South Indian Eatout in Eindhoven

Sri Ganesh

The "News"spread like wild fire. Within a week most of the Indian population came to know of a new Indian restaurant in the city. The only other one in the city "Touch of India" is a touch too expensive for most of the student folk. So we had given up on eating any Indian food outside. Well, things have changed now. I went there 3 times last week :D.

On a Friday about 10 of us made a reservation and as I went in, I realized I knew most of the people inside. The place is run by a Sri Lankan family. The service was completely messy and the staff were totally caught off-guard by the jam packed crowd that bombarded the place. With constant chatter, babies crying and a Tamil, "mrudhangam" (drum beat) playing in the background, it felt close to home. We waited for 2 hours for the all of us to be served! But ah! it was their first week so we decided to give them few more chances.

Check out their funny way of spelling some of the Indian dishes. We had such a laugh :)

The food is very very nominally prized and tastes pretty good for that money. Imagine, Masala Dosa is 4.5 euro!! Within 10 euro you can have a grand meal! The place is open from Tuesday to Sunday 11am to 11pm. If you are in Eindhoven, a must visit at Kruisstraat 92a.

P.S - No, they did not pay me to do the advertisement..:)

Carnaval in Maastricht

With snow falling almost the entire day we braved our way to Maastricht on Sunday to watch the Carnival parade. We saw 0 people dressed up as we marched our way to the Eindhoven station. I almost thought perhaps they had canceled the whole thing. Getting into the train leaving to Maastricht, we were all slightly relieved that our 'costume efforts' had not been a complete waste.

The entire train load that got off in Maastricht was probably walking towards the parade. I actually spotted some other friends and colleagues from Eindhoven. The whole city was in such festive mood. What I truly love about the carnival is that its not a festival for a category of people. Young and old, everybody is on the streets celebrating wearing some crazy costume. A lot of people do take it rather seriously and the dressing is elaborate. The city looked like an animation movie with all characters ever created running wild!

We were extremely cold in a few hour's time. As the snow fell continuously, my feet and hands went numb. The parade showed no signs of stopping so we decided to move on.

Interestingly, the names of the cities are changed for 3 days before the Ash Wednesday. The name given to Eindhoven is Lampegat which means a Lamp hole from Philips' association with Eindhoven. I found it rather funny actually to name a city Lamphole...:)

Picture Courtesy - Vinaya Sekar, Abhinav Rohit

Dutchiness part 2: Carnival

Vastenavond or Carnival is almost on us. It is hard to believe that it has been over a year since I lived in the Netherlands, for it was among my first posts on my life here (link). Carnival is a celebration of indulgence and merriment before the fasting period begins. Seven weeks before Easter, the weekend before the Ash Wednesday, begin the festivities or rather the craziness. The name Carnival is derived from 'Carne' or meat which the Christians give up during the fasting period. In the Netherlands, Carnival is celebrated mostly in the Catholic prominent southern provinces - Noord Brabant and Limburg.


Okie, enough with the history of it, the Carnival as I understand is about getting as crazy as possible. On Sunday, the mayor of the city passes the keys of the city to the fake Prince or the jester in charge of the hullabaloo. From Sunday to Tuesday is the parade consisting of really fancy and weird large shaped floats, people dressed in the strangest of costumes (everybody is dressed up, if you don't then you must be a foreigner for sure!), the thumping oomph- oomph music and humongous amounts of beer everywhere on the streets. The all but deserted places in the bitter winter become suddenly warm and crowded over the weekend. A one week holiday for the students, a lot of the university crowd goes 'bar trekking'as they call it, skipping from one bar to another all night.

Breda, Maastricht and 's Hertogenbosch have the most elaborate celebrations. Last year I went to the one in Eindhoven. A large group of us are planning to go to Maastricht tomorrow to catch in on this year's parade. A much needed change to the cold weather here. More pictures and details later. :)

Snoozing Out!

