Friday in Kolkata
Ruben in Indiareis 2018 2018-05-06 18:23, laatste update 2018-05-06 19:45
Friday morning the day started a bit too early. Breakfast, which should have been served around 08:00, was suddenly an hour early (Which is better than late, but rushing to the door half asleep isn't the dream start of my morning). The planned activities were visiting the Bose Institute, followed by the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI).
After a final buddy-check we proceeded to the vans and left for the Bose Institute. We soon discovered that there are multiple locations of this institute. With only one of the drivers speaking English and one knowing the way, this proved to be rather time-consuming. So with only one and a half hour left, we entered the Bose Institute. Here we had an interesting talk on complex systems, but due to being short on time, we quickly grabbed lunch and continued our journey to the ISI.
We quickly arrived at the gates of ISI, so at least one of our trips had gone as planned, right? Wrong. Apparently we arrived at the wrong gate of the complex. In stead of letting us walk over the campus, we circled around the ISI in busy traffic for at least 15 minutes. The walk over the terrain would have cost us 5 minutes, but we can all agree upon the fact that this would have been totally unacceptable (or at least this is what Indians seem to think). Luckily our troubles were compensated by some interesting talks about molecular electronics and the relation between the formalism of general relativity and fluid dynamics. This concluded the physics part of the day.
Because we had some spare time, we went to a large temple complex near the ISI. After reluctantly handing in our mobile phones and undoing our shoes, we entered the large temple complex. It had a lot of shrines and we happened to visit during a Hindu ritual. By now everyone was tired, so we went back to the hotel (without problems for the first time this day). All I had to do, was get dinner somewhere. I ended up at a Indian restaurant close to the hotel. There were 10 waiters, who were serving 5 filled tables (now we know how the term waiter was invented). The experience was only lacking on one front; the food quality. Moving some staff from the restaurant to the kitchen wouldn't be a bad idea. For the next weekend a visit to the mangrove forests is planned. How we experienced this, you can read in the next blog!
