Saket Vora

Two days ago, I’m exploring ways on what to do between the 15th and 17th of August. After trying dozens of variations on RailEurope’s webpage, I discover that there is an overnight train from Berlin to Malmo. It’s perfect: I get 1.5 days in Berlin, then wake up the 17th morning at 8am in Malmo. From there it’s a 15 minute train ride to Lund! So last night I go to do all the bookings, and to my dismay I find that the Berlin to Malmo is sold out. It’s 9pm. Sigh. That began a 3 hour search for trains and planes and hostels between Prague and Lund. There are trains going via Hamburg and Berlin. To Copenhagen. Planes from Berlin to London to Copenhagen. Planes from Berlin to Copenhagen. Hostels in Hamburg, Berlin, Copenhagen. And finding a cheap hostel in Copenhagen isn’t easy. It was a complete mess.

So it’s getting near 12am. Dad is helping me out now. And just on a whim I go back to RailEurope to show him how the Berlin –> Malmo train is gone. And would you look at that. There it is. Available. My eyes widened and I smash the “Book Now” button and get it reserved in less than a minute. After all that hunting and planning, and in the end things fell exactly the way I initially planned it.

We’ve got the Rail Passes. I just booked my hostel in Berlin, and will get the Prague to Berlin ticket later today. This Prague apartment we’ve booked seems shady so Mom is looking for other places. This weekend I’m going to start making an inventory list and preliminary packing.

Two days ago, I’m exploring ways on what to do between the 15th and 17th of August. After trying dozens of variations on RailEurope’s webpage, I discover that there is an overnight train from Berlin to Malmo. It’s perfect: I get 1.5 days in Berlin, then wake up the 17th morning at 8am in Malmo. From there it’s a 15 minute train ride to Lund! So last night I go to do all the bookings, and to my dismay I find that the Berlin to Malmo is sold out. It’s 9pm. Sigh. That began a 3 hour search for trains and planes and hostels between Prague and Lund. There are trains going via Hamburg and Berlin. To Copenhagen. Planes from Berlin to London to Copenhagen. Planes from Berlin to Copenhagen. Hostels in Hamburg, Berlin, Copenhagen. And finding a cheap hostel in Copenhagen isn’t easy. It was a complete mess.

So it’s getting near 12am. Dad is helping me out now. And just on a whim I go back to RailEurope to show him how the Berlin –> Malmo train is gone. And would you look at that. There it is. Available. My eyes widened and I smash the “Book Now” button and get it reserved in less than a minute. After all that hunting and planning, and in the end things fell exactly the way I initially planned it.

We’ve got the Rail Passes. I just booked my hostel in Berlin, and will get the Prague to Berlin ticket later today. This Prague apartment we’ve booked seems shady so Mom is looking for other places. This weekend I’m going to start making an inventory list and preliminary packing.

Two days ago, I’m exploring ways on what to do between the 15th and 17th of August. After trying dozens of variations on RailEurope’s webpage, I discover that there is an overnight train from Berlin to Malmo. It’s perfect: I get 1.5 days in Berlin, then wake up the 17th morning at 8am in Malmo. From there it’s a 15 minute train ride to Lund! So last night I go to do all the bookings, and to my dismay I find that the Berlin to Malmo is sold out. It’s 9pm. Sigh. That began a 3 hour search for trains and planes and hostels between Prague and Lund. There are trains going via Hamburg and Berlin. To Copenhagen. Planes from Berlin to London to Copenhagen. Planes from Berlin to Copenhagen. Hostels in Hamburg, Berlin, Copenhagen. And finding a cheap hostel in Copenhagen isn’t easy. It was a complete mess.

So it’s getting near 12am. Dad is helping me out now. And just on a whim I go back to RailEurope to show him how the Berlin –> Malmo train is gone. And would you look at that. There it is. Available. My eyes widened and I smash the “Book Now” button and get it reserved in less than a minute. After all that hunting and planning, and in the end things fell exactly the way I initially planned it.

We’ve got the Rail Passes. I just booked my hostel in Berlin, and will get the Prague to Berlin ticket later today. This Prague apartment we’ve booked seems shady so Mom is looking for other places. This weekend I’m going to start making an inventory list and preliminary packing.

We currently have hotels (actually apartments…you can rent these for a couple of days and it’s much cheaper than hotels) booked in Budapest, Vienna, and Prague. Bratislava has become a day-trip from Budapest, which is fine cause Budapest isn’t very expensive. The European East rail passes should be ordered tonight. The Europe travel ends on the 15th, and I have to arrive in Lund on the 17th. The plan right now is that I take a train from Prague to Berlin, spend a day and a half in Berlin, then take an overnight train to Lund from there. I found a good cheap hostel in Berlin that I’ll book either tonight or tomorrow ($20 for the night).

