A weekend that refuses to end ...

To say, I have got used to Europe would be heights of presumptousness. This place certainly holds a certain magic that I bask in everytime I come here. However, silence seems to have set in like a pall over this place much thicker than what I have seen it elsewhere. It's like I am in the middle of a curfew - I probably have to wait for the first week day to see if the cars vroom their ways to the highway. Probably I am just in the wrong side of the village. Anyways, took time to go to Heidelberg, the gard du nord for walldorf, to get some essentials. Fought with the claws of doubt to finally settle on a 15 euro sweat shirt that's become part of my skin since last evening.

Of course, the most interesting incident so far has been the call I got from ~P at 12:25 am. While I was walking away through clouds of thought, there's this ring, all too familiar in the last two days, that cuts through my lines of thought and wakes me up - a horrible horrible ring tone that I am sure I will never grow to like. I croggily pick up the phone to hear her tell me that there are a couple of men in uniforms outside the hotel door who are asking her to come down and open the main door because a fire has broken out in the hotel. Now this was too bizarre to be handled in the state of semi consciousness - still I managed to convince her as step 1, to see whether there's any other soul in the same premises who can actually give her company and convey the message over to the men in blue in german. I meanwhile took the time to rev my logical engine and figured out that even the modest of abodes in europe should be equipped with a fire alarm and hence the whole hotel must be out by now. She called me, as promised, in 5 minutes and told me she couldn't spot anyone in the hotel. I explained my reasoning to her, tried my best to allay her fears through whatever words I could find and asked her to go to bed. I promised to land there personally in case the threats persist (by no stretch of imagination, would I actually look like a samurai who could stand in the line of fire to save the damsel in distress. But thanks to my male valour, when I did propose to do so, I felt no fear. Male valour to hell - I think it was my half sleepy presence of mind!).

Anyways, I guess the men in blue lost patience and left. When I woke up finally, 730 in the morning, the call was the first thing on my mind. I bid my time till 8 in the morning and walked my way to the hotel (you see, phone is an excellent invention. But is pretty useless, when you don't know the number to dial). There was no trace of fire or any sense of alarm. The car park was empty and there was not a single cop around. She was fine alright, in one piece and still sleeping. So, I went down to the reception just to let them know what happened so that I can at least share the sense of alarm I felt last night - that guy was ... hmmm, for the right word, puzzled! Some intruders tried to barge into his hotel, and he was ... PUZZLED! Probably, he thought I had delusions of people comin' in barging in on my friend's window. He promised to look into the matter (sic!) and stared again into the computer screen - where, I am sure he must be trying to figure out the next moves of his minesweeper game.

I didn't want to bother my friend with this silly explanation and was soon on my way home - probably a jog through the rain drenched streets, while the sky didn't completely stop sneezing. As I reached the main road (while the hotel was on a right lane right angles to this) , and walked past the next right, right next to the right I talked previously, I saw men dressed in orange uniforms and a huge van standing next to a building that might just have been behind the hotel my friend's staying in. For a second, a whole image of doubt painted itself before me. probably, those men were actually cops and wanted to enter the hotel so that they can make sure the fire didn't get into the hotel. Probably, they were just pranksters - We would never know.

Funny, the web of choices and the alternatives we take - leaving a sense of what ifs that lay unexplored forever!