Bengalooru

Associations inevitably come into being aided by memories. And years later when the memories have no co-relation to the present the association still sticks, perhaps this is what constitutes nostalgia. Like or dislike for a place can stem in various ways. Some places have a romantic air about them that lend them a quality of Shangri-La. Some have an oppressive and foul name attached to them, like a malignant canker. The former and latter are talked often talked about leading us to attach epithets to those places. Some places are famous because of some natural attraction, or political importance. And there are some places that exist only on maps nestled along treacherous contours or nested unluckily in between page folds or margins; places that are just meaningless dots on a railroad.

For someone who is in the lesser twenties, talking about any earlier era seems redundant, even if the ensuing decades are littered with major changes. Even if I am a child of the new age, googling away to glory and crippled without wikipedia I cannot but look at the nineties with a simple longing. And my memories of the India I saw and experienced then threaten to go away to that wispy place where all memories eventually go to. The more I remember, the more I hazy it seems until the past and present merge into a continuum. So cutting a long thread short, my associations with places date mainly from the nineties. Chennai was the sunrise, temples and strains of MSS's suprabhatam. Kolkata was a thirty six hour train ride on the Geetanjali and the fervent bleats of a goat before it splotched in blood, Mumbai was Bollywood and gangsters and Bangalore was for retired people.

Today's Bangalore contrasts with my minds Bangalore with a violent clash amidst honks of incessant traffic. For a wide eyed kid taking in notes furiously ( yes yours truly scribbled in notebooks while travelling, made lists of stations encountered and described landscapes ), Bangalore was confusing even then. Was it a small city? Was it a large town? How could it be a city if it had such gorgeous weather ? I remember standing with my mouth wide open at the Visveswaraiyya technological museum, especially at a display showing a continuum machine with balls running though it. My mouth remained open as I awed at Kids Kemp, and stubbornly refused to close strolling along M G road with its book shops and old fashioned coffee houses and a tree lined pavement, Brigade road with all its 'modern' shopping and Ulsoor which suddenly seemed like a suburb of Chennai (I know I'm ruffling feathers here :P ). When the train pulled out of Cantt station, I silently prayed we got transferred and could live there. A recent trip to the city also had me agape, at the airport first, then at MG road where trees were furiously being hacked, but as India moves so must old sensibilities.

I wish this wizened twenty something could visit the Bangalore of the nineties again, but don't we all want to relive the past?

PS: Happy birthday, to a pesky Banglorean.

Home

For me Bombay has always been home. If anyone asks me “favourate city” I say Bombay in a heartbeat. There are several reasons I am attached to the city, apart from the fact that it always spells out home. So recently I was myself stumped (discombobulated, googly-ed, startled senseless out of my wits) when someone asked my what’s my favourate city and I said “Chennai”.

There was silence, the kind associated with a patriarch revealing incestuous facts of a family. Friends opened mouths and forgot to close them, others looked at me and wondered if the flu hit my brain and as for myself I sat in a quiet daze of shock still ruffled at the alacrity and the gall of my response. Later that night I took in a deep breath and came out of the proverbial closet. To myself first, then to family and friends. It was true I liked Chennai, ok loved. Yes I had always had these aberrant desires. No it wasn’t my parent’s fault I assured them. It must be the trauma of a scarring childhood experience my wise counselors sighed and concluded. Maybe it is.

Vacation for me always meant gallivanting off to the south by whatever means of transport available. And vacations were never complete without Chennai. The city played host to me several time a year, lulled me to sleep on lazy summer days, fed my appetites on breezy evenings and watched me grow with a matronly eye. As a kid, and a Bombayite I hated Chennai. I wanted to Gestapo the auto-karans, outlaw Saravana Bhavan and revamp the Marina into a mega-mall. No one travelled by trains, buses ahd alphabets and no one spoke indhi. And yet I unfailingly visited the city, my visits held together by a gaggle of endearing relatives and affectionate grandparents.

Very much like the prodigal son coming home, slow realization dawned on me. Like the first soft rays of dawn that broke over the Bay of Bengal, like the subtle aroma of coffee assaulting nostrils, like the gentle whiff of malli on a hot summer’s day. Every time I visited the city I was hit by a wave of nostalgia and a realization of returning to something inherently comfortable. Chennai did not have Bombay’s sense of acceptance or Bombay’s kill to get to the top attitude, but Chennai felt different, felt like home.