As for the luggage problem I was foreseeing, currently I’ll just bring with me a suitcase and a backpack. After I arrive in Sweden and know my mailing address, my parents will surface mail all my heavy winter clothing. Should work out ok.

I think that dumb 512 MB card probably just got to the buy.com warehouse in california. Then it’ll take probably 2 or 3 days to process the return. Then another 4-5 days to get back to me. Sigh. Nader said he might be soon in possesion of a 1 GB card. Maybe I could buy that from him too….it’s not an UltraII though. Oh well. ‘Till then.

Woke up this morning and saw in my inbox that my housing has been confirmed for Sweden. Word. I have until July 4th to send in a deposit of 4600 SEK, which is ~$600. Whew.

This memory card has been a headache. Buy.com’s customer service sucks. They won’t provide a phone number, and unless I can start directing their emails to my work e-mail address, I can’t deal with it during the day. I’m gonna start giving them giving them bad ratings everywhere I can. I’ve ordered lots of stuff over the net, and nothing has arrived in such a condition.

Dave Matthews Band concert is on Wednesday…hope it doesn’t rain!

Peace.

Several good things to note today. Spent the weekend at the beach, so that was fun and relaxing. On Friday we called Manish the Travel Agent and booked our tickets. Finally! We are leaving August 4th, and family is coming back on June 15th. I will be catching a January 3rd flight out of Copenhagen. Upon returning at home, I discovered a priority mail from the Consulate General of Sweden in New York. Fearing that it was a denial or some problem with the paperwork, I tore it open only to find my passport inside. I flipped through the pages and there was the residence permit. Success! And it took only 2-3 weeks! They had been scaring me by saying it takes 6-8 weeks of processing. My camera’s memory card had also arrived, but I was extremely disappointed to find that the packaging was bent, the logo print scratched off, and the package in a generally sorry condition. I am going through the procedure of exchanging it. Caution to buyers: I used www.buy.com. You have been warned. As for my camera bag, I tried two Wolf Camera stores but alas, they failed to carry my particular model. So far I’m pleased with my camera. The weakness in portability is still a concern, but the severity of it will be dependent on the bag.

With the plane tickets settled, we are now focusing on hotels. We have found some apartments in Prague and Vienna that can be rented for 3 days at a very agreeable price, and will commence a dialogue with them in due course.

My camera arrived today. My family owns a Canon Powershot A40. 2 megapixels. 3x optical zoom. A little point-and-shoot. The new camera is a Canon Powershot S2 IS. 5 megapixles, 12x optical zoom, and more manual controls. I’m really enjoying it so far. I spent a month reviewing and researching before buying this camera. I can thank the internship I have now to help pay for it too!
The 512 MB card should come Friday…I hope.

Anyway. We’ve been dragging our feet on the whole Europe trip thing. We’ve got some price quotes for airfare and such, but as usual, everytime you peruse the Internet you’ll always find a slightly better deal. I’m at the point now where I just want to book what we’ve got. If it comes out $50-75 more per person, so be it. At least there’s the peace of mind that you’ve got something in your hand.

Anyway, sleep now.

Last Saturday I mailed off my residence permit application, along with my passport and a check for $147. Sigh. Oh, and nearly $30 for the express mail shipment. It reached the General Consulate of Sweden in New York at 8:45am Monday, so I’m hoping that the processing is speedy and fair.

The conversation around the house has shifted entirely to planning the pre-Sweden traveling. We are finally getting to the point where reservations can be made in the next 3 days. The plan so far:

Aug 04: RDU to Budapest
Aug 05: Budapest
Aug 06: Budapest
Aug 07: Budapest
Aug 08: Bratislava
Aug 09: Vienna
Aug 10: Vienna
Aug 11: Vienna (day trip to Graz?)
Aug 12: Prague
Aug 13: Prague
Aug 14: Prague
Aug 15: Prague to RDU Plane (Dad, Mom, Sachi, Sapana)
Aug 15: Prague to Copenhagen Train (Saket)
Aug 16: Copenhagen (Saket spends night), family arrives home
Aug 17: Saket arrives in Lund for Arrival Day.

