Moving on to the life's next stage...

Yes, its time to proceed forward to the next phase of my life. In the recent past, I had some hot and casual discussions with my friends and colleagues on the topic "Arranged Marriage Vs Love Marriage". Especially, with my German friends and colleagues, it was tough to explain/support the arranged marriage concept, as its almost history in their culture! Nevertheless, I always accepted that the arranged marriages are a little more difficult to deal with. Choosing the right partner is a challenge in itself and the biggest decision in one's life. Recently, I was again lucky to face a sweet challenge to take a wonderful decision.

S. Anbu Vidhya, when I heard her name for the first time, there was an unknown pull due to its uniqueness and when I saw her photo, her smile made me crazy. She is a Post Graduate in Power Electronics and working as an Assistant Professor at Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology & Research Academy (SASTRA), a university in Tamil Nadu, India. Our first meet at her house was on Dec 27, 2009, I still remember the feeling cum excitement on that day and it is to cherish forever. After that meet, my gut feeling told me "Vidhya is the person whom I was raring to share my entire life" and went along with it. After casual discussions, we both were happy that our likes and dislikes seem to be matching and we hope and wish to lead a successful life together. It was indeed a pleasure to think like: "Love (Anbu) with Knowledge (Vidhya) when joins with Victory (Vijay) will sure to prosper our life".

Our Engagement happened on the auspicious day of Feb 19, 2010 under the presence of close relatives and friends. With great hopes and dreams, started counting the days for the marriage scheduled on Jun 21, 2010, book your calendar and you all are invited well in advance.
"Marriage is like a whirlpool, which takes one from a carefree world to a world filled with commitment and sacrifice, with love as its backbone." This quote attracted my attention sometime back and got in as a strong belief. Now gearing up for my next phase with our parent's blessings and wishes from all of you. Meet you soon in my next blog, till then take care, viel spass (have fun)!

Maiden trip to Switzerland

In the month of August, during a casual chat with my friend Balaji over skype, he shared a week office shutdown for him at Belgium in November. He was compelling me to plan a trip. Even in my German office, everyone where started asking "why are u working without a vacation" (Germans have the habit of taking 2 or 3 vacation in a year and spend time out of office regular stuffs), hence decided to have a mega trip and Switzerland was the destination for it. Thanks to bollywood/kollywood and all kinds of "woods" of Indian cinema industry, Switzerland has become the most sought after foreign destination for Indian tourists, specially the nouveau riche. In no country does Switzerland enjoy as much popularity as it does in India. Booked my tickets from Hamburg to Geneva thru Lufthansa Regional and it worked out cheap (100 Euros to and fro). As usual, invested many weekends and week day evenings, doing research and planing the itinerary. Thanks to Skype, Balaji was reachable and he too did his part of planing and associating me. Finally I took off from Hamburg on wednesday (04.Nov.2009) to Geneva.

Switzerland doesnt have their own language, half of the country speaks French (the part near to France) and the remaining half speaks German. Though Switzerland is land locked on all sides and is pretty much in the center of Europe, it is not a part of the European Union and obviously doesn’t use the Euro as its currency. The local currency is Swiss Francs (CHF), conversion during my travel was 1:1 (for CHF:US Dollar) and 1:1.5 (CHF: Euro). It is a country where from one corner to the other corner can be travelled in 3-4hrs, thanks to their extensive rail network. As per our research, we found that taking a 4 day pass for travel inside swiss is economical and user friendly (no need to waste time in ticket counters). We booked our night stay at Geneva youth hostel and Balaji was suppose to reach 3hrs after my landing. I settled down in the hostel, roamed a little in the Geneva city but for taking the swiss saver 4 day pass, they wanted both of our passports and hence I couldnt purchase it. Geneva is in the Swiss-France border and the entire city speaks only French, of course with English. After being in Germany for considerable period of time, a sort of attachment has developed within me for the Deutsch (German) language, whenever I am touring another country (like this), I started missing Deutsch and if someone speaks Deutsch, I felt an unknown liking towards them, after all German too was a foreign language for me before 2009, but now never.

The next day morning after purchasing the pass we took our first train journey to Jungfraujoch. Jungfraujoch means virgin peak (Deutsch to English translation - Jung: young, Frau:Lady, Joch: ridge), pronounced-yung frau yokh. The weather was ultimate, bright sun shine, no cloud cover, blue sky reflection over the lakes. Many of my friends said, November is not the correct time to go to Swiss, eventhen we took this risk and thanks to Global Warming (jovially), we had a summer day during the end of Autumn and beginning of Winter. The journey from Geneva to Jungfraujoch is not by a single train, we jumped 3 trains (@ Interlaken Ost, Lauterbrunnen, Kleine Scheidegg) and the travel time was almost 5hrs. The travel from Interlaken to the top of Europe (Jungfraujoch) was breathtaking with so many tunnels, steep slopes, ice covered mountains, valleys, waterfalls, it was a treat to eyes and enjoyed it. The fact is: The journey from Kleine Scheidegg to Jungfraujoch takes approximately 50 minutes including the stops; the downhill return journey taking only 35 minutes and the entire journey is inside a tunnel. It took 16 years to build this tunnel up to the Jungfraujoch railway station at 3,454 m (11,332 ft), the highest in Europe. Thanks to the the Jungfraubahn cog railways, before arriving at the Jungfraujoch station, the train stopped for five minutes at two other stations, Eigerwand and Eismeer, where the traveller can have a look through the excavated holes of the moving Glaciers!! We roamed the Jungfraujoch using a map (provided in the train) and covered the places like: ice palace, sphinx (astronomical research area), ice walking area. I dont want to write much about our experience at the top of Europe, please visit this site: http://picasaweb.google.com/vijaynov12/JungfraujochTheTopOfEurope?authkey=Gv1sRgCPOlk6byhYSUqAE&feat=email

enjoy the descriptions and explanations below the snaps. We reached Interlaken late in the evening and was tired. We had already booked a youth hostel named BALMERS (very famous one in Interlaken) and enjoyed the stay there. Roamed the town a bit and called the day with lots of memories of the first day at Swiss.