I really can't believe its been almost a month since I posted anything. My new office has me sitting right in the middle of everybody in the room. Even if somebody doesn't intend to, they would end up watching what is on my computer screen. Plus, I don't want my new colleagues to know my goofy side, well not yet. To top it all off, the internet in my studio has been down for the past 2 weeks! After about 25 phone calls and a nasty email, the internet problem was resolved in about 3:42 mts since the guy set a finger on my laptop. Ah! well, things just happen I guess.

There were a few things I wanted to write about but a short summary of what I have been upto should do I guess.

Glow Eindhoven

A week long celebration of art and architecture. Parts of city were strategically lighted up - a play of colorful lights on buildings.

Birthday bash

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with the b'day tie I drew out! :) and a Sinterklaas cake..

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Sinterklaas

the incredible merriment that Sinterklaas (the Dutch version of Santa Claus) and his assistants Zwarte Piet ( black Pete) bring along....

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And the vacation...

I am off to Chennai, my home city in India for a month in a week's time..Counting days...:)

Okie, now don't go imagining there are elephants on every street of my city, well! just on every second street..:p (kidding of course!)

**Picture Courtesy - Asish Pal

Molen van Kinderdijk (Mills of Kinderdijk)

Wind mills are one of the first things that would come to your mind when I say Holland. After, 10 months of living here, I finally went to visit these rotating beauties ( well, technically not rotating any more). Kinderdijk is a small village in the the province of North Holland. It is situated at a point where two rivers Lek and Noord meet. To drain the excess water in this region a group of 19 windmills were built in 1740. Apart from being in the UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites, it is also one of Netherlands' top tourist spots.

The name of the place, Kinderdijk originates from a legend which has it that on the Saint Elizabeth's Flood of 1421, after the storm had subsided, a small basket was visible in the dike area. A cat was jumping from one edge of the basket to the other, to keep it afloat. On bringing the basket to land, a baby was found in it asleep, dry and safe. Hence the name, Kinderdijk or Child's Dike.

From Eindhoven, we took a train to Dordrecht and waited for a bus to fetch us to Kinderdijk. Now, who knew the bus driver would forget to change the number on the display of the bus while he was at our stop? We were gleefully talking right in front of it while the bus took off. We had to wait for one hour more for the next bus. We obviously crashed into Smullers again for frites. :)

It was lunch time when we reached Kinderdijk. The place was extremely windy and cold. One of our rather thin friends actually tried lifting one of her legs to check if she could fly :D. Except for some threatening shakes, she couldn't defy gravity. We were all disappointed! Nov 1st was the last day to take a tour inside the wind mills. We were just in time for that. One wouldn't even imagine how such a cozy house could be built in such small places. Every available square inch was packed with furniture and utilities -tables, chairs, a kitchen and several beds at different levels of the house. At the attic is where the huge gears of the wind mills were placed. Videos and models were placed at every point for a good explanation of the working of the house. And the stair cases! How narrow they were! We were wondering how anybody ever managed to climb up and down those "you are bound to fall one day" stairs.

Our lovely neighbors had somehow managed to pack lunches for all of us. We sat down at one of the benches on the way and gobbled up the food quickly, before the wind could beat us on it. There is a long pathway to walk/bike along the windmills. We walked till we could see all the19 of them. We sang songs as we walked further as the path became completely isolated (could have been the other way around, maybe! :) ).

We honestly hadn't picked a perfect day for this trip. That, we had all not gotten soaked to our skins in the rain that pelted down right after we got into the bus on our way back, was perhaps our biggest relief. I came back home a little soaked and tired, but I have finally seen the Dutch wind mills..:)

Picture Courtesy - Harish. S

Dutchiness part 1: Nederlandse taal (Dutch language)

I wish to start a series called the Dutchiness to explain the Dutch as I see and experience, their culture, food, people, places and various other oddities that come to my mind. A series somehow I thought would give me more motivation to post frequently. The first topic was easy to chose, the Dutch language of course. Dutch is the native language of more than 22 million people and is spoken widely in the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname. Being one of the Western Germanic languages like English and German, Dutch strangely has similarities to Afrikaans, a language spoken widely in South Africa and Namibia. Dutch is definitely not the most difficult language to learn (think Chinese and Sanskrit) but then it is not so easy as well.

