Budapest, May 2013

Soon after coming back from the awesome trip of Greece, I got an invitation to a Karolinska CSB meet in May 2013 by my ex-prof Rudolf Ladenstein. This was a great opportunity for me to share my experiences to the experts of my field of research and to learn something from them. Then how can I not use this opportunity to travel. I and my friends Jashmini and Maryse planned a trip to Stockholm (that I have seen) followed by two days in Budapest (since there was a cheap ryanair flight from Stockholm Skavsta to Budapest).

We flew to Stockholm on 25th May and while I was attending the meeting, they saw the city. The meet was very useful for me and I met great scientists. We left Stockholm on 27th May and by the night we were in Budapest in our hostel. We booked a room of 4 beds, but the fourth bed was empty so we had the whole room to ourselves, Maryse took this opportunity to show us her talent of dancing by performing on the song of "maar daala" from Devdas movie, followed by the performance of Jashmini on "silsila ye chaahat ka" from the same movie, while I was busy in recording the performances. :-D After such an eventful night we took a rest to leave early for the city tour next morning. The next day we visited the Buda side of the city, the castle, the churches. The castle is on the mountain from where you can have the panoramic view of the city. Everything went really well and by the evening we were sitting at the banks of Danube when the lights of the castle and the chain bridge went on. That was a beautiful scene to see the reflections of the castle and the bridge in the river. Then we went back to our hostel to have a sleep, instead after a bottle of white wine we ended up dancing again on African songs like "oh mamma I wanna marry this gal" or something like that. Next day was again full of sight seeing of the Pest side of the city and eating chicken paprika and smoked cheese (paprika is famous of hungary). This evening we had the overnight bus back to Trieste.

It is a beautiful city with many things to offer. One can spend some more days there, we did not discover the night life of the city which is known to be one of the best of the eastern Europe. We came back with a lot of memories, pictures and videos.

Greece, March 2013

In Jan 2013, Silvia (my prof) asked me to apply for a workshop in Greece, it was an International Workshop on Fundamentals of Crystallography in Patra from April 1 to 7. Greece has always been a dream and here it was.. an application away.. so applied as soon as I could. Later by end of Feb I got the acceptance letter from the organising committee and thus started getting prepared for the workshop as well as planning the Easter break for seeing Athens and Santorini.

 On 27 March 2013, I flew from Trieste to Athens, spent 2 days in Athens. I booked the International youth hostel in Metaxourgio in Athens for 27th and 28th nights. The hostel was at a good location as it was 5 mins walk from the metro station and also the staff was very friendly who guided me for a walking tour of the city. I reached the hostel by 1.00pm and by 3.00pm I was on the roads walking around and seeing the usual tourist archaeological sites in Athens. Out of all I liked the Parthenon and its location from where one can have the panaromic view and the Panathenaic stadium where the 1st modern olympic games were held in 1896. After another day and an evening in the city and eating the delicious cevapcici and souvlaki I moved ahead to Santorini (one of the most beautiful islands in Europe). Took an overnight cruise on 29th to Santorini to stay a night there, the island was full of serenic beauty (especially in during March/April). A must visit is Oia (in Santorini) during sunset and the red and black beaches. By the evening I was on the cruise returning to Athens to catch the next morning bus to Patra where the workshop was held.

Patra is a small city and the workshop was hosted in a hotel in the outskirts near the beach. I was the 1st participant to arrive later in the afternoon my room-mate arrived. He was a funny swiss. We grew as good friends and drinking buddies. Found a great local drink named Ouzo that accompanied us during the whole workshop. Met a great teacher Carmelo Giacovazzo, made friends there went out to eat yummy greek meat platter with tzatziki. Until then I had never learned so much in a week and never drank so much in the same week. It was a great time. The week passed by and the workshop was over sooner than expected. On 8th of April I was back in Trieste with lots of knowledge and memories.