A Semester in Fontainebleau, France

Tushar was in Heidelberg for his Thanksgiving break. I visited him for a day and got a chance to meet Karen, his lovely girlfriend. I took the train from Paris Gare de l'est to Mannheim and then from there a short ride to Heidelberg. I arrived there in the evening, after freshening up we went to the Hauptstrasse. It was decorated very beautifully and there were many Christmas markets. Nobody in the world does Christmas markets like the Germans. The vibe was very lively and people were enjoying their gluhwein (hot wine), grilled meats, fries, roasted chestnuts and many other interesting looking delicacies. Below are some of our pictures at the Christmas market. Next day, I went to brunch again with Tushar & Karen, walked some more on the hauptstrasse and had more gluhwein. Then we left for the Frankfurt flughafen as Tushar was flying back to DC. It felt good to see Tushar after 4 months and meet Karen. It felt sad too as I thought I did not get enough time with my

London, November 26-27 Revisited London and then travelled to Cambridge from there. Manoj was giving a talk at LSE and then Cambridge.I did not do much in London as I worked remotely and in the free time decided to go shopping on Oxford Street. My noteworthy observations: 1. We took the Eurostar train to London. The picture below displays the boarding instructions for the Eurostar train from Paris to London. It takes under 2 hours to reach London, the train goes under the English Channel. 2. London is already very decorated for Christmas. In US the decorations go up after thanksgiving. This is the Covent garden Xmas tree and the mall.When we visited London for Christmas in 2017, there were street performers entertaining people in this square, we saw a man performing circus to the famous Queen song  Don't Stop me Now . People looked very happy and the four of us felt happy too, Happiness is contagious. 3. Some beautiful square on the way to covent garden. 4. I wanted

November 19 - 22 I accompanied Manoj on his trip to Tilburg. He was giving a talk at Tilburg university. We took the Thalys train from Paris to Rotterdam and from there a local train to Tilburg. The trains in Europe are very fast and efficient. It took us only 2.5 hours to reach Rotterdam. We met up with my cousin Diya's husband, Sarin, in Utrecht Centraal station. The railway stations in Netherlands are very clean, organized, and modern. We found this interesting mobile device charging device at Utrecht Centraal. If you want to charge your mobile phone, you just sit on a swing and start swinging. The power generated by your swinging charges the phone. They call it Play for Power. Getting to the university from Hotel Auberge du Bonheur involved walking through these lovely woods. It was quite cold, and you can see the frost on the leaves in the picture below. But at least, the trees still had some leaves unlike the trees in the U.S during winter. I sat in a cafe i

November 15 - 16 We were in Paris for the weekend, this time for wine tasting at O Chateau . This is one of the few places in Paris that offer tastings in English. We signed up for the Tour De France of wine tasting. We learned about the principle wine regions of France, tasting techniques, and tasted 3 sommelier recommended white wines and 3 red wines. Quite unexpectedly, we also learned about some of the not-so-pleasant discussions in the French society. When we landed up in Paris that weekend, we were oblivious to the fact that it was the anniversary of the yellow-vest movement. There were protests organized in various parts of Paris. Here are some pictures and video of everything Manoj and I clicked this weekend (Nov 15 - Nov 16).     1. This is the Fontaine de la Victoire. This was on our way from the Chatlet train station to our hotel in Latin Quarter. This fountain had Spinx's facing the four directions spewing water from their mouth. This appears to have been