As an expat in the Netherlands, so is it absolutely essential to learn the language? Well, it depends on several things - how long you plan to stay here, which profession you are in and mostly if you have the interest to learn the language. Fortunately enough most Dutch can speak English. In work places I find it almost non essential (Engineering field). But it is at the coffee corners and lunches when you miss out the joke that you feel the prick to learn the language. Also, all the official letters, announcements in trains and buses, signs are in Dutch. So I have been at it for the past 10 months. I passed the beginner's course and am at the intermediate level. While my reading, listening and writing have improved quite a bit, speaking is still a problem.

In the initial days though (actually even now), my biggest help tool has been Google Translate. This God sent tool has eased several frustrating 'Dutch decoding' moments for me. In my opinion, if you are planning to stay in the Netherlands for more than 6 months, then go for atleast a basic course. It does please people to see that you are atleast trying. Did it help me at all at any point? I think it did. Recently at an interview for a project, the boss of the company was genuinely surprised when I answered some of his questions in Dutch. They offered me the post a couple of days back. If I decide to take it up, I will be their first non Dutch employee... :D

Some useful Dutch language websites:

www.taalklas.nl (highly recommended by my Dutch teachers)

http://www.lesexpres.nl/dutch/

http://www.learndutch.org/

Nothing replaces taking actual lessons though. Some Dutch language courses in Eindhoven:

Easy NL

Studiecentrum Talen Eindhoven

ROC

The Lighted Route in Eindhoven (Lichtjesroute)

Eindhoven was liberated on September 18th, 1944 by the Allies in World War II. The soldiers were welcomed with lamps outside their homes. Since then, every year, the citizens placed lamps along the route that the Allies took in Eindhoven to celebrate their liberation. The tradition was stopped in 1969 but was picked up again in 1984, and this year marked the 25th anniversary of the Lighted Route or the 'Lichtjesroute'.

At the pond

From 18th September - 11th October, the 22km long route is right along the bike path, making it an excellent outing in the night time. Luckily the weather God had mercy on us and it din't rain while we pedaled our way through. Right at the middle of the route is a small pond which is completely decorated with lights and has small stalls in the night with treats for the riders. We stopped to take some pictures and continued along.

Few lovey - dovey ones

Statue of Liberty and Dutch bikes

A crazy fish and wind mills ( of course!)

Honestly it wasn't the most magnificent piece of work that I have seen, but was an interesting way to tour the city in the dark hours. We met an old man on the way who waved at us from his window! :) After the chilly ride, we stopped near the station for some warm frites which tasted like heaven. A good ride with a tasty ending. :)

4 Indians, a Spanish movie, Dutch subtitles

Well, the title literally gives it away. The university has a small theater/cafe called the 'Zwarte Doos' or the black box which plays a movie three days a week. The movies played are mostly foreign and are generally not the main stream hits like in regular theaters. You have to watch out in their Dutch website to see what movie is played and in which language.

It was completely my idea and as I checked the website, it said the movie was in two languages - English/Spanish. Somehow I just assumed that the movie was in English with sprinkles of Spanish in between. So off we all went to watch Che-part 1, a biography on the Argentina born Cuban revolutionary.

The movie started and for the first 5 minutes everything was in Spanish. While my friends gave me the weird looks and mumbled a few curses under their breath, I was confident that the language would switch soon. Ah! Steven Soderbergh, the director was trying to give an authentic feeling to the film. As it turned out the movie was entirely in Spanish, sprinkled with some English.

And as one would expect the subtitles were in Dutch (The Dutch never dub foreign films, just subtitles). I did suspect something when the ticket counter guy gave us the odd looks.

While I desperately tried to figure out the subtitles, I really really wished I had payed more attention in my Dutch class. The movie was dead serious and the one or two times the audience laughed, I joined in just to blend in. hahaha!!! I seriously thought at least one of my friends was going to walk out soon. But we managed through the 2 hour movie. I must say quite an accomplishment. And to think that we were thinking of buying tickets for Che - part 2 for a back to back view!

