Magical Fussen!

I planned a surprise weekend vacation for Suman in Fussen (Germany), for our first wedding anniversary. Fussen is well known for two famous castles - Neuschwanstein and HohenSchwangau.



We visited Hohenschwangau which was the childhood residence of King Ludwig II. The castle was built in Neo-Gothic style. The castle's festival hall or the dining hall was mind blowing. On the long dining table, there were beautiful artifacts that were gifted to the king for his birthday along with fancy chocolate fountain utensils. The queen's room was slightly off beat, as the king appreciated the Turkish way of architecture and built the queen's room in that style.



Neuschwanstein was built by Ludwig II in medieval-bavarian style. Saying that the castle interiors were beautiful is an understatement. We were taken into 16 rooms like the living rooms, study, dressing room, bedroom etc. The king's bed was made from dark wood and the canopy was shaped like a church, which took 4 man years to be completed! The court room was the highlight with the ceiling painted in gold and fresco paintings from all over the world on the sides, large chandelier and marble stairway. Each drape in the 16 rooms were made of silk, delicately embroidered and decorated with gems just like an Indian wedding gown.

After that we headed back to our hotel, which was a wellness hotel and had 8 different types of Sauna. Sauna was good fun, especially since it was cold outside! The hotel was on the foothills, surrounded by forests and lakes. The road leading to the hotel was untouched and did not have street lights, so getting there was quite an adventure!



One of the highlights was also the walk through the woods and the lovely little lakes we saw.

Local food and dessert ofcourse were part of the magical trip.

Before we left for Zurich we saw another castle in Fussen. It had large fresco paintings of pillars, walls and balconies on the external walls, giving a sense of the structure being present.
We had a great time and a perfect mix of history, cuisine, nature and time off. We'll definitely go back, but next time for swimming in the ponds!

Snowday at Brunwald

My friends organized a day trip to Brunwald a popular ski resort in Switzerland. As a newbie at any kind of snow sports, I was nervous, but I enjoyed my time in the beautiful swiss alps, covered with snow and went for 3 rounds of sledging.

I was particularly impressed by the efforts taken to help tourists with their travel to Linthal and then to Brunwald, including the Snow-n-Rail ticket. There were cable cars taking you up every 3-4 minutes, of which the ski cars were most impressive. It took you all the way up, to an altitude of 1300m and gave you an open view of everything around you. First, below the clouds, then in them and finally above them.

After sledging, we went into a cave that had a number of ice formation, like the limestone stalactites and stalagmites. After that we headed down and came back to Zurich.

I must say the swiss know how to make your travel comfortable, probably one of the reasons why it is a popular tourist destination.

Thanks to Paul and Ralph for the images. I've been off blogging for a while and hope to continue now.

Dharam Brushta..!

Happy Thanksgiving all you ppl sitting there and wasting time reading ma blog..!. Anyways so here goes my first Thanksgiving dinner... guess what I had turkey..!! ya ya I know I'm a vegetarian but just got into the spirit of Thanksgiving, tasted it.. man these guys need to put some garam masala(spice) in their food, my taste buds are dying, they need to recoup soon..!

Birthday Baby..!

I've just recovered from all the birthday celebration I had whole of yesterday. It was an extended birthday that started at IST time and ended Pacific time. I'm not complaining..! :D. My roomates threw a surprise birthday party. I had a wonderful time. First birthday away from home, wast bad at all. Infact better ;-)

But yesterday was special. My college had a slightly late Diwali celebration owing to the fact that we missed the calender diwali because of exams. For the first time I tried my hand in singing a film song. Needless to say the song was Aaj Kal Tere Mere from Bramhachari. I was very nervous when I entered stage. Once I started singing, I could not feel myself, I was with the rhythm and the nervous feeling disappeared all together. Everything was going good till I saw my partner walking up to me on stage, this was between the 2nd and 3rd verse, and the instuments were playing. Things were still good till he asked me "Ramya how does the next para start". Well finally everything went well, he just made up some typically diabetic bollywood lyrics like "Tere Kadmo me mere jaan hai sanam".

Fantastic Friday

Yipeee the weekends back and promises me fun n frolic...!
I've been on a movie spree..! It all started with watching Star Wars 1 on Thursday. George Lucas is da man. Then on Friday, man..! ooh Friday was hectic.. I had two movies back to back ;). First watched Memento, a murder mystery. The coolest thing about this movie is that it story was backwards. As in it started from end to start..! For the first 30 mins I was completely lost(I'm sure people saw the question mark on my face), then I started understanding after a while.
The second movie today was Andaz Apna Apna.. the all timer comedy hit bollywood movie. I laughed my lungs out. This must be the 10th time I've seen this move but the fun just becomes better everytime..!

CSCI 410

Its 3.42pm now and I've just had lunch ready to just doze off. But, life's not all that easy. I'm fighting with my PA3 assignment that requires us to create a compiler. I'm writing the semantic analyser part of it. Still in Pass 2 and 3 passes need to be submitted tomorrow..!
God, Bhagwan, Allah, Jesus help..!

"Hello World"

Just created my blog site today. I feel like an infant at this. But hey we're all new at some point of time.
So here you go "hello world"