitting and enjoying burgers and fries. I was tempted to ask if it was a daily ritual after a hard day's work or was it one of those special Friday night treats. Too embarrassed to ask for permission and too greedy to miss out on a possible Pulitzer (yeah . . I aim big), I acted as if I was taking a picture of this rather nondescript canvas on the wall as I shot them. As they talked animatedly, laughed and enjoyed the meal, I realised that I needed a visit to Rome, to help bring back a perspective on the Christian Clergy. At the end of it - all of us are humans first and then everything else we're made out to be ...

Defining Moments #2: The Indian Immigration Story

I was spending 3 nights in Rome and I decided I'd do the 3 nights in 3 different places: Night #1 would be in this posh place where I'd have to wince when I swished my card out to pay; Night #2 would be in a dump which would be less expensive than a meal at a reasonable restaurant and Night #3 would be in between - a place I would be most comfortable spending a night. After spending a night at a 110 Euros a night place, I decided to look for home (read dump). As I walked past Castello Saint Angelo I saw a Punjabi (Sardar) selling souvenirs on a road side stall. I hesitated, turned back and as our eyes met we greeted each other silently from a distance with "Mera bharat mahaan". Using my heavily accented Hindi I asked if he knew of a place I could stay at. To make it absolutely clear I drilled the word cheap in as a many 4 different languages. 2 Phone calls later I was talking to Deepu, who was into arranging cheap places to stay for cheap people like me.

We had an appointment at 7:00 PM - "The 4th stop when u board # 714 from Termini" was his idea of a rendezvous and we had fixed it at 25 Euros. By 7:30 we were ringing the bell of a Punjabi family from Ludhiana - "Singh" was the name on the calling bell. The place was no dump, it was basic, but clean and most importantly this was so much better than the best scenario that I had conjured up in my head for Night #2.

They had been in Italy for 10 years; He worked as a baker, she did odd jobs. They had children. This was their way of earning the extra bit. They had people from all over - England, Germany, India. People from embassies and people on business and most of them had come to know of them through word of mouth - like me. The Singhs were doing pretty well for themselves in the hospitality business.

The next day not sure if the No. 64 was going to the Vatican, I asked this Indian looking guy in my heavily accented Hindi (nobody expects accents to change after spending one night with a Punjabi family). He replied in English. As we sat on the last seat of the bus (which surprisingly was the place most of the immigrants always sat on the bus and bizarrely reminded me of Rosa Parks and her Alabama protest) we started to talk. Laiju was mallu and an illegal immigrant who had come to France 4 years earlier on a Schengen visa that expired within 3 months of entry. He moved to Italy as it was easier to survive as an illegal imigrant and was working in a workshop to support his mother back home in Thrissur. Laiju had just applied for a Residence Permit and was hoping that it would come through so that he could meet his folks back at home.

Defining Moment #3: A small step for entrepreneurship ... a giant leap for Globalisation

300 Meters from St. Peter's Basilica, a Chinese lady had set-up a stall on the side. She was charging 1 Euro for people who wanted their names written in Chinese. Audacity.Chutzpah.Guts. 300 metres from the Vatican. A German pontiff at the pulpit. An Italian city where the largest Asian tourist population is Japanese. This women is selling people a piece of paper with their names written in Chinese.

It reminded me of the old lady in Friedman's book, The world is Flat, who'd be sitting in a park in Shanghai every morning with a weighing machine charging people who wished to weigh themselves. Friedman endearingly decided to indulge the lady. That was his ode to globalisation and his way to bring her into the web of globalisation. I decided against indulging the lady at the Vatican. The unwritten yet simplest rule of capitalism and hence globalization is that people buy services/goods that are useful. I want her to win, but I want her to win by the rules.

Surfing couches across Europe

Europe, like India, is a cultural melting pot with a million cultures. Ask a European to travel 250 kilometres from where he is and he'll probably feel like a stranger in a strange land. People, opinions, outlook, culture, leanings are all very different as you travel across Europe. I was lucky enough to interact personally with a great number of these different souls and all that happened thanks to the Couchsurfing Project (http://www.couchsurfing.com/). Couchsurfing is based on a very simple premise. Travellers all over the world are a kindred spirit and a traveller will be more than glad to host you for a couple of days if you happen to be travelling to his city. The name of the project comes from the fact that hosts will at least be able to give up their couches for you to sleep in, if they have nothing else to offer. I used the Couchsurfing network to make friends in Hamburg, Milan, Venice, Paris and Berlin and each experience was extremely fulfilling.

My first Couchsurfing experience was with Leif in Hamburg. Leif is a Scandic name and apparently it is common for Northern Germans to have such a name. Leif was the perfect host. He drove us down to Lubeck and Scharbeutz apart from showing us around Hamburg. Leif introduced us to popular local selections from Astra beer to the Reeperbahn (Hamburg's Red Light district, where the Beatles played in the 60s much before they got so famous that John Lennon in his characteristic style said "We're more famous than Jesus Christ"). We did the typical touristy guy stuff in the Dollhouse and also did the Sunday morning at the fish Auction hall. His parting gift to me was an East German flag that made it to the display back at home.

I love the Italians. My mother tongue, Telugu, is often called the "Italian of the east" because all words (or almost all) end in vowels. This gives an impression of symmetry and structure to the language and makes it sound very pleasant. Italy reminded me of home to the extent that I felt homesick. I was hosted by Ray Tarantino in Milan. Ray has a band of his own and inspite of his busy schedule showed me around Milan's nightspots. Being one of those Da Vinci Code trivia fans I couldn't resist visiting Vinci's Last Supper Painting. Milan has so many Japanese tourists that they found it common sense to install squat-pans in toilets in most places. With the amount of money the Japanese tourist pumps in, anyone would bend backwards to indulge them.

If people were to be given the choice to visit one European city then they must choose Venice. Venice is charming, mesmerising and frustratingly beautiful. What made it even more memorable was to be hosted by somebody like Sara. We discovered some wonderful Osteries and Cafes in Venice and had a great time. She had some wonderful stories about her experiences in Galway and Granada and her passion for the Lynx. By the end of the trip she surpassed Gondolas, Marco Polo and Cassanova as far as recall value with respect to Venice was concerned. Venice also introduced me to other travellers and Couchsurfers. Sebastien a French-Canadian who had just finished a trek in the Julian Alps in Slovenia, Anna and Fanny an Italian and Belgian pair who had just come for a break.

You can't do justice to Paris if you stayed less than 3 days. I was there for almost 5 days and I still felt like I wanted to be there longer. I stayed with Won the first few days. Won, an American of South Korean ethnicity had a passion for mime and that brought him to Paris. I attended a few of his rehearsals as their official photographer and it was amazing how passionate Parisians are about art. Mime is an old South East Asian art that looks so fabulous when done the right way and Won's team was so good that at times forgot about my role of clicking pictures. (I remember a mime artist performing in School and being booed away from Stage and our Headmaster making the whole school stand in the chilling December cold in the middle of the night). I then moved to Vincente's place in Le Gobelins. Vincente worked for a foundation that helped young kids discover their scientific leanings. I met him at a time when France had just voted Sarkozy in and through his friends who were a great bunch of people we drank wine late into the morning and talked about Paris, India, French Politics and France's 264 patented varieties of cheese.

In all these people I found a common theme: A genuine love for travel, an interest in meeting people of different cultures and sharing experiences, and helping fellow travellers so that they get the best travel experience. People don’t expect a community purely based on good will to do well ... but Couchsurfing has all the ingredients to become a much larger and widely used community. Good bye seedy hotel rooms !!