Some forgettable experiences from my first trip to Europe!
My first trip to Europe
happened kind courtesy Tabler Jagdish Chandran, ( CMD of Premier Mills
,Coimbatore) who was the second Indian
after Deepak Banker to become the President of World Council of Young Men`s
service clubs (WoCo), the international body to which Round Table India was
affiliated. As it was Bob’s AGM at Stockholm in 1980 and RTI was pitching India
as the venue for the 1983 AGM, Bob
persuaded a group of Indian Tablers to accompany him. While other Tablers could
afford the trip on their own, Bob decided to partially sponsor me and Tr.
Muralidharan of Coimbatore. I was to be one of the rapporteurs at the AGM, taking
minutes of the proceedings. I used the opportunity to plan my first trip to
Europe and USA in the summer of 1980.
My first halt in
Europe was at Amsterdam, the beautiful city of dykes and canals, a place famous
for its wine and cheese boat parties. The red light district where prostitutes
sit in rooms with glass windows illuminated by red lights is a ‘must see’ for
visitors. I was a guest of Tabler Rajesh
Duggal of Delhi who was posted in Amsterdam at that point of time and stayed in
an apartment complex at Zan Fort, a sea resort suburb overlooking the sea. It
was summer and the sun was known to set only around 10 or 11 pm and
rise around 4.00 am. It was a new experience
for me! In the evening the beach was packed with young couples having fun, many
of them spending the night in sleeping bags that they carried with them. I
realized that most of them were the ‘back packing’ hippies who generally
wandered arounthe world
hitch-hiking and wasting their rich parents’ money on fun, liquor and sex!
After spending five
days at Amsterdam, I bought myself a two-week Euro Rail pass and travelled in
comfort during nights while visiting places during the day. My first halt was
at Lausanne in Switzerland, the French speaking town located on the border of
France. Here I was to join my group consisting of Tr. R. Anand, the
tall and lanky bachelor who was then working with the India Today group and Tr.
K.K. Sood and his charming wife Kitty — both from my table. We were also joined
by Bijone Ghosh, an Apexian from
Ambattur, Madras.
As I had a tough
time trying to locate the address of Anand’s cousin with whom we were supposed
to stay for three days, I checked my things into the station locker and went
around the station asking people in English for directions to the house. None
of them even bothered to respond to me and literally brushed me aside saying
“No English”. I then took a taxi whose driver was equally unfriendly and after
roaming around for 30 minutes, with the taxi meter shooting up I managed to
locate a sales girl at a shop who could speak English.
Much to my dismay and minus 40 dollars I found that the building I was looking
for was just a stone’s throw away from the station.
Anand’s cousin was a
friendly girl who took us around the city and also joined us on our trip to
Geneva and Interlaken, a town on top of the Alps. It was to be my first
experience with snow and all of us behaved like kids throwing
snow balls at each other. The train journey from Basel to Interlaken was a
breathtaking experience and this is where I tasted my first Martini. All of us
gulped it down like sherbet and got quite high and ended up with headaches on
our return journey.
On our way to
Stockholm from Lausanne, we stopped at Venice and Vienna. The train journey from
Vienna to Stockholm was unforgettable because of an incident that occurred
during the journey! Throughout the journey I was pulling up Anand for being
careless about his passport and
tickets. I was
carrying my passport in my trouser pocket and the tickets in my T shirt pocket When the train
stopped at a wayside station I decided to get down to buy something to eat.
After the purchase, though there was plenty of time, I ran back to board the
train for Stockholm which left the station after five
minutes!
In Europe, when you
travel by train, every one or two hours you pass through a different country
and at every border town, a ticket checker will inspect your ticket and
passport. As the train was in motion, an Austrian TC came to our coach asking
for our tickets when I discovered to my horror that the ticket that I was
carrying in my T-Shirt pocket was missing. After intensive searching, I
realized that it must have fallen on the platform of the station where I had
got down earlier.
I tried to convince
the TC that I was a genuine passenger and showed him the receipt I got at the
Amsterdam station while buying the Euro Rail Pass. The TC was adamant and said
that rules are rules. He insisted that without a valid ticket, I could not
travel in the train and wanted me to get off at the next station. My efforts to
bribe him also did not work out. My friends also decided to get off though they
all had their tickets and I could see Anand laughing at me for my carelessness.
