Strasbourg trip

Strasbourg(France) is a city virtually sandwiched between Germany and France and historically has been a disputed piece of land between two countries. The major significance of the city is that Gutenberg created the first printing press in this city, now a seat to major European institutions such as European Parliament, Council of Europe.

Booking tickets:
The process of booking tickets was sort of a mini saga. We were constantly visitng Deutsche Bahn(DB) site for one week to check whether there are any discount offers. Till 2-3 days before the traveling day there wasn’t any breakthrough. Only option available in the site was tickets for 80 Euros per head. We were about to call off the trip, but Sachin and Sivaram didn’t lose hopes and gave a try at DB reservation office at Reutlingen Hbf(central station). They got tickets at the price of 53 EUR for 5 people, a real breakthrough indeed. The ticket was combination of Baddem-Wüttemburg pass and two way ticket from border of Germany to Strasbourg, the option which was not listed in DB site.

Students' Exchange Handpost

This post is for future Exchange students to ESB(Reutlingen) from SPJIMR. The basic idea is to keep essential information documented on a single platter.

Visa Processing:
It's the first stepping stone for the exchange program. While working in a company all processing headache will be taken care by travel-desk, but as a student we have to do everything on our own. Find visa application details at Mumbai Consulate - Schengen Visa. Applying for Schengen visa as a student one need not furnish all documents as in case of business visa.

The must-have documents are:

• Passport: [It's obvious :)]
  
• Filled VISA form
  
• Covering letter from SPJIMR: signed by program co-ordinator.
  
• Invitation letter from ESB.
  
• Demand Draft for Visa Fee: The amount given in embassy's website will be in EUR, so confirm the exact amount in INR by calling up Embassy.
  
• Photographs: Make sure to submit with exact requirement, slight deviation here and there will result in rejection of the application.
  
• Medical Insurance Certificate.
  
• Flight tickets.
  

Documents which are good to have. Usually furnished with a business visa application

• Bank statements: last 6 months, just to provide some sort of proof that you can bear expenses on your own.
  
• Form 16 and IT return.

Air tickets:

• Of all options we chose Emirates for cost, convenience and experience. We got return tickets at 33K INR per head, whereas the price for other major airlines was more than 60K.
• The most important plus point is that Emirates allows 30 kg of check-in luggage by default for Economy class! A huge cushion especially if you are planning to carry food items from India. Cheaper options like Gulf-Air and Kuwait-Air allow only 20-23 kgs depending on the flight occupancy.

Accommodation:

• We stayed at Kolpinghaus, a private dorm in downtown of Reutlingen. It was booked in advance by our university coordinator Heike Trost.
• The rates are very affordable price especially as per European standards. It was 200 EUR per month for triple sharing and 250 EUR per month for double sharing.
• However, due to some miscommunication we ended up paying extra amount 2.4 EUR per day for breakfast. Since we were used to having complimentary breakfast while staying aboard, so we assumed that breakfast at Kolpinghaus is also complementary.
• Better option is to have fresh bread, corn flakes and milk bought from grocery stores and it will definitely work out cheaper.
• Other point is to keep in mind for people who have already stayed abroad is that the stay won't be as convenient as your biz-trip accommodations, as the facilities such as toilets, kitchens will be shared like any other general dormitory.

Going to university:

• The best and the only means to travel to University is city-bus. Going for the first time from Kolpinghauz is quite challenging for a person who is new to the city. Luckily for us, Jonathan (one of the staff of Kolpinghaus) accompanied us for the first day.
• From Kolpinghauz one has to walk upto Bismarkstr stop in front of Unal bakery. From there take either Bus #8 or #11 to Stadtmitte(central bus stand) and from Stadtmitte to the university by bus to the destination 'Houbuch'. There’s no number for this bus, it's code is ‘H’, not sure what exactly ‘H’ stand for.

Naldo Pass:

• It's a student transport pass for entire semester which can be bought at a convenience store in Stadtmitte for 53.7 EUR.
• Definitely a must have pass to avoid paying for tickets everyday. If you make frequent visits to university the break-even can be easily attained. The same pass can also be used to travel by trains (RB or RE) to nearby cities Metzingen or Tübingen.