Childhood remembrances are important clues to personality traits my psychiatric friend says. If ever mine was analyzed there would be an entire kaleidoscope of images. Of Mylapore in the mornings, T. Nagar in the evenings. Of going up and down the 1A with cousins, running on the endless expanse of sand on Marina and a thousand other inconspicuous, innocuous memories all of which climax into a giant snowball of emotions leading to lumpy throats and misted visions.

So there. I’m coming out on my blog now. I love Chennai, I think it rocks and I’m proud of it.

Country roads take me home

There is a virile excitement to be found in driving fast. Zipping across landscapes in a rush, driving in raucous speeds gives one a thrill otherwise unattainable. And this is not a pleasure extended to those who occupy other seats n the vehicle. The slow increase of numbers, ascending to the forbidden and mentally marking off milestones as the road markers seem to merge, until time itself begins to fly. Wind in the hair, spirits loose and caution (or the lack of it) hovering like a concerned parent behind.

There is another joy in driving slowly, the slowness brought upon by choice or force; with a low speed limit and a near empty road, the lack of acceleration not robbing the essence of movement. With speeds like 30 mph, there is time to note every lark that perches upon telegraph lines, time to feel every bend in the road, time to whoosh past trees and time to feel gravity working on you, as you hurtle down hills.

Driving in Massachusetts can be exasperating because the roads there have potholes. Lanes dizzyingly and exasperatingly merge or diverge, befuddling the novice. Driving in Massachusetts can be rewarding because the road suddenly will cut across a lake, pierce through a dense forest or dally around rounded hills; or even more suddenly deposit you in a city amidst skyscrapers and the sea.

It takes two to tango. And providing a much needed background score to this vista was a well furnished ipod that would play notes befitting the landscape and friends in tow, replete with lazy witty repartees. I spent most of the fall and winter of 2008 on trips that were more lessons on nature appreciation and less trips.

Much has been said of the American freeways and how they are a pleasure to drive on and also extremely purposeful and useful. This post is a tribute to the unsung heroes in Massachusetts, the state routes. Unseen, unknown like dark ribbons on the landscape.

Route 9: Is a major artery for Boston and its suburbs. About 10 miles form the city centre, it decides it has had enough and then exclusively zips past lakes. Peppered with grocery stores, malls and humdrum commercial establishments that suburbia thrives on.

Route 20: Is actually US route 20 stretching form Boston proper, traversing the length of the continent ending somewhere non-descript in Oregon. Parallels I-90 for most of its length often ducking under it and in one case going over it. In the city it has a most innocuous beginning in a leafy square, hardly expected of a road going all the way to the Pacific. Becomes a surprisingly crowded road, linking areas. Is densely forested, and in my opinion has some of the most lip smacking restaurants this side of the Atlantic.

Route 85: This one is hardly important but a personal favourate, simply because it was close to home and I had a treat driving on it one cold snowy afternoon with kathanakuthoohalam for company.

Route 135: One does not expect waterfalls on an urban road. And it is not inappropriate to lose ones head if the first time one sees a waterfall on a road, it is frozen and the ice threatens in looming shapes, to engulf small cars.

There are many more but I realize that I can hardly say different things about any of them. All of them were the same, traversing lands of great beauty and picturesque. Route 140 where a friend (who cooked well) lived. Route 111 where we got lost at 1 am in the morning, route 62 that we were always confused about, route 117 that took us to a great big Wal-mart. Routes 2 and 3 that were less state routes and more freeway, route 110 that had the huge houses, route 30 which most illogically loops around everywhere, route 28 where I ran over a duck, route 1 with all the seaside villages, route 128 winding along cold forlorn marshes, I could go on and on.

What I’ll do instead is hope I haven’t bored you with this long post, and hope you can see all of what I have said without calling me a clichéd sentimental old fool.

This post is also a birthday present to K, who was privy to all the aforementioned incidents and travels. Music connoisseur, in charge of general maturity and a close friend.

City Profiles

I like writing about cities. Most people see them as dots on a map or as places populated with urban detritus, but not as an organism. Not the fire breathing, I-will-destroy-everything-in-my-path kinds nor as a gaggle of dysfunctional humans. But as an entity that shapes the environment around it, in all spheres political, social, geographical and mental. It is easy to see a city as a collection of famous buildings or past happenings of importance. It is also easy to see every city having a ‘character’ atry, hep, modern, conservative, heartless and so forth. What is not easy to put in words the ‘je ne sais quoi’ of every city and see it with that perspective.

