My Life in Nice so far

Today i complete one month away from india...and what i wud not give to again eat a veg roll at arcus at 3 in the night!!


i thought that the nice trip is really interesting and i shud write about before the US trip since anyways i have to rely on my memory for the US trip. Well i have alreay written about my adventorous journey and kaisa jhatka laga ki yahan log english bilkul nahi bolte....thats fine to an extent but it is really bugging when people do understand english and refuse to speak it....at college everything went well with everybody speaking english but we already had a taste of what was in store for us outside. some memorable incidents happened in our quest for bus pass, travel by buss and our shopping is always fun! the first time we boarded the bus was to go get our passes made. we simply couldnt match the map with had with the one in the bus and after trying all sorts of things we made manghani ask the uncle beside him. shafi being the most sincere in learning french also went forward to explain we were looking for the bus station...meanwhile manghani whipped out his dictionary and thrust the page opened at "bus station" in the uncles face! luckily he did not get scared and gave some directions to us the only part of which we understood was that we were to get down at the next stop. this is the most wonderful thing here...we get mad trying to communicate our question across and our contentment is so ephemeral on succeeding as we can never understand the answer!! after lots of walking we realized that we had reached the central bus station but the passes were not made there....again lots of walking and we finally reached the right place where luckily one girl spoke english....while we were there some very loud moroccan females came and seeing that we were from india started shouting words like "shukriya", "shahrukh khan", "aishwarya rai"...it was really surprising....pity they dont know manmohan singh or mahatma gandhi!!

the first day we had a cocktail party at college and guess what...we had indian food also there!! ordered from a restaurant called "nooris"...the samosas looked and tasted pretty different...but it was really nostalgic just looking at the samosas and pakodas and a very feeble attempt at some sweet...

then the next day armed with our bus passes we went to central nice to check out the place and to enquire about cell phones....well we finally dint get the connections but the others did get calling cards...and we did see a lot of interesting things in our 4 hour walk...we came across mc donalds and wonders of wonder - "BATA" ( although minus the 50% sale sign which is always there on the showroom opposite to MDI),some good guys and an indian store!! jai went mad with excitement when he found out that the guy spoke tamil...the unique things about this place are the no of dogs... i guess its true that there are more dogs than children!! people take them into buses...there is even dog shit on the pavements!!another thing which i find surprising -similar to india and contrary to US - is the number of people....esp in old nice the streets are full of people...the small cars...very few really good models unlike US where the size is also much bigger and the variety. then i wonder why they discourage shopping...u have to pay 1 euro everywhere for the big shopping carts and 3 cents for plastic shopping bags in some superstores!! people here carry shopping bags having wheels!! i really wonder about the "business behaviour" and why they do this...when all around the world they are trying to sell more and more...

one thing i must say - here bikes are really cool and i wish i cud rent one...the weather is good and we have a good view of the sea from our balcony. i planned on renting a bicycle but it dint work out....

another funny thing happened reg the bus (yes its true that the bus is an important part of our life here)...to get down at the stop u have to press a button "arret demande" meaning "ask for stopping". the bus does not stop if the button is not pressed and there is no one on the stop waiting to get in. we were clueless regarding it and the look on our face was worth seeing when our stop went by and we ready with all our luggage waiting to get down left standing in the bus!!! then the ppl realised that we dint know and explained the procedure to us with a lot of gesturing and shouting...

by the way my bad luck at being over 26 continues...i had pay 40% (8 euros or 500 bucks) more for the bus pass and am getting a lower rate of interest for my bank account....abhi to main euro rail ke jhatke se bahar bhi nahi aa payi thi!!

i ll write about our attempt at shopping in the next post.

N.B. i have written really fast and have not reread it so pls excuse the mistakes!! merci!!