Birthday and Bridges

Given that tomorrow will be my birthday, and I have decided to be rather quiet about this one, I decided to celebrate this one alone. Tomorrow is a working day, and I will be rather busy, and today was such a glorious day that I decided to take a walk by the Aare.

The Sun was bright and sunny, which is the object of this picture. Nevertheless, it was a slight chill in the air enough perhaps to keep a very light jacket on if you were wearing half-sleeved shirt (like I was -- and a new one too, given that it's going to be my birthday tomorrow!). In any case, this is a section of railing just by the Aare (I'll leave you guess in case you know Bern intimately!).

Bern is not a low-lying city, its close to 500m high; and most of the city looks down onto the Aare. And if you are walking by the Aare, like me, most of the time you'll be looking up. This gives a wonderful way to study the bridges.
People like bridges --- at least I do. They are a wonderful feat of engineering, and sometimes standing on them can give you quite a view below. There are quite a few bridges in Bern joining the parts of the city cut deep into two parts by the fast flowing Aare. While in the medieval ages it had served as a natural defense against invading enemies, now-a-days they have been stitched by these bridges. Take a look at some of them.

In the backdrop of the river and the small houses, the bright sunny sky, the cool weather, I was having a very pleasant time. It reminded me of the last birthday, spend in the Austrian Alps and in Innsbruck attending a conference. Incidentally, that was a Sunday, we had a wonderful conference lunch and followed by a nice walk down the mountain into the city of Innsbruck, and then an intense physics discussion with Uwe and Mike Creutz in a quaint bar.


Well, anyway coming back to the present, you really can't help noting certain things by the river. One was the certain stale smell of fish coming from the river -- this was a bit strange, I had never quite experienced that before in this part of the Aare. Certainly there were quite a few people fishing, though, which probably meant quite a fishes were around. At some point there was lots of gushing in the water, which made me look closely as if some big fish was sneaking up on me; but to my disappointment it turned out be some water outlet in the side of the river that was pumping out water. Another was this tower. Apart from the graphiti, this was a piece right from the Middle Ages.




The strong current of the river is often harnessed for power, I suppose -- you get to see these small embankments across the river, like this one.
Very soon the path turned a bit rocky, going over to the northern part of the city where the river twists and turns a lot. To my surprise, the road led to quite a dense wooded region -- this was already beyond Felsenau and going towards Tiefenau. It is indeed surprising that I have been here in Bern for almost two years now, and I hadn't come
along this path even once. Well, so much for that! Here is a view from in between the dense trees, looking into the river -- which you can make out by the strong reflection.

Initially, I had decided that I will walk all the way to Bremgarten, where the river turns and flows to the west, and then come to a place from where I can cross the Bremgarten forest into Bumpliz Nord and then finally to my house in Bumpliz Sud. But shortly beyond this point (as shown in the picture to the right), I decided that it was a bit too much.

                             

This is one of the fleeting decisions that I sometimes make. I promised myself that  the next time I would start from the other direction and make all the way to this point. On the way back, it was a simple matter to find the station Tiefenau and take the train back. In fact, the superb train/bus connections in Switzerland make these kind of trips really worth making.

Anyway, if you travel a bit onward, you quickly come to Worblaufen which is the kind of the north-eastern border of Bern. This is where Albert used to live. To the left is a picture taken the Friday before last, when I was visiting their place. This is one of the high bridges connecting the parts of the city to the neighborhoods dissected by the river. This is an inverted perspective from the rest of the pictures before.



Whatever happens, this is one of the birthdays I will never ever forget now! This year has been very nice to me, life has been nice to me in some ways, for which I am grateful; and not nice in certain very cruel ways, but I cannot complain about that. Certain things are too heavy to be changed, they are better accepted as they are. Well, Happy Birthday to myself!

Note added a week later: The reason for editing

is like of the  most amazing co-incidence that has
ever happened. The very next day after I finished
writing the blog was going to be my birthday. I had
ordered this, what you see to the right, several weeks
back, but it was delivered on the 23rd of September.
It was a like giving myself a birthday gift; though
I could hardly have known that it was going to be
delivered that day. :)

Yes, the picture, however was taken a week later,
to be precise yesterday: me watching the latest
South Park on my latop!

Goodbyes

Goodbyes are not really my cup of tea; which isn't saying anything much because so many people have the same feeling. This week a very good colleague, a very valuable friend, and his family, who moved out of Switzerland into Holland -- (and thankfully), for a permanent job. All the universality associated with saying goodbyes to people who are close to me, swept over me again.