Consider a piece of lush land between low rounded hills and a shallower inlet of the sea. Miles of mangroves blurring the distinction between the land and water and the whole scene reads like a page out of Tolkien’s epics. In the nineties denizens of Mumbai were confronted with the existence of such a piece of land lying east of the city, on the Indian mainland and they conspired to turn it into a city.

And this momentary deliberation is what makes New Bombay what it is. A planned city with the widest roads in this hemisphere. Railway lines with stations so near one can walk to and from them. Malls, theatres and shops confined to particular areas and homes in sectors. Sectors in nodes. It was all very novel and for the first few years after its conception the city lay barren with pockets of population stranded like some post-communist city. And with time all industries moved to Navi Mumbai (in a cruel mockery of the name change from Bombay to Mumbai, its sister followed suit). MIDC (Maharashtra Industrial development corporation) was established all over the hills, ironically with toxic companies having the best views. Come monsoon and all the unpaved roads become unofficial waterfalls with picnickers reveling in them.

Viewed from the eastern end of Mumbai, New Bombay has an impressive skyline, one that is tall, modern and spans the length of the city. Mangroves, buildings and the foothills of the western ghats in the distance.

Encyclopedia Geographica

Most families discuss politics at dinner. Some well read ones bandy about famous words, and talk of Rushdie and Khalil Gibran. Still others watch soaps and grin at the vamp’s evil machinations. In my family, we talk. But none of that normal stuff for us. Being the dysfunctional unit that we are we talk geography. If this conjures up visions of people talking of Darfur and Patagonia, again dispel those. Let me elaborate.

Appa or Amma will start with where they went that day. The travelling spouse’s modes of transport would be acutely examined and then a long and protracted discussion would occur. Major roads would be discussed, the number of signals computed. The number of panwallahs, gutters to be navigated and the closest relatives abode from the point of destination would all be taken into consideration. Then the weather comes in. Mumbai being what it is, and more importantly where it is, you wouldn’t want to be flushed away in the rains. Hence all previous parameters would be voided in the face of the south western winds and newer, drier routes plotted.

Hinduism neatly divides the year into two halves, one replete with festivals, the other conspicuous by their absence. Travelling secular Mumbai in dakhshinayan compounds life. Amidst all the mandaps, mandals, makeshift temples and human detritus thronging them appointments must be made, offices reached on time and examinations be vomited upon. This is where we really excel. Sample this actual quote by my father to a bewildered rikshawallah: “Don’t take the left at the Church like you normally do, instead take a U-turn, immediately get into the housing society, pass through it and leave form the other gate. Never mind their watchman ill take care of him (!). Then get into the bus depot, circle the lake, go the opposite direction through that one-way and you will see a small gap between two trees, go through that, and you will be the first to reach the station today. Don’t thank God, thank me, and you will live to see another traffic jam”. Needless to say rickshaws avoid us like the plague.

Bandhs and political stirs leave all people scared and wary. My parents call too, but with detailed instructions on reaching back avoiding all the ‘political hotspots’ of the city (usually involving walking alongside stinky gutters, trespassing through several plots of private property and in one case, going through a tabela. No the cows weren’t pleased either).

Records, inevitably are set. “My husband can reach the mall under heavy traffic in a matter of seconds” Amma will proudly boast. In a benevolent mood she might even confide “We take a right turn at the vegetable market. Cuts 13.7 minutes, but watch out for cabbage peels.” These candid confessions sometimes lead to us bumping our rival families on one of ‘our’ secret routes leading my parents to froth at the mouth and devise newer, faster (and decidedly shadier) routes. We could give Google Earth a run for their money any day!

Talents rarely stay hidden and we are the local neighborhoods preferred database. Recently my father went a step further and lectured a cousin on how to find her way. Nothing wrong in it except that she was in Chennai and he in Mumbai. “Don’t listen to that autofellow, no train comes at that level crossing, just go across and you’ll reach home in time for dinner”. I was stumped. Amma, unfazed added for good measure that if my cousin took a particular lest turn she could pass by a temple too (and thank God for geographic mastermind relatives?).