At the next station,
we approached the station master and explained our plight. He promptly called
the station master of the previous station to find out if any ticket had been
found on the platform and surprisingly, he had! He confirmed that another
passenger had found the ticket and had handed it over to him. He was willing to
send it through the TC travelling by the next train, which was expected just
after an hour. I could not believe my luck! I wondered if such a thing could
ever happen in our country! I did get my ticket
back and when the next train arrived, we continued our journey to Stockholm.
My return train
journey from Copenhagen to Amsterdam was a horrible experience! After a tiring
day of sightseeing, I went to sleep as soon as I got into the comfortable
reclining bed that the train offers. Around 2.00 am, I
found myself being woken up by somebody who asked to see my passport. After
inspecting the same, he growled at me in German which I could not understand.
One of the ladies in the compartment who could speak both English and German
told me that there was something wrong with my passport and
that unless I got down with my baggage, the train would not proceed. My pleas
did not have any impact on that tough looking police official, who literally
dragged me out of the train. When I was out, I realized I was in some wayside
station in Germany, on the border of another country. It was very cold with
poor lighting and with not a soul in the station. The police official gestured
me to follow him but would not help me with my baggage. The only sound there
was from his shoes, as he was walking. I was frightened beyond words! I thought
I was going to be punished for some crime which I might have committed
unintentionally. I imagined myself inside a German prison with no one in the
world knowing where I was! Faces
of my wife and kids passed through my mind and I invoked the name of every God
I could think of. The police officer made me walk up a flight of stairs and led
me to a small police outpost. Fortunately for me there was an inspector who
could speak English. He went through my passport carefully and said, “You seem
to be the Director of a company but you did not know that you were passing
through Germany without a valid visa?”
I tried to explain
to him that my destination was Amsterdam and that I had no plans to get down at
any station in Germany. He clarified that the new Visa law with India had come
into force from midnight of 26th July 1980 and at 2.30 am in
the morning, I was the first traveler to be detained for not having a valid
visa to pass through Germany. Unlike the police officer who forced me out of
the train, the inspector was friendly and said he would try and help me. He had
to wake up the Asst. Commissioner of Police to find out
what can be done. As per the instructions he received, he gave me a temporary
visa valid for 24 hours, on his official letterhead and that was when I heaved
a sigh of relief.
But that was not
all. The train I was offloaded from was a direct train from Copenhagen to
Amsterdam, reaching that city at 7.30 am,
giving me sufficient time to reach Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam by road, to
catch my noon KLM flight to New York. With the help of the local stationmaster,
the inspector rerouted my ticket, under which I had to change trains in three
different places before I reached Amsterdam at 11.00 am. What
a nightmare I went through changing trains! I was lugging my huge suitcase and
even the portable baggage trolley was useless as I had to carry the baggage up
and down the flight of stairs since the stations and the platforms were at two
different levels. At Hamburg station, though I was given clear instructions, I
was misled by a fellow Indian and found myself in the wrong platform when the
train was streaming into the station. How I ran up the steps with the heavy
baggages in hand and reached the compartment just in
time is another story by itself! As soon as I dumped my bags inside and got
into the train, the doors closed behind me and the train started. I literally
fell on top of my suitcase and was panting for the next ten minutes. I could
clearly hear my heartbeat and was sure I wasgoing to die of a
heart attack that day.
Though the train
reached Amsterdam at 11.00 am, I was able to reach the
airport only by 12.00 noon, the exact time of the departure of the flight. When
I saw no passengers at the counter from a distance, I was sure I had missed the
flight. When I reached the counter and handed over my tickets and passport, the
assistant looked at me and asked me sarcastically, “Mr. Rajan, have you come
for today’s flight or tomorrow’s?”. Then she smiled and said, “You are lucky.
The flight is delayed and will be leaving only at 2.00 pm”.
What a relief I felt. I thanked the assistant, thanked all my Gods and
proceeded to the departure lounge to catch my flight to New York.
In the next post I
will share both my shocking and pleasant experiences in USA!
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