Wondering Why?

From Active to dormant is how I should describe my blog. I started this blog purely to document my love for travel, cooking and eating of course :) and I do find myself looking up the blog very often to recall the ingredients and recipe of certain  dish I had made/created/invented . But over the past 2 years, ever since I left Agartala I find myself blogging less and lesser with every passing month, I should not be giving any excuse because the past 2 years have been the most active and busy years for me in terms of discovering different cuisines from around the world and also in terms of travelling.

The past two years has been really wonderful for me; I got married to the person who makes me happy & laugh with his happy ways always, was on sabbatical from work (a much needed and deserved break), completed an advance degree on development (next degree will be a Phd hopefully) , visited 11 more countries and just for the record I have visited Paris thrice and Rome twice, made some wonderful friends, discovered Dutch, French, Italian (The REAL Italian kind) ,African  and Latin American  food, learned few words of Spanish & many, many words in Dutch, discovered my hidden talent of organizing holiday on a shoe string budget, finding cheap tickets. One thing I really want to mention is, I cooked food for about 100 people for one event at ISS with 3 other wonderful people who lovesss to cook, the team included a French, Japanese, Nepali and Indian....the butter chicken, fish curry and kheer was loved by all. And the most important I discovered that I am bad or should I say horrible in cooking chicken....lol. The only good chicken curry I ever made was the Butter Chicken for the ISS event, but that was all thanx to the pre-mix masala, that chicken was a big hit.

So much activities in life and I failed to document most of it....ahhhh what a shame. But since I am back in India and re-adjusting life post ISS and my European Extravaganza I should and MUST start blogging again. 3 blogs a month is what I am targeting at, so 1 post every 10 days.....hmmm the target is achievable. All the best to me and happy blogging.  

Hagueover

Hagueover or Hague-Over and not Hangover, a new term coined by one of my batchmate from Philippines, explaining in one word how much we miss the awfully windy yet lovely city, we called  home for 15 and half months.  The city I learned to love...now that ISS and Hague is over I have to admit that I do miss the city but  what I miss most about the city now when I look back is difficult to put in few words or in just one post.

I still remember the first day in Hague, it was bright, sunny and a perfect day, 'Perfect Day' was not what we thought back then, only now I can say, it was indeed a perfect day. When the Admin person, told us to go out and enjoy the sun, our reply was "Oh! we come from a HOTTTT country so we do not appreciate the sun so much" , only to realise that we would regret what we said the very next day. Hague is awfully windy and I am not joking, the wind can sometimes blow you away like literally, but despite all the wind and rains, Hague is a lovely city to live. It's weird when I think, why I never took pictures of Hague when I have over 1000 pictures in Paris, and another 1000 pictures in Rome alone. I never took any pictures standing in-front of the   Nordeinde Palace or even the famous Peace Palace, both located 5 mins walking from Dorus.

Missing Hague, friends, ISS and the community we build!

Travel Plans November

To begin with we are going to Amsterdam, followed by Paris, Rome, Florence, Venice, maybe Barcelona, Brugge, Antwerp and if we get cheap tickets maybe Cologne also. Enough reasons for me to finish my RP before 9th. 

Visiting Auschwitz from Krakow

Auschwitz Camp 1

Having seen many films based on the WW II holocaust and the atrocities against certain section of the people in Europe, esp. the Jews who lived in several parts of Europe during WW II, visiting Auschwitz and knowing/learning  about the concentration camps was not only depressing but I was amazed at how humans can be so cruel to each other and to even think that almost 11 lakhs people perished in those camps in the gas chambers is beyond words to express.

Auschwitz is 1.15 hrs by bus from Krakow, we went on a guided tour and I think it saves you time and it's not so expensive, we paid 90 PLN  per person (22.50 Euro) which included  travel in a very comfortable bus and an English guide. The whole tour takes about 6 hours ( we went at 9 in the morning), be ready to walk and wear comfortable shoes, for people wanting to explore in their own, the guided tour can be a bit boring but they  ensure that you don't miss out anything in the camps which is now more like a museum, the guide we had was really good and she managed to show us the whole place without tiring us, explaining and providing all the details possible. The whole place was packed with tourist and I saw that most people were on a guided tour in different language English, French, Spanish, German and even Polish. 

After the tour I wonder how SS and Hitler got all the horrible and inhuman ideas to torture people, I personally feel it's not human to have thought every possible ways of torturing people but Hitler and his people at SS did the unimaginable. The Holocaust and the camps at Auschwitz is a reminder that no living creature on earth is as cruel as humans are. 

Krakow on a bright and sunny week

Krakow City

In the middle of writing our RP, we decided to visit Krakow and I must say we were lucky, it was bright, sunny, beautiful and Krakow has so much to offer for tourist. We also visited Auschwitz, which is where almost everyone who visit Krakow go for sure, we went on a guided tour which was very well organised and @ 22.50 Euro it was worth it. More updates will follow. 

ARD Dinner

We had our last dinner as the 1st and last batch of ARD as a group at our convener's place (  @ the very famous and the super star academician  SBJ's (Jun's) place), Jun's new house is really good, with front and back side garden, he has been growing potato's in the Garden, Agrarian Studies Professor but farmer at heart :). The dinner was awesome, a combined effort  by all of us, I made Butter Chicken and veg pakoda's, TK made Chappatis and this guy can make chappatis better than all the Indian's in our batch. Jun cooked this really tasty rice with black pepper, olive and grated lime cover,  which I plan to replicate very soon and also chicken, AC made the best Tiramisu for dessert, the best I ever had and the best part about the Tiramisu was the decoration, she wrote ARD with blue berries on top....super awesome. MJR got a lot of appetizers, MA ( Venezuelan but the wannabe Nicaraguan hahaha) bought yummy Macaroons form France and the new Phd guy B made some greek salad, which was also quite yumm. We all had a great time but sure missed our Pinky panda, Hilhil and Prof Vince. At the end of the day I realized what a great year I have spent in ISS with my classmates from all over the world, I am looking forward to going back home and getting back to work but I sure will miss the group a lot.

AC's yummy Tiramisu.....the best I ever had