The only good thing was that I realized my Dutch even though not any where close to being decent has vastly improved in the nine months that I have been here.

P.S - Ernesto Che Guevara! What a man, what a revolutionary! Not having learnt a whole lot while watching the movie, I came home and read quite a bit about him. Will probably try watching Che - part 2 with English subtitles.

Kinderen sans borders

For the past two days, I attended a technology congress in Arnhem held mostly in Dutch with some of my department staff. Health care and hospitals is one area where the language is still quite a problem for the foreigners. I was perhaps the only non Dutch in the entire meet. For the first time I was swamped by a language unknown for 2 days. Towards the end, I gave up on even trying to figure out the few words I understood and retired to a nearby corner with a book. All that my ears could hear was a long buzz....

As we drove back to Eindhoven, we stopped at one of the colleague's house for a coffee with their family. With a couple of hundred cars returning back from the congress the highway was blocked for over an hour and we were late. Her husband warmly invited us home for some fresh coffee and waffles. It was bed time but their two young girls came running down eager to meet the guests. Sipping the coffee, the conversation obviously moved towards the intricate details of our university and the politics around the department as my colleague's husband also works there. I don't know if things were a little heated up and 'not suitable' for my ears as I still have a student status or as they were passionately discussing they forgot about me, but they switched to Dutch and were soon lost in a heated talk.

Ah! I barely cared at this point. I was observing what the kids were doing. It was kind of funny because their knowledge of English and my knowledge of Dutch were at the same level. They began by bringing down all their soft toys from their room and made them wear special clothes for the night and showed me how they tucked them in and sang them a lullaby. They entertained me, with the younger one playing the drums and the elder one, on her piano playing Beethoven's 'Fur Elise' (she must be 10 or 11!). As I ventured on in my broken Dutch, they tried to speak back to me in English. We were constantly laughing. It suddenly stuck me how amazing children are. I was a practical stranger who looked completely different, spoke a different language and they couldn't have cared less. They made me shed my inhibitions and speak their language without fear ( speaking would be far fetched, lets say attemp :) ). As the younger girl decided to try on some of the doll clothes herself for few more laughs, the other kid started drawing something on her board. She quickly made an art and gave it to me.

As we left their house the two girls came running behind our car until it reached the street corner. It reminded me of my childhood when we would stand at the edge of the house and keep waving until the person turns the corner. They managed to bond with me in the one hour I spent with them so effortlessly. The bliss of innocence!

A trip to Den Haag (The Hague)

Some of the space box (the box like weird apartments I live in) buddies decided to go on a day trip to Den Haag. I jumped on the opportunity to visit some places and for a change, do some thing other then the usual Saturday shopping. With some discipline we started pretty early in the morning, 9am..:). As the train chugged its way from Eindhoven, we had some freshly made poha (an Indian breakfast made of flattened rice flakes), that our neighbour was thoughtful enough to make in the morning.

Den Haag is the political capital of the Netherlands, housing the country's parliament and the royal family. We took a tram from the station and headed straight to the beach - Scheveningen. The word " "Scheveningen" was apparently used by the Dutch in WWII as a password. Even the Germans who could speak Dutch easily never quite managed to pronounce it the right way. Never mind, I wouldn't even try typing the right pronunciation. This was my first visit to a beach in the Netherlands and I was excited. Having lived in a coastal city, the ocean evokes beautiful memories in me every time.




Yup! thats me bungy jumping! haha..I wish I could say that. I just watched those brave souls plunging down towards the sea from a far off distance. We lazed on the beach sand for over an hour and soaked in as much sun as we could. After gulping down a Subway sandwich for lunch, we went to SEA.LIFE right at the beach, an aquarium filled with our earthly buddies living underwater. We googled in as much of the scaly, slimy and some brilliantly colored beings as we could.


