Norway

It has become a habit to come back here only after finishing any tour.:) It looks as though this is a travel blog. But this country is so beautiful that it is worth mentioning and I may not be able to describe everything in words. In most of our tours, majority of the time is spent in planning and honestly this is what we enjoy more. Norway being the most expensive country and we trying to book at the last minute, was making the planning phase more worse.


 Considering the fact that Norway has the greatest length (1752km) of any European countries (India -3050km) but width only 432km we had difficulty deciding where to start, North or South.

Tromso

 Our first step in Norway, was in Tromso, which is in the Arctic region, the largest urban area in the Northern most Norway. Tromso is basically an island with snowy mountains on the opposite side. We had to take a rope way to go to the top and it was worth every penny! You get stunning views. I am actually holding my adjectives to describe other parts of our journey. :P

The next day evening we took an express boat, Hurtigbat to Harstad. The express boat stands up by its meaning, its really super fast which is aided by its hull shape. > 20 knots. The interiors of the boat is no less than a 3 star hotel. It has VIP sections, wi-fi, tv, snacks, drinks etc. It's much bigger than boats we refer in normal context. It can carry around 200-300 people. Norwegians prefer to travel with the boat though the price is 1.5 times than the bus because of its speed & convenience. Throughout the journey a friendly Norwegian middle aged man around 35 engaged us in his overview of Norway. Most of them speak English, so language is not a problem in Norway.
To be continued...

Non-UK citizens can vote

Tomorrow May 6th is the UK General Elections.I do not even know the names of the local candidates & parties here but I can vote.I do not know the existing problems nor the developments,no idea what political parties have performed / failed, no idea of the local economy,political system, BUT I still can vote. Whom? What for? I found it very strange that people who are not British citizens can vote in UK General Elections.
Normally the voting rights are obtained for any country only if you acquire the citizenship. As per the British rule, all EU & Common Wealth citizens can vote in UK. More information in link here.
It would have made sense if there was a minimum period of stay in UK needed,before a person is eligible to vote.

Early Spring

The Spring has sprung!

Spring is the most loved time here. This transition season from winter to summer broadly gives the idea of rebirth or regrowth. Everyone around is happy and cheerful, even the birds give the impression to sing a whole lot louder. Hurrah! The Spring is in the air.

Purple Friday Flower

Cars Parked on a sunny day
Colourfully rich flowers bloom everywhere. Suddenly a lot of activities seem to start. Gardening,Grass cutting,Hunting Easter eggs, hanging basket plants and Cleaning etc. If the weekend is sunny, there will be a rush of cars towards the Mumbles beach. People will be busy gardening & beautification of their houses after a tiresome dark winter.
Dresses change from pants to shorts and skirts, full sleeved tops to sleeveless spaghetti s,shoes to slippers, dull grey and black to jovial colours.Young ladies jog,cycle and exercise to tone their bodies for summer.
Shot from ground
The city council starts filling up the pot holes and clean the roads with road sweeper vehicles. The yellow daffodils are planted everywhere including the village (A) roads.The city looks beautiful. I appreciate their enthusiasm and efforts to make the things look good. Men with bare body hang out in parks and beaches. Numerous events and gathering festivals take place. Sports stadium & walking paths will be full.

Pink Spring flowers

Windows of houses are kept open and no job for heaters.Owners of convertible cars show off in the streets. Shiny goggles on many of the faces. All the holiday destinations are lined up with cars and people. City centre will be bursting with life, don't know where it was all hidden before! Lambs are charming in hill farms.
We are lucky to have magnificent beaches and mountains within 3 miles from our house. In India summer is the most hated season because of the heat and there is no great value to sun. The importance of Sun is only realised after a long dark gloomy winter.
It is time to rejoice when the nature is reawakening.

