Sugar, wine and Trdelnik

Sugar rush. That is probably what made me enjoy the wine festival last night. Hosted in the quaint town of Pardubice, the place that feels like a second home already, this festival was something we all were looking forward to in the last few days. Yeah, there were not many wines to be tasted as I had imagined, nor a lot of varieties of food but the combination of the meat, fresh out of the grill, really nice music and interesting performances was enough to make this night one memorable affair so far. I must however mention this amazing sweet baked stuff I got addicted to. Trdelnik. Simple, sweet and a no-nonsense dish. In other words, if Trdelnik was a guy I would have dated him!

So I think I am slowly beginning to get the hang of this European life. For instance, a weekend neither existed for me nor my friends who have jobs with the oddest of work timings and weekly offs. Here, they take their weekends very seriously; in fact, the town becomes empty after Friday. One wonders where it is that they take off for the next two days. I have had only two weekends here so far but the lack of whatever it is that I did every weekend in Mumbai makes me feel sad. Because there is nothing really that you could do here on a weekend, unless you are in a group which in my case has not happened yet.

In a way it’s good for me I guess because after being trained for 5 days on how to think and why to think by Mr. D in the department of Philosophy, the rooms of which are my safe haven, it feels nice not to do anything on a weekend and catch up on the movies I missed. On my today’s list is Raanjhana and Ayaalum Njanum Thammil.

Coming back to the wine festival, yesterday at the venue I felt for the very first time a sense of surge. I cannot explain it. Probably it is how people here make you feel. Going to a gathering and talking to random strangers are something that the socially awkward me would have never done in Bombay. It feels quite easy to do all that here. It calls to the fore that aspect of your personality which is not overly guarded or inhibited. Because I am not used to making friends so instantly I guess I would have to wait to see if anything actually comes out of it. I am hoping it does because among the lovely people I spoke to yesterday there was this girl who was a hair stylist who promised to give me a hair cut at half the price and a gay couple. Which girl does not want a gay couple friends? Having them would sort out all wardrobe problems in your life right? Is it not what Sex and the City has taught us? I wouldn’t know, I have never seen it. But that seems to be one of the stereotypical ideas the annoying series is propagating.

My late night jaunts have come to an end. Not because it is not safe but because people here like turning in early, which is nice. And I was encouraged to do so by this guy O, whose job it is to make sure that we foreign students are taken care of, a job he probably takes too seriously.

Things in the second week are slowly falling into place. There seems to be a routine to everything now and God knows how much I wanted a daily routine. Those beer sessions in the evenings sometimes, the fetching of dinner late in the night and the cool breeze on the walk back- things just feel good right now J