After downing an ice-cream and doing some on the spot shopping, we moved on to the next stop, Madurodam - a miniaturized version of Netherlands filled with all the important places as small size replicas. The place has a small airport, whistling ships and even trains zipping all across. The coolest thing is that they give you a small booklet with your ticket which has a short description of all these places and where they are. A good guide to refer to later on.

All that is miniaturized

Sadly Eindhoven had just one reference and that too on a fancy building - Evoluon. Come on guys! You should have put up Philips, the pride of Dutch technology!!

The scale of things

Tired, we sat down for some drinks and frites. On our way back, the train randomly decided to take a round about way and came in 2 hours late! But otherwise the trip was simply wonderful. Nobody got lost and nobody lost anything. We were in sync with each other and the weather was at this perfect balance of being sunny and slightly windy . No matter which place you visit, sometimes it comes down to the people you go with, the weather and some luck of course. Ah! we did well..:)

Park Hilaria

Eindhoven has a yearly fair in the summer for the bored school kids to go on some crazy rides, eat cotton candies and slump into chairs for a cool drink and some frites. Park Hilaria provided much needed entertainment to the young and the old for a week, beginning from 27th July to 5th August. Placed right next to the University, most people flocked to the fair 2-3 times. A complete road was blocked and re-routed, giving the entire neighbourhood a festive atmosphere (not to mention the blissful "unzz - unzz" music at night).

I went to such a fair after a long long time with my neighbor and constant buddy these days. We both felt like kids and were super excited, baring our teeth constantly. Each ride was 3 euro and I wanted to try at least one super crazy ride which would shake me up completely.

While my friend kept throwing worried glances at me, with a plastic bag ready for some immediate throw up incidents, I bravely ventured into the twisting and twirling ride where it seemed incredible that people were actually sitting inside of the complex machine(No! no! no comparison with the mega rides in super theme parks I am sure. I just haven't been to any such places.) To my own relief, I came out in one piece still all teeth baring. It was heel fun! :)

Good times!

Oops I dropped my spoon!

The traditional south Indian cuisine consists of food placed on a cut banana leaf and people generally have their meals sitting on the ground and eating the food with their Hands.



To this day, most people even at offices and homes eat with their hands, though the banana leaves are gone. Only really formal and city bred folk use spoons and even then, forks and knives are just not needed for our diet which mainly consists of rice.

As I moved to Canada, the difference in dining table etiquette did hit me but not to a great extent. I was constantly in a student community and the university free food was generally pizza which we conveniently gobbled up with our hands. I mostly visited Indian/Thai restaurants and my student budget barely allowed me to visit the posh places. Basically I never cared much about table manners of the western world and conveniently cruised through life without paying great attention to it.



Then I came to the Netherlands. Enter - Formal dinners, office colleagues, people eating pizza with fork and knife situations. God, was I in a mess. The first formal dinner at TU/e will perhaps haunt me for few years. I was as it is nervous, as I always am in such formal places and I was new to the place and barely knew anybody. I was dreading how I was to get through the night, when they served me with spaghetti. I nervously announced that I am not particularly handy with the knife and fork. That perhaps was not the smartest thing to do. I could instantly feel all the eyes on me. My Italian colleague kindly explained to me how one is supposed to tame the wild noodly things. Well, all I can say is that I somehow survived.

The European way I believe is to have the fork in the left hand, the knife in the right and use the left hand to actually eat.I am not so strong with my left hand so I generally do a zig-zag of cutting with the knife on my right and fork on the left and then place the knife down and switch the fork back to the right to eat. Phew! Why does it have to be so complicated? I lose my appetite in the tension of switching it the right way without looking too awkward. With time, I am getting better. But I still have a long way to go to eat a formal dinner without actually thinking about it.