Goodbyes to my school, to my college, to the Calcutta I knew, to TIFR, and smaller, more personal, sometimes more deeper ones scattered on the way in time. Of course, there was during August a much more deeper goodbye said, to a feeling -- an invisible one, a one that is really complex. But, I digress: what is the use of trying to describe a goodbye to something which I will never be able to describe.

Goodbyes, perhaps, shouldn't be said, at least to good things. But then there you are, powerless against forces greater than you are, which orchestrate things that you don't want, that force you to say goodbyes to things that you didn't want to.

Goodbyes can sometimes be so sour, either because the new Hello is sour or simply you were too attached to the past to say the new Hello properly. In anticipation, some people just hide the goodbye with an occupation. Like I did a couple of times. In August. In 2011 when I left Mumbai.

Goodbye, I wonder how it will be when I have to leave Bern ...

Goodbye for now!

More trysts with Visas

The last time I wrote such a blog was when I was applying for the Schengen visa to Italy. It was 2010 and I was aiming to attend the Lattice 2010 conference in Sardinia.
It is 2013 now, and I am trying to fly to the US, to visit MIT and Duke. I live in Switzerland now. You'd have thought (or rather no: maybe you're smarter, and I am still dumb; so let's say, I'd have thought) that things would be much easier. The official wait times for processing the US visa from the Embassy at Bern at time of the year is 3-days. In the website, in the FAQ section they say that at peak periods it is about ~2 weeks.
I had my visa interview at the Embassy on the 31st Jan. The US consular officer who took my interview was quite optimistic that I would get the visa in 2-3 weeks time. This is my second visit to the US. (Never mind that last time I got issued a one-year visa, which expired at the beginning of this month, forcing me to apply once again. In the meantime the visa fees went up from CHF 125 to CHF 160).
It is the fourth week now, and I am anxiously counting my days. I am supposed to fly at the beginning of next week, and if things don't work out, I stand to lose hundreds of dollars (or even thousand the whole transatlantic flight has to be cancelled as well). Not to mention a most wonderful academic and research opportunity.
All the same, it seems that there is nothing I can do. Calls do not reveal any information, their emails replies are most unhelpful, ending in wishing me to have a lovely day, when in reality, I'm biting my nails off my fingers. Out of sheer desperation I am writing this blog. To have my feelings written down somewhere so that I can recall them later.

Not Proud

You know, there have been things I've done about which I am not proud. Two such things suddenly hit back on me suddenly. Two promises. Nothing life-changing, but small ones.

The first one was during the trip to Jaisalmer. We went out to see the sand dunes early in the morning. It was freezing cold in the desert; and it was long before I had become accustomed to cold that I can bear now. In any case, there were some local people waiting for us with camels. There were a couple of small boys as well with them. Small, that is, around 10 years of age. While we went on camels, they walked on the sand. And there we were on the dunes, before the sun, watching the sun come up, while these people stuck up a fire, warming their hands in it. I still have their pictures. I promised them, that when I went back, I would take the pictures on paper, and send them a copy. I do not remember now if I wrote down the address. While the pictures remain on my social networking sites, showing off to the cool desert places I've been to, no trace of the address or the pictures on paper remain. A promise that I had ignored, or simply waited long enough to forget. The only comfort that I have from the trip is that before saying bye to those small boys, I gave one of them my pair of gloves. I was going back to warm Mumbai, I didn't need them anyway.

The second one was much more dear. It was the trek to Roopkund. And it was scary, for me. There was snow all over, and I was scared stiff, and slipping all the way. I did make my way as much as the group, as high as possible. And then came back. Safe and sound. Only thinner. And promised the guides that would never forget them. Promised as usual to send photographs. And as usual did not send them. I wonder if they remember us at all. Every week there are adventurous tourists, trying to hike up. Do they remember all of us? But this thought, is just an excuse not to fill my promise. If I did take the printout and send them pictures, then they would definitely have remembered. And this time there wasn't anything I could give them, and later feel happy about it. Only their pictures remain in Google+, reminding me of the promise which I never fulfilled.

It must be well over several months since I wrote anything. As usual, lots of things change; many things happen: you get to know more people, see more movies, read more books, visit more places, get a little more experience than you had before, manage to lose a little more of innocence you had. Basically you get a little bit older.

As I sit today in my office, pouring over some some equations and trying to make sense out of them, with the snow having covered well nigh everything outside, I suddenly realize the things I am missing. Around this time, by Indian reckoning, about two years before, I would typically make a visit to the BEST canteen near the TIFR in Mumbai. And then I know now, two years from now, I will be somewhere else thinking about my time here, missing the routine things I do here, my friends and colleagues here.

And such is life.