I’m pushing Mom to get the plane tickets booked via the Indian travel agent. Hopefully that will get started today or tomorrow. Our hotels are the latest X-factor….we had a good call with Best Western and we might go with them. Surprisingly to us, Prague is gonna be most $$$, instead of Vienna as we had thought. We decided to nix visiting Berlin cause it just wasn’t worth it for the amount of money. So far this trip is coming to be approximately $11,500 (on the high side) for the entire family. Whew. At the moment my concern involves my luggage….for the traveling my family will be carrying only carry-on bags, but I’ll have my two suitcases for my entire semester in Lund. I’m exploring options of surface mail to Lund, so I just have to carry one suitcase, and that way will just get my winter clothing after I arrive in Lund. Or I can lug around the two suitcases. We’ll see.

The official acceptance paperwork has finally arrived from Sweden. It’s also disappointingly thin….no brochure or information packet about Lund or anything. Two copies of the acceptance letter, and one sheet telling me the status of the classes I signed up for.

The family (sans Sachi…who is hiding in her tent in Colorado from a hail storm), is now endlessly debating what to do in the time between August 4th and August 17th, when I’m due in Sweden. Some things that have been discussed:

• Should we go on a cruise?
• Do all five of us go? Three? Two?
• Do we do it all ourselves or find a package tour?
• Stick to the railways? A boat trip down the Danube? Rent a car?

So far, we’ve been in strong agreement on which part of Europe we’d like to see. Budapest, Vienna, and Prague are the big three cities. Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, is on the way between Budapest and Vienna. Berlin is north of Prague and I’d like to see it for a day or two as well. I can’t wait till Brandyn comes back so I can see him again. I want to hit a coffee house and talk with him for several hours.

I’m also trying to get my residence permit paperwork together as quickly as possible. The problem is that the residence permit form requires information about date of entry into the ‘Schengen’ states, which includes Austria…so finalizing the trip itinery would be a good thing.
I’m almost thinking for booking my own trip so I’m set regardless of what my family decides. We’ll see.

Progress Energy internship going good so far. Sapana is busy at GSK. We’ve been playing a lot of bridge lately. I need to improve my card counting and seeing where finesses can be used. It’s tough.

More later.

It’s been nearly a month and a half since my application was received in Lund, and I have yet to hear back from them about whether or not I’ve been accepted to study there. They had told me that I’d hear by the end of April, but that didn’t happen. The study abroad office at State said not to worry at this point. For me, it’s not really a worry…it is just the tedium of waiting. In order to get my paperwork done for the residence permit (which can take 2+ months), I have to have the letter from Lund. And until I get the letter from Lund, I won’t be buying my plane tickets. It’s just pushing these things farther and farther back, which results in smaller and smaller buffer time.

On Saturday I attended a required meeting for people going abroad in the fall. Wow. It was boring. Very very little new information. I did meet some nice people though. They had all the people going to Scandinavia sitting together. Leslie Peteya is going to Lund with me, one is going to Norway, and two are going to Copenhagen, Denmark. Looks like a good bunch. I found out that Frankie Myers is going to Ireland, so that’ll be good.

Right now we’re trying to figure out how to do the pre-Lund traveling. My family is very keen on going. Due to work related deadlines, we’ll have to leave near the end of the first week of August. Targeting August 4th or 5th. I have to be in Lund on August 17th, so that gives us 10-12 days of traveling. I’ve been to London, Paris, and Rome, and I’d like to go to places that would be hard to get to while in Lund. I was thinking Budapest, Vienna, and Prague. Three cities, 10 days? It can be done, I think. Brandyn has been to all three, with extensive knowledge about Budapest, so I’m gonna get as much info from him when he comes back. Enjoy a cup of coffee while I’m at it too.

As for application stuff, I’m still waiting for official word from Lund. I have a residence permit form almost complete, but need to check to make sure it’s the right one. I’m hoping I’ll hear back within the next two weeks.

I got an email from Kathy Gordon at the Study Abroad office – I have received an official nomination by NC State for the Lund exchange program. I’ve got even more paperwork to fill out now, but I still can’t looking for plane tickets yet. I have to wait to receive official word that Lund University has accepted me, and that probably won’t happen until early April. I’m pretty excited though. Jordan got the nom for Ireland.

I got an email from Kathy Gordon at the Study Abroad office – I have received an official nomination by NC State for the Lund exchange program. I’ve got even more paperwork to fill out now, but I still can’t looking for plane tickets yet. I have to wait to receive official word that Lund University has accepted me, and that probably won’t happen until early April. I’m pretty excited though. Jordan got the nom for Ireland.