Hello, Hyderabad! Actually, I'm about 40 km out of Hyderabad, at the ICRISAT campus.
Getting here was a long haul - 23 hours total travel time. Yikes!
On the flight from Newark, NJ to Frankfurt, Germany, I sat next to two young women - one from Germany, the other from India. Upon landing in Frankfurt, I walked around for a while to stretch the legs and get the circulation going again after an 8.5 hour flight. I wound up at the Goethe Bar - having lettered a lot of Goethe quotes over the years, I was drawn to it. All my anticipation of tasting a genuine German beer went up in thin air after the first swallow - it tasted exactly like Blue Moon! Oh, well, as the only woman "bellied up to the bar", I soon had company - Jeff & Jeff from Chicago, on their way to Birmingham, England, and Mick (pronounced "Meek") from Sydney, Australia. I couldn't help but laugh as Mick kept showering me with compliments and offering me chocolates in addition to the beer he bought for me. Good thing I had a plane to catch!
On the Frankfurt-Hyderabad leg, I was seated next to a young Norwegian boy, Christian, who was traveling with his father to India as missionaries. For a young teen, he was a wonderful conversationalist, and we spent much of the time relating Ole & Sven jokes, talking about Dan Brown's books (he was also reading The Lost Symbol), and a myriad of other subjects.
That flight had the most babies on it that the flight attendant had seen in over 15 years. Let's just say that there were several baby chorus performances - enough to get out the ear plugs.
I landed in Hyderabad at 12:35 AM, exhausted, but curious. After nearly 1-1/2 hours, I arrived at my daughter's door - sleep never felt so good!
