Aktualitäten II

Alright, shall we continue?

I get the feeling that I'm going to skip a lot now. The reason for this is that I suddenly lost all interest in taking pictures (don't worry, I got it back^^). Maybe because on one hand after two months in India I am used to most of the things. On the other hand I wanted to enjoy all the new impressions, instead of watching them through my camera. Third thing: We did a lot of boring every day life things.

By the way: my life is now completely in English! English phone, English facebook, English computer, English blog. Even with Robert I speak English most of the time. Jeez!

So! Let's get started with an insight to NID: this is how the mess looks like. Very simple and practical. But alright.
Usually we have breakfast there, lunch either in the mess or the small kiosk on the other end of the campus, dinner also either mess or in one of the many restaurants in Ahmedabad.
One of them is Chirag opposite to NID. Supernice food for nice prices and the best Shahi paneer ever. At the moment we try to find out new places but I guess next week I have to have food there again...






This is how it looks like when the dealer for traditional fabrics comes to NID. I did not buy fabric but a really nice kaftan from Afghanistan.

 The Eames Plaza and NID building. 1st floor is library, class rooms and IT centre, 2nd floor is studios and foundation classes.

Another food place: The so called "BMW". We have lunch here or a nice afternoon snack and chai. Although the chai is better at "chai gate". A guy from the chai stand outside of the fence works inside NID and provides the students and staff with yummy tea.

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Some city sights

Funky Star-Wars-look-alike building near CG road. We discovered it while searching for a DHL shop.

A sign in Upper Crust restaurant. The special bread is available when it is available. 

This makes sense to me!

 Old city.

 A workshop in old city. Yes, the tree is IN the workshop.

 How many boxes can you have on a bicycle?

 

 Modern and traditional Indian economy at Ellis bride. Before I came to India I saw a website about Ahmedabad and saw a picture of a camel. I was so excited about seeing camels on the streets! Now I find it kind of cute, I already got used to them. Only the elephants we see rather rarely, that is still exciting!

This is where our booze comes from most of the time. It is a liquor shop inside the garage of a Hotel. Most of the rickshaw drivers don't know the hotel, but we already know the way :D There you can get a liquor licence, which allowes you to buy "units" of alcohol. Its a bit cheaper and better quality then the booze you get illegally (which comes in plastic bottles and is called "superior blended" or something similar - brrrrrrrr!). Getting booze illegally is super expensive, but kind of fun in the old breaking-the-rules-way. You need to know who to call and where to meet etc.
But still even if we get the legal alcohol we have to smuggle it into our flat because we are not allowed to drink alkohol, as well as we are not allowed to cook with meat and eggs. The reason for this are the jains, a subgroup of Hindu religion. They believe that all life is equal and therefore are pure vegetarians. Very conservative jains even don't eat vegetables that grew under the earth, they would have vegetable bananas instead of potatoes for example. The reason for Gujarat being a dry state is that Gandhi, who lived here and started his salt march in Ahmedabad, was a big fan of abstinence. Both together doesn't make life easier but it is nothing you cannot deal with.

And throgh all the weeks every day you could tell a little bit more: the kite festival would take place soon. On the streets, in the backyards, everywhere were you possibly can fix strings, men started dying kite strings. A bit later you'd get the kite shops popping up on the streets. I love that the citie's appearance changes so much with the festivals.

Now all kites disappeared, except for those in the trees. It seems that kites are a seasonal thing. I miss the kids playing with the kites. I will do an entry about kite festival soon!

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Around New Year Daniel's family was coming from Sweden! We bought some more matraces for them, and now they make a pretty nice sofa :) And yes, five matraces plus three people fit into one rickshaw. It's kind of cozy.

Do we think this looks nice? Yes, we do! It is also nice to drag a matrace out to one of the balkonies (we have three of them, harhar) and enjoy an evening beer, watching the sun go down and all the birds!

So, if anyone wants to visit spontaniously, we've got some place for you to sleep at :D

Messing with the laundry maiden. Always something nice to do on a late saturday morgning. Not so nice, if it is a late wednesday morning and she was supposed to be there at 8.30am, not at 11.30.
We have fixed prices for every type of laundry, which goes from 3Rs for a sleeveless shirt and boxershorts over 5Rs for Tshirts and 7Rs for trousers to 10Rs for sweatshirts.
Like our cleaning maiden she comes every third day, picks up the laundry and returns it after two days. Hopefully. Sometimes something disappears. But we get shirts that do not belong to us instead! :D

That was new year's eve. Later we sat outside on a huge terrace for the main course, I took a picture of it for you guys at home. This is a nice Gujarati thali. We have some "salad" and mixed pickles left side on the leaf, two kinds of roti with selfmade butter on it, a sweet ... someting..., some different vegetables, chickpeas, some sweet milk sauce, yoghurt, and of course: Dhal! Sooo yummy! I really have to upload some recipes!

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I have been helping Daniel to realize his form by nature project. He designed a helicopter rescue harnest, inspired by a flying devil ray. I draped it on Robert (poor guy had to hang in a terrible position - half on the floor, half fixed with a rope from the ceiling - for 4 hours), we made the pattern and cut it in fabric, then Daniel made the prototype and gave it to the tailor. This is what came out of it in the end! I like it!

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Here are some pictures of our neighbourhood.
We mostly walk the way from our flat to NID, which is about 5-10 minutes, and maybe grab some food and water on the way. Longer distances we do by rickshaw most of the times.


A convenient way to get to school when you're late :) Since we have been to Diu and therefore know how to drive a scooter, we get to use PJs scooter ocasionally. We only use it between our flat and NID though, traffic is a little too crazy for us on the main roads :D But it is nice when it is noon, sun is burning down and you want to rush home and back because you forgot something.

This is the chai walla on the way to NID. Sometimes you can get chai there until 3pm, sometimes only till 10am. In the background you see the fruits- and veggie walla and the mobile bakery. They push their carts around the neighbourhood all day long. It is very convenient when they stand in front of your house. But mostly they are SOMEWHERE and then you have to go to the store anyway.

The view from Daniel's balkony. No, this is not really slums. But I don't know how to call this kind of housing instead.

"Slum" kids. And school. Every sunday morning they sit on the street, hopefully learn something and have some food together.

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Furnishing!

I promised to have some pictures of how we built our furniture. So here they are! We built two big tables out of fourty 70cm long pipes and two wooden plates, two cupboards out of metal constructions, a swing out of an old plastic seat and strings as well as a glass table out of a broken glass plate and water bottles. We also stole some old signs from NID, which are now in the flat, biiig letters which mark our rooms and printed our contract in A1! 

I will put some pictures of the finished pieces in the next post. Promised! :D

(Prove to Robert that we do have a pic with all the four of us! Yo Kalpavruksh 2 design collective!!!)

Alrighty! So much for now. Next time there will be pics from the flat, maybe some stories about scary Gujarat women and the mysterious Hijras... Take care my darlings!