Grocery stores:

• The places where we bought grocery items were Asian Stores at Stadmitte, Penny Markt near University, Unal near Bismarkstr and Aldi Süd. Unal was convenient w.r.t distance but was expensive.
• The major commodity which we used to buy was rice ( Basmati rice to be pricise). It was 2.49 EUR/kg at Unal, 2.2 EUR/kg Asian stores and at Penny Markt it was 1.79/kg. Though the brands were different but saving a few cents per kg mean a lot.
• The route to Aldi stores was bit complicated. We visited there once before leaving just to buy chocolates. Artem(friend from Ukraine) helped us in finding the route.

Mobile connection:

• A must-have utility for comfortable stay especially while traveling. Life without it is virtually being like a handicap.
• We opted for T-mobile connection, 15 EUR for new a connection with 10 EUR free-talktime. Call rates were 0.05 EUR/min within T-mobile network. So make sure that everyone in your group opt for the same connection.

These are just a few important things, for any other queries do post comments.

A few important locations, including retail stores are pin-pointed in the embedded google map.


View Reutlingen in a larger map

'2 states' by Chetan Bhagat

India's author for masses Chetan Bhagat is back with his new book "2 states: the story of my marriage" a fairy-tale about bonding between two individuals whose lineage are from diametrically opposite cultures. I managed to get a copy of the book from flipkart.com at a discount price of Rs. 65 only.

The protagonist of the story Krish(a Punjabi, an IIT alum) and during his stint at IIM-A falls in love at first sight with his batch-mate Ananya Swaminathan(a Tamilian, an economics graduate). The relationship progresses from just friends to live-in and many more things. But they face difficulty in carrying it forward beyond IIM-A endeavor due to resistance from their parents.

Krish tries all possible methods in books and out-of-books to nurse the impression with his to-be-in-laws whether it was giving tuitions to his Ananya's brother or helping Ananya's father for an office presentation or helping Ananya's mother fulfilling her ambition(live stage performance in Chennai).
As in his previous books, the author is spot on in his characterization and especially in this book highlighting stereotypical opinions of people from one side of India on people other side of India.

According to me best parts of the story are
- First day interaction with Ananya at IIM-A mess and describing her as an outlier by IIM-A standards.
- Krish's mission-impossible at Chennai where he undergoes plain culture-shock.

Amusing moments are his encounter with (in)famous Chennai Autowallahs and his first impression about Ananya's home mentioning embarrassing moments such as getting orders from his to-be-father-in-law to keep the footwear outside and later on treating him as a non-existent entity by getting engrossed in editorial of Hindu!

Grab a copy of the book to read many such amusing moments. Overall, a good read especially for the folks who like to read the stuffs which have DNA of Bollywood. Regular reader of literature can skip this.

Other reviews:
Fingers to Keyboard - Chetan Bhagat: 2 states

ps: The major feature of the book is that it is semi-autobiographical and author's real life love-story has been fictionalized. Read more at When Punjabi Harry met Madrasi Sally.

Telecom Sector in India

Following is the presentation we made on Telecom Sector in India as part of Business Environment Domain Study.

Telecom Sector in India

View more presentations from naanushande.

As part of domain study, it was amusing to follow industry updates on the sector on which is very dynamic. Having worked in previously in telecom domain, I was comfortable with jargons associated with the news-items. The learnings in the PGPM course very helpful to make business sense of new technologies. The presentation was done on 20th Nov 2009, already in one day there many new significant updates in the industry which are not part of above presentation.

A comprehensive report on the sector was also made part of domain study. The report was made 3 months back and I had uploaded it to scribd. The latest stats of the report says "6,383 Reads | 2,330 Downloads" and the document is in the 'scribd hotlist' for longtime.

Telecom Sector in India

Students' Exchange experience

Last week we made a presentation to the faculties at our institute for sharing about students' exchange experience at European School of Business(ESB), Reutlingen. In order to make presentation for interactive we chose majority of experience thru video.

The first video covers the experience from academic point of view, highlighting the diverse environment.



In the second video we presented the fun part of the exchange program, highlighting trip-n-tours we had in 6 weeks.



Regarding detailed account on trips-n-tours, I have published about Lake Konstanz so far, pending posts are about City Tour of Reutlingen and Tübingen, Strasbourg, Switzerland, Munich and Heidelberg.