My First Day

I arrived at the hotel about 10:30 in the morning. Took a bath and then planned to sleep. But, me.... knowing myself, didn't dare sleep. I prepared myself for the cold and went out in the town. To look around, what;s there, how different or similar it is to what I have already seen.

What I found was pretty much similar to my expectation of a typical European city. Almost similar names (store brands), same kinds of super markets, not much different.

I somehow was expecting more Jewish effect on the city, which I could not spot myself. Somehow I have this mental image about Switzerland, which is very closely linked to Jews. Somewhere down inside me, I respect them a lot for their skills. And, having known Islam (more negative than positive), would like to know lots more about Jew-ism. But, I did not find any traces of Jew-ism (that I could spot). Though I have to admit that I hardly know anything about visible signs of Jewism.

I had seen at least two people at the airport, looking at which I could straight away say that they are Jews. but afterwards nothing.
In the town here also, nothing.

I walked across the city's shopping area... which was open on a sunday in preparation of the upcoming Christmus shopping season. But I did not see the kind of rush I have seen in Brussels. I thought ... a new town, a new trend.. let's see..

It was very cold, and I was worried about my preparedness while going out. I forgot my gloves that time and paid heavily. i could realize the mistake almost immediately.

I have this habit of not being able to go inside a shop if I don't have to buy anything (genuinely). And I have seen myself spending quite a bit of money just because I entered the shop and shop keepers (or salesman) have spent some time on me. I feel it like an obligation.

Therefore, I developed a need of buying a USB memory stick. I actually needed (still) one. So, I started entering electronics shops and looking for it. The exercise where I have to make something understand to someone who doesn't know english (and I of course don't know his/her language) is very interesting for me. I love that. And here I had the perfect opportunity. Alomost no-one in shops knew english good enough to understand my point in the first attempt.

Then it was genuinely the internal fight that I always have about the size of the stick. I have this tendency where I try to avoid being limited by capacity of anything. If I have to buy something, I would rather have it the maximum size (or multiple uses ) possible, even if i have to pay extra money. e.g. Last time I went out to buy this USB stick (in Brussels), I ended up buying a complete Sony VAIO Pocket kit (which I still regret(: . At that time it cost me 450 Euros. Somehow, I knew immediately afterwards that it was a bad decision.

Here, I found at least two shops which were selling USB sticks. one was some Inter discount... and other was even more obscurely named Fust. And even more intersting was the fact that both of them had a difference of about 20 Francs on the same product, of the same brand, same model, same capacity. Most strange, i thought may be there is another shop which has another price tag, who knows, even lower than the two of them. And so I continued surfing...

In the end, took a veggie burger at McDonalds' and went to sleep. No photos shot in the whole day. Now I am wondering, whether it will be worth to bring 5 rolls with me... if I am going to shoot at this rate... :)

Lets see...