On way to San Francisco

After coming back from the second USA visit, I was wondering whether there would be any point in going back for the third visit. USA is a young nation, and there is not a single organically developed settlement anywhere. In my first visit, I had been around even through the smaller roads, which went through very small settlements, but all of them had the look of being formally planned along the main high-way. The smaller towns and villages are all alike-you have the main village road with all restaurants and shops, and then all the rest is low-rise housing. Everywhere you go, you meet a similar townscape. It is only when you visit the big cities that the skylines are different, but there too, you have very little variety. Housing in most places is mostly low-rise, with the typical European/British style, built in wood with sloping roofs and large windows-and this has nothing to do with the climate. The style is mixed, Gothic windows with verandahs in renaissance columns, and many combinations of the european/british vintage. So if you have seen one american city, you have seen them all.

Then again, the journey from Mumbai to any place in USA even by plane, is arduous (it takes about 36 to 40 hours door to door) and has always made me wonder how Srinivas gets the energy to carry on all these years. He being an IBM employee, travels by business class, and may have been able to stretch his legs a bit more on the long-haul flights, but it is a tiresome journey, and to top it all, he is supposed to do some work at the end of all that travel.

The only redeeming feature of this kind of travel is that you acquire a bit of edge over people who have never made such trips, and may be able to show off a bit, but finding such people (at least in Pune) is becoming difficult these days, what with almost every other household has a Son or a Daughter (in many cases-both) in some or the other part of USA. Marathi can no longer act as a code language in any of these trans-Atlantic flights and you generally tend to find people who have been doing these flights much longer than you have ever done.

But Mrunalini was quite insistent, and we buckled under the pressure. And anyway, I had always had the urge to see San Francisco, right from the day we saw a mock-up of one of its street views in Orlando. It is a favourite location for Hollywood, with streets sloping in almost an impossible fashion, which is actually the result of putting a straight grid-iron pattern layout on a hilly ground. In some cases the slopes are so steep that the footpaths have steps and you keep wondering whether all those cars parked along the street can stay that way all night.

So it happened that we planned the third trip, and made it this far. Incidentally, we came via Zurich, which is a very straight-forward and easily navigable air-port. On the second trip, we had a stop-over at Paris, and the Charles De Gaulle Airport is a nightmare for the occasional traveler. It is built in stages, has a series of curved terminal buildings which are connected by an underground railway, and after making what seemed to be a correct choice at the time, we got off at the wrong end of the terminal E, and were cheerfully re-directed by the security people. Taking the train back in search of our boarding gate, when we finally reached it, the staff was in the process of closing-we could have easily missed our flight to Atlanta that day.

So when Pranav told me that there would be a stop-over of 6 hours at Zurich, I thought we had made a good decision. Not only we would have sufficient time to find the terminal, we would be able to have some breakfast and wander about a bit, both of which we had missed at Paris earlier. But the Zurich experience turned out to be an anti-climax. After reaching the air-port, which was virtually empty save our own flight, I found out that the incoming and outgoing flights would be operating out of the same terminal. So in a matter of minutes we were at the departure gate. There was virtually nobody around, and all the shops on the terminal were closed. True, it was 6.30 in the morning, but like a railway station, you normally expect the airport terminal to function 24x7. Probably the Swiss had never heard of this. The terminal had a laid back look, and all around the airport you could only see the sleepy hills, and not a soul around. It felt like we had come to a holiday destination when nobody was expected - something that happens when you arrive at Mahabaleshwar in the rainy season.

I also located a deserted smoking lounge, and toyed with the idea of smoking, but had packed all my stock in the checked-in baggage, and there was not a single shop open at the terminal where I could buy cigarettes. So when the duty-free shop opened I was the first one in, only to be told that you can only buy a minimum of ten packs, and that put me off. So finally I settled on a cappuccino at the inflated rate of $7.00, but the fellow at the kiosk said the change shall only be in swiss franks, which I had no use for, so I settled for some cookies at an additional price of $3.00 and gave him the $10 bill, and that was that.

Still, there was a lot of time on my hand, and wandering about I located a kiosk at the airport which promised a free internet for one hour-all set-up with laptops. It was thus I checked my email and sent message to Pranav that we had arrived safely at Zurich and were on our way to SF without any hassle. I even logged on to my facebook page, something that I do very rarely, but found nothing much to comment about except for the fact that we were at Zurich. Finally, around 10.30 am, people started coming in and the terminal was full, and after waiting interminably for the boarding announcement, we boarded at about 12.50 pm.

The flight from Zurich to San Francisco was uneventful, and almost like Zurich, when we landed, ours was the only incoming flight and virtually no queue at the immigration desk. We were outside in a matter of minutes again, and in fact had to wait for Mrunalini & Saurabh for some time. The weather was pleasant and the fresh air smelled exactly like what I had experienced at Jacksonville, when we made the first trip to USA. So here we were, all set for yet another visit to the New world.