ATLANTA.. a journey to remember

Hi All,

I ve reached and survived for two whole days in the land of martin luther king! And it has been one wild ride!

Its been an adventure and a misadventure on many counts..

First i guess most would know that my first ever international flight was canceled due to a strike in an airport in Germany! We had to wait for over four hours till the lufthansa staff could rebook us thru jet airways and delta airline.. Then we merrily headed home to sleep another night on our home soil... it took the fright and the excitement away from the entire process of going abroad or so i thought.. as the taxi took me back home via the usual route.. Soaked up every place in chennai..Felt the weird attachment born which binds u to ur city when u realize u are leaving it for an alien land.

Next day eve. I was back at the airport...and went up to the jet airways check in counter to get my boarding pass.. Another dirty little twist in the plot designed by cruel mother fate surfaces! My ticket from Chennai to Brussels has been canceled.. but my flight from brussels to Atlanta has been confirmed.. What a comedy!

The flight was scheduled to depart at 00:10 and i was waiting till 11 :40 to know whether i would be boarding the flight due to kevalamana misorganization by lufthansa officials.. psst note: LUFTHANSA is a stupid stupid flight.. Dont ever board one.. probably they will tell u that they have run out of fuel midway and ask u to jump using a parachute... and u will end up jumping and realising they have given u a knapsack which they had accidentally placed instead of the parachute due to economical constraints... :)

And finally i managed to get into jet..It was awesome...the entertainment system and the service were really good.. Then came brussels.. We were frisked and made to wait in the transit area where the only stuff which didn't require any euros was using the restroom! :) so we exploited that service. Then we waited till Delta airlines which was supposed to fly us to Atlanta ripped us off.. Yet another royal bilking! We had to pay 200$ for the extra third piece we were carrying which was not to be a problem if we had travelled by Lufthansa.. Lufthansa officials promised us it wouldn't be a problem! Lesson learnt: No one is ur friend.. they were being polite to get rid of us earlier. The world doesn't conspire to help u without a profit motive! :)

So we paid the 200 bucks and got on the delta flight which was about as cheap as they come.. compared to jet airways Delta was a joke! Jai Hind...

We landed at Atlanta at around 13:40. We went through immigration and customs and finally collected our check in baggage at a building nearby to which we commuted by a subway train.. hmmph talk abt flaunting technology to prove that they are superior to us..! ;) Grow up Americans. We had people from the India Club who had come to receive us. We had like 14 pieces of luggage sheaperded by four people! :) We managed to get to our residence by squeezing in as much of luggage and four people in a car and the remaining made its way thru the local public transit system named MARTA. As if things were going outta the way to make things difficult. The guy who was supposed to let us into the place was out.. he had left the key under the carpet.. an ingenius hiding place totally remarkable!! We four roommates were all alone for the first fseven hours after we landed in the USA. :) We had no clue what to do. No idea of the area we were supposed to be in. It was a shady place populated by african americans who were big and intimidating. We finally mustered up enough courage to venture out and try to locate a store where we could get something to eat... We finally located a grocery store called Lucki! Outside were three guys in typical hip hop style... We decided to give the place a wide berth when suddenly one of them called out HEYYYY!.. I turned outta reflex and stuck somewhere between being courteous and wary stared dumbly.. my friend vishnu on the other hand appeared all cool and normal and adviced me not to turn at every call i heard and that it was probably not meant for me.. but as we walked past we heard the calls getting louder.. and vishnu realized he was mistaken to my despair! they were directing the calls at us! we tried to half run .. half walk our way outta the place.. scared outta our wits.. :)

We entered a burger store run by two chinese.. no.. korean .. ok i dont know.. asian people! we got four burgers and a coke bottle and made our way back to our place.. sat on the porch and had a quiet dinner.. A lady walking up the pavement stopped outside our door. and gaped at the four of us.. she silently made her way past us into the house... She was a spanish lady who was occupying one of the upper bedrooms!.. she came down and inquired about who the hell we were. She was informed of our arrival earlier it seems.. yet its not often that u come back home to find four starved scared indians sitting on ur porch.. She was polite and went back to her room. We occupied the couches in the living room where we had and still have dumped our luggage! We didnt meet anyone till past ten.. when finally one guy staying in the basement room made an appearance and left just as soon.. Then after arnd ten min he reappeared with another person. They were both indians. and lived next door. One of them was Vishnu's cousin. They were shocked at our predicament. They had no idea of our arrival nor did they know that we had no one to take care of us.. They were really nice and helped us out.. Got us set up with the place.. Next day morning they came and gave a general idea abt the place... we chit chatted. Then one of them we had met the night before ,Santosh, took us shopping at walmart to help us get the basic stuff such as asleeping bags... pillows.. laundry bags.. toilet paper..et all.. and the groceries at kroger. He then treated us to semi lunch/ dinner at a mexican place called willy's . WE had one of the best possible burritos.. and a bottomless coke! :) Sated we returned and chatted about japanese anime and akira kurosawa's films and tennis and US stuff till night when we finally hit the sack..

Today caught a movie. and cooked.. more in detail abt it later! :)


Cheers
Ashwin