All this knowledge isn’t gainsay. We have an original Rand Mc Nally atlas 1985 edition. It is a work of art no less. Mapping the entire globe form Cambodia to the Caucasus, Buenos Aires to Bangkok (with helpful footnotes on how to get to Juneau from Jakarta). The bloody thing must weigh a ton if anything at all. Then there are countless Indian atlases, from various publications. Also every time we take a vacation, as souvenirs we collect maps. So we have maps of almost all major Indian cities, two towns and some vague scribbles detailing a hidden Shiva temple a few kilometers off the railway tracks at Arakkonam. And then Appa bring maps from his sojourns abroad. So I know the way to wadi Haifa from Sharjah, and that the river through Gloffhausenbach has no bridges on it (leading me to pontificate if all Germans prefer wading to walking, but there is a time and place for every discussion). The digital age taught us to operate Google maps and latest versions of Google Earth are downloaded as soon as they are available.

A few weeks ago, I saw Amma reading a book on the Solar system (National Geographic special edition, weighs another ton and is a beautifully informative book). Houston, be scared. We are almost up there. “Beam me up Amma”

Paper Planes

Most suited when one is driving on the I-93. There comes a moment, precisely one, when the city looms over. Vehicles streaming into adjacent lanes. The cold air nipping through. The rough sea and calm skies with the sunlight bouncing off them skyscrapers onto your face and suddenly you’re underground. From up above, descending steeply into subterrainia. Speed. Lights. And a time flows liquid like, in slow motion as a million lights flash past by.

No bohemian atmosphere. Prudish and not ashamed of its intelligence. The subways teem of students reading Neitzsche and Proakis. Taking the “T”, walking among buildings whose collective intellect could shame some entire nations. Looking out the seafront, walking the freedom trail. Losing yourself in the north end among cobblestoned paths and ancient houses. Freezing in the cold longing for vendakkai curry and digging into hot clam chowder at Quincy market. Walking through its numerous squares with a gaping mouth, taking it all in. Looking down at the city from the Prudential tower at the brilliant autumn foliage. Cheesecake at Copley square. Gourmet Indian food at backbay. For a relatively young nation, this city oozes history. And snobbish aristocracy.

Suburbia is eye piercingly beautiful. Suburbs have no right to be so. Lakes with roads cutting through them, almost apologetically. Streams and forests. Homes, schools, malls are extremely incidental.

Cities like Mumbai and New York are made of real stories. Of grit and struggle and of hard life. These cities command a sometimes silent, sometimes bloody struggle and compensate magnificently. None of that shit here. No immigrants looking wishfully at plenty. No gangsters and pimps, certainly no one smuggling stuff into its exceedingly cold harbor. One is born rich, becomes only richer and dies in a golden grave. Buried amidst oaks and holly, on the Charles riverside.

Elitist. Cold. Old. Home for the past three months, and maybe for the next five. Boston, MA.

*Paper planes- ARR, Slumdog millionaire. Listen to it. More importantly, watch the movie. A lesson on how to laugh, cry, be shocked and be amazed. More importantly, a lesson on Mumbai.

A day in the life of Mumbai

Nerul, Juinagar, Sanpada…

Stations flashed by as she straightened herself. Soon Vashi would come, bringing along a dreadful rush of people, pressing on from all sides. She backed herself against the walls and compressed her belongings. Her umbrella by her side now was pressed to her hips and her handbag hung not elegantly from her hands, but from her throat. People clambered in even as the train slowed down and soon the train was whooshing over creek.

Mankhurd, Govandi, Chembur…

She clenched her teeth and pushed a fisherwoman away. Feeling her surroundings tentatively, she kicked. Aah it hit someone. As the offended foot backed away, she spread her feet into the crevice. Chembur next. Saroja would get in. She idly wondered what Saroja would be wearing.

Tilak nagar, Kurla, Chunnabhatti…

Saroja had pushed and managed to weave her way all the way across from the other door to her side. Time passed gossiping, cursing bosses, talking of sexless husbands and errant kids. She was in a position of minimum volume now, she and Saroja entwined like participants in a pagan orgy. Saroja’s hair strewn across her sweaty neck, with those irritating flowers she wore, her wet umbrella dripping into the folds of her saree. Her own handbag was not seen, only felt somewhere in the deep recess between her and that fisherwoman.

GTB nagar, Wadala, Sewri…

Conversation still flowed freely, like oil over a jar of mango pickle. Soon Wadala came and Saroja got off, her flowery hair brushing past and nauseating briefly. A sudden view of the city blurring outside as the fisherwoman shifts her leg. A brief look at the time. Plans for what to do in office.

