good times in stuttgart or, the first stop of the express

the whistle blows and the smoke rises...the scene outside the windows turns into a silent blur...the transeurasian express.

the announcement: stuttgart. the beginning of our travel and all our future travels; my home town. A sleepy town, also being compared as the largest village in germany. and truely it has the village feel to it, huge masses of park area, extensive suburbs that start right at the center. but then there is the other side of stuttgart, the commerce, mercedes, bosch, soccer, the(night)"life". nothing compared to those west european travel highlights like munich, paris, berlin or london. but there is no need. it is a beautiful place I have been priviledged to have been brought up in, and im quite sure I will always identify some sort of sense of home with it, even if i am an international student that will settle for something larger, smaller, completely whack or just different later on.

it is an equally enriching experience to come from a gigantic city full of people, cars and smoke to stuttgart - that has apart from exposing me to a diferent culture, cleaned out my sooty lungs as well. as i stepped onto the german soil in suttgart for the very first time, my reaction was: brrr...it's cold!! Before I could think any more, my brains were frozen. slowly as my homeostatic temperature control system kicked into life, i saw for the very first time in my life...the subway! a universal and ingenious invention i owe much of my current "liberty" to. the wind streams past my face and i have arrived in great speed and excitement to my institution of learning - my school.

the school. the place Pragathi and I met, sat through hundreds of more and of less interresting classes together, had fun in. learned in (i hope at least) and in future will still be the setting of numerous more of less stressed out sniplets of life. the place we are writing from this moment. its a colourful school, both in physical apprearance, faculty and student body. it has humungous potential, and a lot of unfortunate plot twists. lets hope the administration finally gets their act straightened out next year.

the school is jinxed. you really miss it when you are away from it. the energy, the hustle-bustle, the people, the classes and (maybe not as much) even the homework. the international setting can take your breath away if you haven't experienced something like that before. teachers pile on work and swamp our already marshy minds, but behind the groans there is the strive todards a better person, a more knowledgable, cuturally versed and grownup character... ;) ...and a certain bit (okay...much more) of respect for the teachers for handling hormone powered teenagers bobbing off the walls half the entire day. With eight more hours left (the countdown goes on...), I am trapped under the spell the school has cast. I will surely miss the school and my friends, more than the number of atoms in this entire universe, if you ever measure my grief.

then again there always is the evil overloard plan to abduct pragathi, lock her in the maths cupboard( our teacher has volounteered it!) and repay her bit by bit for all the food pragathi has donated to our own internal freerice.com progam (not advertising the site at all). likely eh?