Florence

Date: Feb end 2004 - Jan end 2005

The first location which I visited outside India was Florence. I was there for around an year and had a very memorable time there. The apartment where we stayed was Mt Zion in Florence and for office we used to go to Erlanger.  

The things that excited me the most in Florence were:

1) The Library: We had free access to the state library which had numerous collection of books, CDs, VCDs etc. We were allowed to take 30+ material at a time for a period of 4 weeks. This was one of the thing which kept me from getting bored.

2) Driving: I drove car (Toyota Corolla, Maroon color) for the first time in my life in US. Driving a fully automated car is like playing with a toy. It just had D (drive), P (parking), R (reverse) as gears and even had control to put the car on auto speed. All I needed to do was just to control steering. Once I drove car non-stop for 7 hours while returning from New York. 

Traffic in US is also sensible. We know as long as I am in my lane, no one is gonna come and bump me from any other side. We just had to follow 2 seconds rule from the car in front of me and keep checking the vehicle behind me. In India any one can come from any direction. After returning from US, the traffic situation in India was a shock to me and I couldn't dare to drive back in India. 

3) Trailer: I saw the trailer for the first time in US. I got really impressed by its huge structure and the sound it makes when we cross it. While driving whenever we encountered Trailer, going in the same direction as we, we used to got tensed by the pressure it creates on our car. I assume a single trailer can easily accommodate 3-4 trucks that we see in India.

4) Long Days in Summer: The days are very long during Summer (We saw this later in Europe as well). Till 9:30PM in the night there used to be enough sunlight and after 9:30 PM it started getting dark. Everyone who went out of India for the first time gets amused by this fact. One of my friend, amused by this fact, suggested to take a snap outside in sunlight at 9:30 PM with clock in hand.

My colleagues there were Krishna Kumar Mohandos, Shankar Murthy, Sarika Gada, Sudhir Kumar, Vijay Mehta, Balaji, Shikha Vashist, Dinesh Kumar (PM), Sandeep Saptarshi (Support Lead), Amit Kumar (Later PM ), Viswa (Later Support Lead).