Franzi in India
India – Monday evening, Franzi landed in Mumbai. The journey felt a little bit like time travel since so much time was lost and the plane flew continuously through the night. Once she arrived she spent the night at a hotel close to the airport to get ready for an early morning drive to Pune. The driver picked her up at 5 am and with the sun rising the drive gave away some good impressions of the country.
The day was spent with the client and the third party we were visiting. We were welcomed with a candle-lighting ceremony, had authentic lunch and ended the day with a joint dinner.
The next day was spent working again and the journey was practically over. Wednesday afternoon Franzi was driven back to Mumbai to fly back to New York Wednesday evening. It was a long flight of 16 hours through the night again, which got her to New York Thursday morning. This allowed for some resting, reflecting and working for the rest of the week.
Meanwhile Alex spent the week in South Carolina. Since his project was coming to and end the team treated themselves with a nice dinner at the Kennedy.
Alex’s best friend Eike and Kati in NYC
On Friday, we welcomed our Thanksgiving visitors, Alex’s best friend Eike and his girlfriend Kati came from Germany and Texas. On Friday night, we first hung out and caught up at home with some drinks. On the way home from the office Alex picked up his framed drawing. He’s recently been getting into drawing again and finished an old Honda tank this time.
Before going to dinner, Franzi tried out for a volunteering activity. Recently she has been looking to spend some time with animals on the weekends. Volunteering is a great opportunity to do so if there is no time to have your own animal. Afterwards we went to a NYC classic for dinner – Momofuku noodle bar.
On Saturday, Franzi was unfortunately still pretty exhausted from the crazy India trip and started getting sick. Therefore, she stayed in while Alex, Eike and Kati ventured to Williamsburg where Eike bought a new jacket at Jane Moto – a handmade in New York piece.
After a bit of rest for Franzi, we all strolled through SoHo together and got a Polaroid taken by Jean Andre Antoine. At the corner of Prince Street and Broadway he has been doing street photography since the past seven years. He uses a camera from 1947 and spends nearly every day working the same SoHo block, photographing people and exhibiting his artwork.
To warm up, we eventually ended up in Lucky Jack’s, a cozy bar to ring in the evening. After a couple of beers we moved on to our friends Gino’s restaurant Tre for some cozy Italian food.
Since we didn’t have enough impressions for the day yet, we booked tickets for stand-up comedy at the dark horse comedy club later in the night. It was a bit confusing to find at first, however, after we eventually made it, we had a great evening with a small crowd and entertaining comedians like Carmen Lynch and Adam Strauss.
After an eventful Saturday, Franzi was back to being sick on Sunday (surprise, surprise). She stayed in while Alex, Eike and Kati explored the Meatpacking District and walked along the Highline. When they were back, we spent the rest of the rainy Sunday at home before Eike and Kati took off on their roadtrip to Boston and Rhode Island, where Alex and Eike studied together at University of Rhode Island (URI).