But for heaven sake, at least eat the pizza with your hands. Trust me, it tastes much better that way! :)

P.S - Obviously I am no big artist. But my feeble attempt at cartooning..:)

Picture Courtesy - http://www.tourismofkerala.com

Temple van Eindhoven

Eindhoven is perhaps not the most exciting place to live in the Netherlands but there certainly is a joy in finding the nooks and pockets in a foreign city to which you can associate yourself with. One such place that I recently visited was a temple, run by the Hindus from Suriname. Suriname is the smallest country in South America which was a Dutch colony until 1975. Being a plantation colony, people from parts of India in agreement with the British were taken to work as laborers. Following its independence though, several people migrated and made the Netherlands their home. So these people of Indian/South American origin have quite some presence here, one example being this temple (clik on the link below to reach the website) -

Mandir Triloki Dhaam

The temple located at Tongelresestraat 371, is open on Sunday's between 3:00pm and 5:00pm.

The entrance -


Swagatham (Welcome in Hindi) -



The temple from inside -

For the first time I heard a Hindu priest preach in Hindi and Dutch!! It felt slightly odd somehow, but I could imagine that the kids born here would understand that better. He picked out verses from the 'Ramayana' (one of the epics in the Indian mythology) and elaborated on them. The part was about Sita, lord Rama's wife being abducted by the evil Ravana. He described how hopeless Sita felt while she was in Ravana's power and then he suddenly said in Dutch - Sita thought Rama had gone on a 'vakantie' forgetting his beloved. heehee!! vacantie?? I had a silent laugh over his description. My tolerance though for such sermons are not too high! I put in all efforts to concentrate and not nod off..:D. After the sermon there were some bhajans (songs sung in praise of the lord). The temple organizers were warm and friendly and with warm 'prasad' (food offering) at the end, it over all felt pretty good.

Well, now I know what I would be doing on Sunday afternoons, I will just need to time it better! :)

Thursday night outs

To create a more social atmosphere between the colleagues working in our program, we have a monthly dinner at a fancy restaurant at the university called the University Club followed by brief presentations by students, just so that we know what everybody is working on. We generally have the dinner on Thursdays.

One of our colleagues having recently gotten a job wanted to celebrate so we decided to go out for a drink. It puzzles me why the Dutch students here always want to party on Thursday nights. What about Fridays? We still have work to do. I asked my Dutch colleague about it.Well, apparently students generally travel back to their homes on Fridays and are so particular about their family time that they do not want to ruin Friday evenings spending time with colleagues. I guess they still go to the bar but just with a closer set of people. :)

So we went to a bar to begin with and spent some time chatting. We talked about how the people here treat drugs with care. I am still amazed how the streets aren't filled with doped people. Nope! You wouldn't even know. To our Dutch friends staying in one bar wasn't enough. The streets being packed with bars, they wanted to move on to the next one soon. Well, I had work to do the next day. I came back home.

Mind your language - Eindhoven version :)

If you have ever seen the British comedy series - "Mind your language" you would agree that it is one of the most hilarious series ever. It is about adult students from different parts of the world, learning English as a foreign language and the slapstick comedy that they involuntarily indulge in as they mince the language in their own in way. Well, I had the proud privilege of being in one such fun class!!

I decided to take a Dutch course as soon as I started my program in TU/e. The class had people from Mexico, Spain, Germany, India (of course!), America, Greece, Italy, France and Nigeria. The group was meant mostly for PhD students so one can imagine the sort of geeks that this class had. There is something about learning a language. It takes you back to your more childish form as you begin to learn communicating from scratch.

The Nigerian guy was the hero of our class. He would answer ALL questions with - "Nee, dank je wel" (No, Thank you). The Spanish guy who was attending the class with his girl friend would just repeat all that she says, or simply " Ik ook" (Me too!). The most hillarious time was when a guy wanted to know how to propose to his girl friend in Dutch and he ended up practicing it with the guy sitting next to him who freaked out! We were in splits!!! One of our teachers would always speak in Dutch but she would also use a lot of sign language to make it easier for us to understand. We would half the time keep guessing what she was talking about. She would do the funniest of expressions. We not only learned the language but also got a lot of insight into the Dutch culture.

I just completed my Dutch written exam. I have an oral exam next week. I think I will pass :). Am contemplating whether I should take up the intermediate level course. Would I be staying here for more than two years?

Point to consider - For several of the grammar rules, we used this as the aid - "xtc koffieshop" :D Rings a bell anybody?