Live from Pune!

I am typing this from the exotic subcontinent of India! That’s right, I have finally arrived, and with surprisingly few issues along the way.

We got out of Frankfurt with some 20 minutes delay, which, all things considered, wasn’t so bad. Frankfurt, incidentally, has got to be one of the most depressing airports I have ever been in. It’s purely function, no form at all – the London Underground is more attractive. It also has a better choice of food. Remember that lunch I was going to look for after my last post? It wound up consisting of a teeny little hotdog, a chocolate muffin, and a pretzel. In that order. Yeah. The business lounge was okay, but the food they were offering was very unappetising. I’m pretty sure meatballs aren’t meant to be beige…

Anyway, we got out of Frankfurt without too much delay, and the Lufthansa business class seats were nice. Not as nice as the ones on BA, though – for one thing, they were set up all facing the same way, whereas on BA, they face in alternating directions. The big advantage of this is that everyone has their own little pod-like space, and can do whatever they want without disturbing anyone else. Here, if you were on the window seat and, for instance, you wanted to get up, or talk to the steward, you had to do it over your neighbour, possibly needing to leap over their legs if the seat was outstretched. So yeah, BA wins on that count.

Another thing BA wins on is service. I’m sure Lufthansa in general are fine, but here they were incredibly slow. We had one of those 3 course meals, but we’d been in the air for two hours by the time they started clearing away the starters! I gave up after that and went to sleep instead of bothering with the rest. The salad I had – garden greens with chanterelle mushrooms and little pieces of cold stewed pumpkin and carrot thing (surprisingly good) – was incredibly dry, and none of the crew realised that the dressing had been forgotten until they had almost finished serving. The dryness I could understand, the forgetfulness not. It’s not like there were a lot of dishes, and the little pots were right there in the serving cart! Anyway, when I finally got mine, the little plastic pot had that distinctly swollen, puffy look that warns ‘don’t eat me or you will regret it’, so I didn’t eat it, and politely declined further food (until the next meal, just before landing).

My neighbour was a friendly Canadian also destined for the Westin hotel, and we chatted a bit, but he hadn’t slept in 24 hours, so that didn’t last. I slept some, enjoyed the view when there was no cloud cover (we flew right over some beautiful cities in Turkey), and watched Prince of Persia. Not sure why, but I enjoyed the characters more this time around than when I saw it in the cinema.
Anyway, we landed, Immigration and Baggage Control were fairly painless, and the drive to the hotel was only five minutes, which was nice. All in all, I was in my room by 5am, and in bed by 5.30. The room is beautiful, but smaller than I would have liked. I asked about upgrading in the morning when I arrived, but the girl on the desk just smiled at me and said ‘your room is a very nice one’. I was too tired to argue then, but when I got up again a couple of hours ago, I went and spoke to the manager, who promised me a bigger room in a day or two, when they become available. Which means I’m not sure how much I can be bothered to unpack until then, but we’ll see.

The place seems nice, in any case, very new and shiny, with lots of wood panelling and such. I had lunch in the main buffet restaurant, mushroom and vegetable stir-fry with spiced rice, followed by one of those little bananas, which was quite good. Tomorrow I’m going to see about going to a supermarket near the office complex, though, to get some snacks and things. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of convenience store nearby, and I don’t fancy paying minibar prices for two months!

My main project for the moment is to get hold of a DVD player. They aren’t expensive in Europe, so I doubt they would be more here, and I would really like to be able to play my own stuff on the TV (the laptop is too old to really be useful). They don’t recommend you leave the hotel alone, at least for a few days, so that’ll have to wait until next week.

So that was my first day in India, yay!


Update: Since writing the above, the manager has called and offered me a bigger room, so I am now nicely set up in a room with two queens, rather than a single king. In some ways, the other room was actually nicer – it had a fainting couch, for one thing, whereas this one has two little chairs, and a desk set-up which was separate from the TV. The view was more lively, too – there were a lot of trees with hawk-type birds circling above, and there was a busy road to watch. None of those are things I’ll particularly miss, though, and this room has one major thing going for it: Space. There’s a lot of open floor space and a much wider space for the window, which means more airiness and natural light. I can actually see myself living in this one for two months without going crazy, whereas the other one was kind of cramped and boxed in. So yeah, worth the trade-off, I think. Now to unpack!