Update 1

As I promised yesterday I'm back today with updates...it will be gradual, so please don't expect all the news at one shot...

The last few hours before I left for the airport, I was really tense..had like butterflies clamouring for attention in my stomach. But it settled down and by the time I reached the airport I was my usual calm and composed self. Though it was my first time in the airport (I refuse to count the few times I've flown as a kid), and international airports are so confusing, we managed just fine. Got through check-in, security check etc smoothly and then called up the people I wanted to talk to before boarding the flight. That was sentimental few hours!!
The flight by itself was OK. I had like absolutely no reaction to taking-off, landing...you know the usual nausea and giddyness people experience. Infact I slept quite comfortably once I managed to settle into the tiny seat. An interesting thing was that my experience echoed that of others in my acquaintance who'v travelled by Alitalia - the crew is extremely inept and inhospitable. Bordering on rude..if you don't act like this bossy authority, they just rail-road over your requests and almost see through you!! Siama and Jigisha had a slight problem with the food, but I quite liked what they served except for the chole for breakfast...I was quite revolted seeing chole in my tray almost as soon as I opened my eyes...but then we all know my so-called 'firang' tastes!! Hahah!
Anyways we landed at Milan airport at 6.58 am local time, and spent 2 hours at the airport...pretty boring coz none of the custom duty shops were open that early!!
The flight from Milan to Berlin was in one of those tiny cute 56 seater planes...that was awesome...we could see out of the windows and I just totally enjoyed seeing the perfect landscapes, the red roofs of the tiny cottages, the snow-capped mountains and then the clouds....it was an amazing experience.

We landed at Berlin at local time 11.20 am, and Hardo was waiting for us. He was exactly as I remembered him (appearances) - tall, shaggy, with long hair and a beard that reminds me of blue-beard for some strange reason! Ofcourse I had completely read the cover wrong, for the book (him as a person) inside is a warm, friendly and very helpful person. Throughout the hour long drive down to Magdeburg he talked about a wide range of topics from his experience when he landed in Mumbai last year, where he stayed, what we have to do once we reach Magdeburg, the local area history, about the town, a little information about places we passed etc etc. We passed this man-made structure called the Kali mountains...they were created due to the artificial production of salt in the region. The alkaline nature of the soil in the region has destroyed the vegetation around the mountains ...I found this very interesting - yet another example of how materialisation adn industrialisation has affected natural elements...

We reached Magdeburg and headed straight for the University where we met Prof Lange. After that we headed to the estate agent's office and signed the contract for the flat....we are now paying 444.60 Eu for it....
The flat itself was a surprise..quite dirty by German standards. But much bigger than what we expected. We have 2 bedrooms, a huge living room, a bathroom, a kitchen and a balcony as well. All the rooms are heated except the balcony. Tha bathroom was the dirtiest of all...and most annoyingly has no drain except the one in the bathtub...which means when water spills out of the tub, you either let it stay there and tolerate the damp smell (there are no windows) or get down and mop it up daily...well cleaning up that place was a mammoth task which we took on later in the week. Had to numb our senses before we plunged into the task..but now that it's clean, we are quite pleased with ourselves.
We also had to sweep, mop and clean up the other rooms. It was extremely dirty as we got it. We ended up re-arranging the furniture and shifting cupboards around so that the place looks nice, warm and inviting..more of a home than a house. We did this on saturday nearly a week after we arrived coz till then we were busy getting ourselves enrolled, getting registered with the local council, settling in basically. We couldn't have managed this without Hardo, coz he pretty much smoothed the way for us and we didn't have to do much else ebyond signing!!! He's been an angel through-out...wrangling his way trhough for our work, when he didn't need to do anything of the sort...thank god for him!!!!

Classes started this week...so far we've had only introductory lectures but the professors are impressed by us and we'Ve already gained a reputation in the languages deparments...becuase we not onlly interact in class, our POVs seem to be of a level higher than that of the students here...plus we've offered to do presentations out of interest not necessity so that acts in our favour. These are the classes I've signed up for:
1. Alternative and Parallel Englands - Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (D.Wiemann)
2. Political, socio-economic and cultural asepcts of Indian society today: the case of Bombay/Dharawi (D.Wiemann)
3. William Blake (H.W.Breunig)
4. Janespotting :Austen in print and on screen (D.Wiemann)
5. City cultures in Britain (B.P.Lange)
6. English in non-native contexts (K.Ebeling)

I had wanted to do the courses on post-colonialism but they got cancelled so I had to come here and change my decision and settle for these...so far they seem very interesting...

Hmm..pretty tired for now..shall pick this up tomm...until then..ciao!!