Lovely Mumbles Beach 

A beautiful poem on Spring written by Robert Louis Stevenson is here

South Spain - Andalucia

Hola :)

Hablos Ingles ? ( Do you speak English ?) - - - This is the foremost question I have asked numerous times while in Spain. :)) Of course you all know English, so I can go ahead. lol :)

Whenever we travel, I always used to think that I need to write all those interesting facts in my blog. But it never did happen! So chances are more that I might have forgotten many things when writing a past experience.
We started our 10 days trip to Southern Spain (Andalucia) during Christmas holidays when Britain was suffering from terrible winter. We were in for a surprise with a pleasant weather and the city & crowd of Malaga welcoming us even at night 11.30 pm.

As it was Christmas time,the streets were full of lights, decorations and surprisingly People!!! Even 7 -12 year old kids were playing on streets at midnight. If you want a true Spanish experience I reckon Andalusia region. Only a handful of people can speak English and our taxi driver said he knew little English. He could say only kms, numbers, money and YES or NO!! Perhaps he was right when he said that, knew only what was needed to him. :)
I had rehearsed a lot of Spanish words as a precaution and even downloaded many Spanish dictionaries and translators onto our itouch. All these homework because we knew we might travel to Spain more than once and glad we did it. Most challenging was to identify vegetal food in the menu!! Gracias (thanks) to iTouch for translation, without which we would have surely ended up in eating Tuna or Sausages! By the end of the trip we knew most of the Spanish food names. Like. Azucar, Sol,fretos,Pimiento,Acita,Hueva,Pollo,Jamon,Aten etc..
We were warned before by many friends and on-line forums about non-availability of `vegetal` food in Spain. Fortunately we could locate a Kabab shop which had 2 veg options- Falafel & Patata Bravas (which became our only choice for most of the remaining days there).



Spain is known for Bull Fighting and Flamenco dances. Tennis is their favourite sport;no wonder why most top 100 tennis players are Spanish. Orange like fruit trees are seen everywhere.


One strange thing that we noticed is the timings to eat.
Breakfast :8 - 12 pm! (Even 1pm in some restaurants)
Lunch: 1 - 4/5 pm!!! Dinner: 8-12pm!
We then travelled to Granada, Sierra Navada - snowy mountains, Seville-big city famous for beautiful cathedrals & monuments and Estepona. On a rainy Christmas day we had nothing to do except to roam around Granada (walked for almost 6-7 hrs), because only on this day that the whole country shuts down except a few restaurants.It would not be fair if I don't mention a stranger who helped us to the max in Seville while we were struggling to find the way to hotel. (Google Map was not right). He took me to a pub to ask if someone else knew the address as he was not aware. We started walking as per their suggestion which was actually wrong way. The stranger after knowing the right way, he followed us in his car and dropped us all the way to hotel. I asked his e-mail address, but it's a pity that I could not make him understand even that in Spanish. :(

The Mediterranean coast is an absolute beauty! Loved the beaches in Malaga, Estepona and the Marbella coast. In Spanish 'll' is pronounced 'yy'. (Like Marbeyya).


Spain, I would say is like a 'developed' India. Resembles our country in many aspects like late closure of shops,shut down in the afternoon for 2 hrs, tiled roof for the houses,informal gatherings,lively folks talking to even strangers in bus & trains, hanging of clothes in the balcony,black (long) hair, small shopping streets like Bangalore's Chickpet and also very similar weather. Famous 'Alhambra' is in Moorish style which represents our Taj Mahal.

Vale Vale.... So many lines keyed down already. Let me stop here. I will write about my 2nd trip to Spain (Barcelona) which is completely different city, in another post.

Adieos

Welcome!

Well.. What shall I write in my very first blog? I would welcome myself and readers to AmateurColumn and I presume that this is another way to improve upon my (English) writing and share my amateur thoughts.

Ever since I started living in UK,I have become a 'tech savvy' girl. It all started with sexy 32GB iPod touch gifted for our wedding and credits to Ravi-my husband as well. He has most modern gadgets & gaming consoles in his collection. Wii Balance Board is the recent addition in my name. And to add to this, I also became active on Facebook,Twitter,Orkut,Google Buzz,Google Wave etc. It was a shame not to have a blog of my own; Moreover I had promised couple of my friends to start writing about the life in this part of the world! So here it goes..

Hopefully I can do some justice to my readers and believe they can cope with my writing style. :)