Coming to Chennai

All right, bloginistas: here we go again. I’m back in India and ready for adventure. Getting here was as close to a breeze as flying 9,000 miles can be. Got into Philly, hooked up with my colleague, and buzzed off to Frankfort.
We fly Lufthansa this time. It’s a German airline, so the button for “flush” on the plane’s toilet says “Splorgee” or something like that. I found this amusing. Here is a fun habit our German flight crew had: They come up to you and ask you something in German. You blink stupidly back at them so they repeat it in English. Then they come back and do it again. And again. They must have fed and pampered us 150 times in six hours and each encounter was started with a phrase in German and then a sly smile. As if to say “Oh, ja ja: you still haven’t learned German since the last time I came undt offered you a hot towel, now I must say it again in baby talk English because you are so stupid and lazy that you only know one language.”
Or maybe I’m reading a little into that.
In Frankfurt we had a confusing layover (why go through security when you get off the plane?) and enjoyed a very German breakfast of mixed sausages, potato salad and sauerkraut. Then it’s back on another plane with a friendlier crew- including a nice woman who I’m pretty sure was named Brunehilda- and then a mere nine hours later, here we are.
First impressions at midnight? The place is steamy. The bad heat has passed, but it was still sweaty in the middle of the night. The hotel looks swanky in the lobby, but the rooms are kind of meh. The lights in the rooms are on some kind of weird switchboard and you need your room key to get light and AC. I’m sure I’ll figure it out.
Meanwhile, it’s six am and I’m starving.
First impressions at 8am? The place is steamy. We took a walk down the road to get the lay of the land and I was moisty after 200 yards. There isn’t much around the hotel. It was a dusty road to nowhere.