The French Connection ! I only wish I could have had some more connections when I had the chance. More about that later. Anyway, there’s no doubt that my 3 month sojourn in France has been an unforgettable one.

Flashback Mode !! It all started when I was coming back from Munirka after having Tamil food in a messy mess. Barely had I entered the hostel, somebody congratulated me on being selected for foreign exchange. I was thrilled and when I saw the mail on my lappie, I became ecstatic. This was one time I was really thankful that I had scored good grades. What surprised me the most was that people were willing to skip the foreign exchange for lack of suitable dates. I guess, hats off to Mohit !! Maybe it’s because my priorities were screwed up, but I never considered the possibility of sweating it out in Delhi. Besides, I could already visualize the countless opportunities which would arise in such a situation. Well, really, wouldn’t a guy who’s been stuck in an isolated department with 2 girls and around 60 noisy guys for 4 years imagine such opportunities ? No offense to the girls in Delhi, but MBA’s not been too generous in that area either. Or rather, I’ve been a big jerk. Anyway, not an issue I’d want to contemplate on a blog. By this time, guess I wouldn’t have to elaborate on what opportunities I thought of in France.

So, I’ll skip the parts where me and Mehul ran around to get the visa and complete all the formalities. I have to add that without Mehul, a lot of things would have been screwed up. Before I knew it, it was time to go to France. Accomodations, tickets, etc were all taken care of. Being stupid, we decided to go to France before New Year to see the New Year celebrations there. This really affected our course choices later on. However, in hindsight, I guess it might have been a blessing in disguise. Back to where I left the story. We left India on Dec 28th if I remember right. Our departure from India was marked by a high-speed midnight taxi drive and about a couple of hours of waiting in the sloppy Delhi airport. Sleepy eyed, we boarded the Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt.

I expected a lot from an International flight. But I guess flights always look better in the movies. The seats were better than the local flights. But I guess the seats are so designed that they are good to sit and bad to sleep. They did have music and a movie, but I was always in a state between consciousness and sleep to notice anything. I did notice that they were playing “Krishh” (where Hrithik Roshan acts (or maybe not) as another dumb guy). I must be thankful for Krishh though. Without it, I wouldn’t have gotten the little sleep which I had. Anyway, we also got food coming every 20-30 minutes with whatever we wanted to drink.

We landed early morning in Frankfurt. Frankfurt was amazing to say the least. It was a very, very big terminal with flights coming in every few minutes. The shops in the airport were very inviting and any shopping mall in India would have paled in comparison with it. Of course, as proud Indians, we didn’t spend a dime and did what every other Indian does – window shop. Ogling at displays and squeaky clean cars got boring after sometime and we went to catch our connecting flight. Alas, we still had a few more hours to go. So, I took the time to catch up on a movie I’d wanted to see for a long time -”High Fidelity”. A good movie – I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun for potential viewers though. We boarded another Lufthansa flight to Nice and reached our destination in a short time. We had officially landed on French soil. The real story begins here…