Mine Darke and Twisted Life

A Swiss Tale - Day 1

Well, I'm sitting at Vienna airport waiting for my connection to Delhi, and what better way to kill time than catching up with my blog. This has been a real eventful month, too eventful by half.

Let me start with my grand holiday to Switzerland... one I almost did'nt return from!

Day 1

It was a bright evening as Saujanya, Gaurav, Shweta, Shelly, Arthur and I set off from Norwich. A cheerful mood prevailed, except of course for Arthur, who was catching up on his hibernation, and Gaurav who was lost in a coma. As anticipated, Saujanya, Shelly and Shweta were at each other's throats from the get go. I of course spent my time making inane comments and playing both sides.

We reached Stanstead by around 4 pm, and our two resident steam engines hurried to raise the nicotine levels in their alcohol stream. Once that was concluded to everyone's (dis)satisfaction, and a few pictures snapped, we headed on to the check in. Everything was proceeding smoothly, till we reached the security, where I blame most of the confusion on Saujanya's hat. The headgear in question was supposed to make him look like Brad Pitt, but unfortunately made him look like a bandito out of an old western. Whereas I walked through without anyone giving a second glance, he was strip searched (well they made him remove his shoes) and scrutinised very thouroughly, and the same fate befell his partner in crime , Shweta. Apparently a single security check was insufficient for the Brits, as they had a second round of shoe removing activity, where all of us had to take of our shoes. The pong was so rank, I'm sure that if anyone lit a match the room would have exploded.

Well, these minor hiccups aside, we were finally seated in the plane (the correct plane!) were Saujanya and Shweta promptly proceeded to commence World War 3. After gratituous violence on Shweta's part, Saujanya finally rang for the stewardess to complain, while I did my best to squeeze out of the window and obtain a seat on the wing, where I would be less conspicuous. And thus we reached Geneva, where we were bombarded by an incredible array of billboards advertising wristwatches of every imaginable size, shape and colour.

The first challenge that night was to find our hotel, which our intrepid navigator, Arthur managed to guide us towards. The Phoenix Airport Hotel is a decent stay (mebbe if I plug it here I'll get a free stay next time). As usual, we guys were self sacrificing, and let the girls have the bigger luxurious room, while the two smokers spent the night in each other's arms (just to point out - they opted for a double bed), while I and Saujanya spent the night next door to a snorer who sounded as though he was taking a course in amatuer carpentry and sawing wood the whole night. Of course Gaurav managed to find the one channel on TV which was showing something 'interesting', so all in all it was a happening night.