Cotton green, Reay road, Dockyard road…

The train rose and fell across bridges. Plans were made, plots hatched, some discarded, some to be implemented. Gently shoving the fisherwoman away she reaches for her mobile phone and texts her daughter, reminding her to have lunch outside today. She amuses herself trying to text a romantic message to her husband. Futility and bad network conspire and in the phone goes.

Sandhurst road, Masjid, CST.

All the fisherwoman are bustling now. Some make the exchange at Sandhurst road, but the majority get off at Masjid. So do three burkha clad women. She hastily gives way for the latter. The train slowly pulls into CST. Tired, weary, crumpled and disheveled she sighs. Disembarks. A slow walk at first, a brisk trot and then a full fledged run to catch the bus, waving on the way to her train friend from the middle compartment.

Wanderlust

I have a habit of dreaming about travel. I like to travel and I do travel, but not as much as I would like to. This makes me want to travel, and leads me to dream about travelling. Of fast trains and blurring views. Of majestic views atop mountains, of rapid rivers, calm seas, magnificent metropolises and quaint bucolic pastures.

This dreaming has progressed to such an extent, that I find it has become a hobby in its own right. I pointlessly look up pictures of strange places, possessed by an intense desire to be there, to experience it all. I want to stand by ‘Christ the Redemptor’ at Rio. I want to see Stonehenge. To be silenced by the Victoria falls, bustled about in Hong Kong and look at the Mona Lisa. To see the Aurora Borealis inflame the skies above Helsinki, cross the Danube on foot, Be enamoured by Hollywood. I want to travel down every road that goes somewhere and be on a train to a far-off destination. I want to see it all, have it all. Be everywhere.

Strangely enough when I do visit places, a profound sense of anticlimax dawns on me and I can only look at whatever I went to see. How much ever you believe in the journey being the real manzil, there must be a frisson of excitement when one reaches the destination. All I have instead is a jaded feeling of ennui.

Wanderlust ever conspires to waylay weary travelers. And that is how I find myself on the roads time and again. The pleasures gained on making a monumental journey to see ancient wonders and boast of having been to foreign lands, the pleasure of seeing your very own neighborhood after heavy rains, are they the same? Does geographical disparity interfere with the traveler’s conscience? Would I be as happy to spend a night at Hanoi, trek through Darfur or prance about in Patagonia?

And amidst such nebulous thoughts I am suddenly drawn back to the mundane world with the familiar ping on gtalk.

*Picture-Kaveri delta near Karaikal, TN, India

Summer

Come on…quick…don’t be scared, Solapur is a water filling station, half an hour to go

And so the day would begin. The Madras mail left Mumbai at midnight, and this was the first thing I would hear the next day, with my father prodding his scared son to leave the confines of the great carrier that is the Indian railways.

Summer vacations invariably meant heat, mangoes and trips to madras. I used to love travelling by trains, I still do. I’m a complete sucker for trains. There is an irresistible romance associated with train journeys that flights just can’t make up for.

And we always took the madras mail, even though it took 30 long hours to cover the distance between home and a city very very close to home(not geographically, of course…of all the insanities that one could attribute to me, geographical incorrectness is not one of them). The train would speed through the fertile landscape, cutting across states, blurring views, relentlessly southeast. Solapur would be followed by Gulbarga, and the names of the stations would no longer be in comforting Devnagari, but in alien squiggles. Karnataka would pass by in a blur of a small novel and lunch. Andhra was always dreaded because of the heat. The landscape was unforgiving as well, barren parched earth, clumps of trees. Here and there a farm would exist, defying the lack of water and the killing heat, shoots of rice swaying to the trains slipstream. Crossing over the Krishna and Tungabhadra granted views of sandy expanses, dry riverbeds and occasional relics, sure to be submerged with the oncoming monsoons.
Another thing that would occur would be that chaiwallas no longer served chai, but coffee. South India slowly began, Hindi would be replaced by a patois, of Telugu and Tamil. Rotis would be quickly consumed and curd rice would be the main course. Onward we would go, Cudappah and Renigunta and finally Arakkonam in the wee hours of the morning. The train would suddenly bustle with the eagerness of people to leave the train. Groggy eyed, I’d embrace the hot morning air (only in Madras, can even the mornings be hot). And near basin bridge, the inevitable stench of sewage, as the train pulled into central. Sunrise and I’d be bear hugged by any aunt, (who had managed to wake up by then). Madras. Marina. Grandmom’s. Cousins. A whole month of fun. Aah…nostalgia.

