Europe Tour — A Dream Come True
Many of us from India, since we come from a tropical region, have this fantasy of playing in snow, walking in the snow and even I had one since my childhood. Either you get that opportunity very early or it can be later in life. For me it was the latter one. Last year in July, 2016 I went on the Ladakh expedition with a riders club (BRC — Blitzkrieg Riding Club) from Pune on my Royal Enfield cruiser bike, but unfortunately it was monsoon and we barely could see any snow/ice. Also we cannot ride as most part of the region is closed in winter. But yeah, I got to see a little snow at the top — Khardung La. And that was more than enough for me then.
Luckily, with a bunch of efforts my presentation got selected in the internal Red Hat conference — QECamp’17 this year and people with their selected talks get the opportunity to present it in Brno, Czech Republic, one of Red Hat offices in Europe where this conference is held every year. Usually it happens around first week of February, this year the dates were 24th to 26th January.
There were 3 other people with me: Priyanka, Satya and Rohit. We planned the trip together, for departure at least, everyone had different plans for return so it was their own responsibility. We did our bookings for hotels, flights and inter city buses. So ultimately me and Rohit ended up planning for a 17 days trip which included attending 3 different conferences and visiting 6 different cities. QECamp’17 and DevConf’17 in Brno and FOSDEM in Brussels, Belgium.
One problem here was our office Annual Event was planned somewhere around our travel dates. The best we could do is attend half the annual event on 21st January and leave for Mumbai to take the flight and this sufficed both of our purposes. We did not miss any of them. Well, I missed the dance in DJ at the end of the annual party.
There were very few options for direct flights from Pune to our destination, so we had to do our booking from Mumbai and that goes well for the Puneites. We took a cab from Pune to Mumbai airport, did 3 different pickups and there we were on the highway on time. We reached the airport 3 hours in advance for safer side. I requested the other 3 to go in and do the luggage check in and I would wait for my brother in law, Rohit who was on his way to see me off. Well it was a 15 minutes meet but I cherished meeting him later. He gifted me this winter cap, he wished me for safe travel and then we departed. I entered the airport to see that these people were still in the queue for luggage check in and I joined them from the middle. Ours was Emirates Airlines and usually there is a huge crowd they say when the connecting flight is from Dubai as it is the biggest connecting airport in the world and so on. We completed all the necessary procedures and finally we had half an hour of time before the boarding started. I could see this outlet of Apollo pharmacy near our gate and that reminded me of not having bought basic medicines already to survive in a foreign country. With the help of Dada (Satya) who had a clear idea of things, I got the medicine quickly, but still I compromised on the neck pillow thinking that I shouldn’t spend much even before the journey starts. Usually they provide you pillows and blankets in the flight but not the neck pillows. I clearly remember of having neck pain in the flight during my Beijing trip last year but still couldn’t manage to get one since then.
It took us around 3 hours to reach Dubai International airport where we had a flight change, again in the same Emirates airlines with a gap of around 2 hours. Again we completed the necessary procedures to aboard the new flight and then the time had come to take off for Prague, our first destination in Europe. Best city I would say to get started with. Well, its exciting to aboard a flight, change a flight and what not? But its really boring to be seated in a single flight for more time and our fly time was around 7 hours to Prague. In this time I had couple of quick walks throughout the flight, met Priyanka at her seat as she was allotted a seat away from us, watched 2 bollywood movies and also had a power nap of an hour. Too much to achieve in a matter of 7 hours. The map in my LED display kept on showing the current location of the flight every now and then.
We reached Prague airport safely with no surprise of the freezing temperature, it was -10 C when we landed. We were all prepared with the winter wear already and also it was being announced multiple times in the flight itself about the outside temperature. We did a quick currency exchange to get a few Czech Krona, booked a cab to hotel and left the airport within the hour of landing. Prague airport is a very small airport though.
We checked in to our hotel which was booked already by Priyanka, made the payments and got the receipts. Dada had his booking in a different hotel, so we split from the airport itself. Now, all of us were hungry, so we freshened up and came out for a bite to try out the street food. Later we contacted Dada to catch up for the night walk in the city. Here are few street side photographs from Prague:
