Trip to Pittsburg (January 2004)

Here is a mail i had written to my friends as soon
as I landed in US for the first time in January 2004.

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Hi,

Have been hearing from all of you and it has been great getting lots of mails in the groups.

So, I have landed here in US. Right now, I am in Vamshi's room and am mailing you from his laptop. It was great to see some of you at the airport before I left & some of you who called me up.

To contribute to our list, I have sent some junk about my trip to Pittsburg, read it at ur leisure.

My journey was cool and I had fun travelling. My itinary demanded landing at three places and I loved all the three places. My first flight was to Dubai by Indian Airlines. I was served Biryani :), just when I thought that I was going to miss it . Air hostesses were kind enough to serve something or the other at regular intervals . So , drinking and eating was a major time-pass during this flight. Also, I was very excited, this being my first flight after soo many years. Dubai was awesome from the top , City looked very rich and planned .

I thought that I was dreaming at the Dubai Airport. It's awesome. It was so neat, posh and beautiful . Whatever I write would be less, you got to be there to experience it. It was like a large luxurious palace . There was a huge duty-free shopping area and I had two hours to do lots of window-shopping. Cars like Porshe and Benz were put for sale :) . At the airport, we spent a large time trying out various perfumes .

The next flight was till Amsterdam by Royal Dutch Airlines. Compared to IA plane, this plane was huge . I was asleep in short time on board listening to some sweet music coming out of the ear-phones. I woke up amidst a sequence of dialogues touching my ears. A movie was being played . I cudn't recognise any actors on screen and in a short while again, I was asleep. I woke up again to the call for breakfast. We were served lots of things , nothing familiar . A particular item looked very wierd and I was so curious that I asked the air-hostess what it was . I was embarrassed when she smiled back and replied "I agree with you sir. It doesn't look like one but it is an omlette". I said to myself "Ofcourse, it is, idiot". There was another item, some grass-like spinach which was served. This time, I didn't dare to ask what it was. The breakfast was indeed very heavy and it took me an hour to analyse and eat it. It was unfortunate not to get a windows seat on this aircraft, I cud not seee Amsterdam from above . I had huge expectations from the amsterdam airport and what i saw was more than that. The airport is huge. We kept on walking giving a glance at all the shops , but it never seemed to end. We got a map of the airport and we were shocked to see that we hadn't visited even one-fifth of the entire airport. We spent 3 and hours that we had to see as much as we could . The best thing that we saw was a casino. It was the same as I had seen in the films. A beatiful girl was drawing the cards and taking the bets, and on the other side of the table were two middle-aged ppl and an old man. the middle-aged people looked exactly like cow-boys and were puffing cigarettes in a typical english filmy ishtyle. The old man was having a drink and he seemed to be playing it with all his wits. I watched a game and then moved forward.

We boarded the Northwest airlines at Amsterdam and it was bigger than both the earlier airlines. And also, we had an individudal interactive TVs with every seat. Spent time browsing thru the list of movies and songs and maps (showed the current position of aircraft on the map along with altitude and temp. information). I managed to see a couple of movies and listened to some music. I was served something called meatless cas*** pasta, It was good. Later, we were served Pizza and lots of rounds of drinks. Surprising, this time there was also an air-host. We finally reached Detroit after a loong journey. At Detroit, it didn't matter if you were in a windows seat or not, everything was covered with snow. Snow was something that i had never experienced before and it felt great to see it. Airport is not as big as Amsterdam airport but is very sober and beautiful. To go from one end of the airport to ther other, we took an unmanned tram and that was a great experience. We roamed around for a couple of hours and then boarded the domestic plane to Pittsburg. The plane had difficulty in taking off because of the snow storm but it did and I was finally at Pittsburg.

Vamshi was waiting for me here. We came home by bus and now I am here doing nothing but playing with his laptop and reading something. He is there in the CMU campus to attend the classes. I am scared to roam around alone because of the heavy snowfall here. For Lunch today, Vamshi made a very delicious curry. So, that was a good Lunch. Dinner might be outside, would finally walk on the snow.

These couple of days experience was overwhelming. Loved every moment of the new things that i cud experience some of which i cud narrate to you.

k, bYe

Sriram