Travels and Travails in America

In one fell swoop I lost three hours of my day. Travelling eastward around the globe, unfortunately takes time…literally. Returning from glorious, sunny California to snowy upstate New York was forbidding enough, additionally I also had to cope with the brutal way in which my hours were taken away from me. Often we look at some guy, and think wow he has it all..a great life, career..whatever..California is that guy of places. Since much has already been said and written of the glories of the pacific state, I won’t expound much here, but believe you me when I say, CA’s the place to be.

Riding the metro was fun. Coming from a city like Bombay where riding the metro can be a life or death experience, San Francisco was very very cool. Calm collected, orderly and not crowded. One dwells too little on micro moments of joy that life throws at us to enjoy them thoroughly. Like the rush of the train when it accelerates, travelling alone in a new city, roaming footloose, wherever mind dictates. Not wanting to do the ‘touristy’ stuff that normal mortals do, I decided to see SF my own way. I roamed downtown and its dark streets among skyscrapers, and walked through Chinatown with its pungent aromas and quaint charm. I took the metro randomly, only to arrive at the seaside. The train was all things at once, bustling underground telling of corporate deals and big city life, trudging through dreary suburbs, reeking of an ennui that only urbandom can bring and unexpectedly issuing above ground to merge with the streets and wait for road signals. The last stop was an unassuming square, only the horizon was endless. The Pacific. Somehow I was excited. I couldn’t help it. Here it was the pacific in all its glory at 32 Fahrenheit. Belying its name, the waves roared, surged and hopelessly ever kept crashing. What is it about lonely humans and the ocean?

Viewpoint

A uniform snowy blanket, as white as a sheet over a corpse lay stretched in all directions. Clumps of brown shaggy growths, once trees, disturbed the landscape. Occasionally cluttering the landscape were towns, contributing more to the monotony because of their brutal geometry.

Morbid as though it sounds the above is no prelude to some ghastly horror story, merely a description of the American landscape in winter, viewed by yours truly from 28,000 feet. Flying off to my cousin’s place for the hols, with a window seat, I was excited. As the plane rose I saw the grandeur of the continent, the extent of winter and the orderliness of American cities. I, for one am completely bowled over by the ways Americans plan their cities. Roads intersecting each other at ninety degrees, perpendicular and straight to the core, with a geometrical fastidiousness that only a square can inspire. Breaking the monotony are wide sweeping curves, they too perfect semi circles. Blocks over blocks of houses and people living their dysfunctional non-linear lives in straight lines. Railway lines and highways define straightness here, brutally cutting across geography. It’s no wonder I fell in love with it all. As someone who is particular about symmetry to the point of being obsessed, Indian cities have always frustrated me. Parallel roads intersect, Perpendicular roads never meet, railway lines, boulevards highways and lanes all bewilderingly meet at a single point and more astoundingly, move away with rapid swiftness each to its own course. Neighbourhoods overlap relentlessly and geography interferes causing roads to swerve erratically, chaos reigns supreme. However the occidental cities lack a character, a flavor so present in the orient. With roads at interesting angles, there’s always space to squeeze in that small triangular shop selling funky beads, or that Chinese restaurant with standing room only. By contrast American cities are stiff, strict and formal. Our cities are a vivid mess of informality, with the most unexpected urban landscapes ever. Where else in the world can a straight road suddenly turn right back, for no apparent reason and gift you with a view of the sea? Indian road makers also seem to have an aversion to tunnels, meaning you get sick with hairpin bends and risk falling off cliffs, but are also granted fabulous views in the bargain.

Flight take offs regularly clear the mystery of why roads travel the way they do. I have been surprised several times by looking down and seeing two landmarks of the city exactly next to each other. Travel to them by road and you would never guess. American cities are terribly simple to navigate (given that you have to navigate in straight lines only), and directions to reach an address are fairly straightforward. Compare this with how you would give directions to your house and you get the picture.

So what in the end did I like? The straight neatness of the west or the comfortable chaos of the east? The brain says one and the heart another. Also the air hostess is now getting chips of an interesting texture and I want to try them out. I have to change planes at Minneapolis and the temperature there is a forbidding -12 degree Celsius. Expect more morbid winter descriptions.