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The plan for today was to spend a day at Innsbruck in Austria and add that to my travel map. I wanted to be back in Zurich that night, so I decided to make a day trip. I had booked my tickets in advance on the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB or OEBB) on their website at € 19,00 each way (which was a very good price considering that I paid CHF 16.60 each way only to get to Sargans the previous day when I visited Vaduz. As I had seen before when I returned from Milan by train, generally, booking train tickets on SBB was more expensive than booking on Trenitalia / ÖBB / Deutsche Bahn / where possible, even when, the actual train on which you travel is the same. ...

My flight to Zurich from Mumbai arrived on time and I made it out of the airport relatively quickly. I boarded the train from the airport to Zurich Hbf and then took the tram to the hotel to drop off my bags. I could have spent the day relaxing after travel, but instead I had decided to make the most of it by visiting Liechtenstein nearby. The plan was made, and I had booked the train tickets to Sargans just the previous evening on the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) website for CHF 16.60 each way. I took the tram back from the hotel to Zurich Hbf and grabbed some breakfast at Rapido. I boarded the InterCity IC563 which arrived from Basel and was headed to Chur. The train left exactly at 9:37 AM; the next stop was Sargans. ...

natural liking for someone or something both fulfillment and longing, it does bring you are captivated and you don’t know why it doesn’t fit with obvious logic, but you still try you’re drawn to things that have a certain appeal or to people because of how they make you feel a four-legged friend who is eager to please the solicitous demeanour which puts you at ease the open countryside and quaint simple folk the obvious grin and chuckle on your inside joke ...

at times you are distant, even when with the crowd though you are really not, sometimes you do seem proud powerful like the tempest and gentle like the breeze you navigate places and people with such quasi-ease you are totally fatalistic and that’s how you choose to see your multifarious affiliations, they are just meant to be affinities come and go, but some things stay the same how you give, what you get and how you play the game ...

a feeling of pensive sadness, typically with no obvious cause you continue to tread the usual path, despondent, but without a pause when? where? how? and why? did all of this have to start who has put you in this quandary? your mind? or is it your heart? you want to wish away this frenzy, things should be steady, even slow but what is the solace that you seek? i think, even you do not know ...

Ever since I found out about touristanbul I was eagerly waiting for the opportunity fly Turkish Airlines and visit Istanbul in transit. My red-eye from London to Istanbul on Saturday night landed early morning and I had a 15-hour layover before my flight to Mumbai. There were kiosks at the airport where people could apply for a visa.The Republic of Turkey issues e-Visas for Indian passport holders who have a valid visa for the USA, the UK, or the Schengen countries. I had applied for the e-Visa in advance to avoid any last-minute complications. I headed to immigration, where the officer checked my e-Visa and also my visa for the USA, and stamped my passport. My bag was checked through to Mumbai so I walked past baggage claim and customs and proceeded to the Hotel Desk in the International Arrival Hall (next to Starbucks). I submitted my boarding pass to them, and they asked me to wait around until they called for the tour. There was still lots of time so I found an empty bench and took a nap since I hadn’t really slept well on the overnight flight. ...

The plan for today was to make a day trip to Milan and add Italy to my travel map. I had started thinking about this two weeks before but the train tickets from Zurich to Milan were already quite expensive. So I decided to go by bus. I booked my onward journey on FlixBus for €19,00 and I found a good price of £22.10 on loco2.com for the return by train. My journey would take me over the Gotthard Pass by road and return via the Gotthard Tunnel by rail. The Gotthard Base Tunnel was still under construction and only opened in 2016 so I didn’t get to experience that. ...

First of all, it’s hard enough for us to remove ourselves from a state of inertia and try something new. We tend to get comfortable very easily and don’t really make any effort for change as long as the going is good. It’s only when things don’t really go our way that we tend to sit up and take notice of opportunities suitable for us. Our approach to decision-making tends to be more reactive than proactive most of the time. ...

… Because It Might Just Come True! Life is strange. It has you running after things which you’re not even sure you want. And if you do want them, you’re not sure why. What you want, may clearly be something which is not best for you. The question is: When do you realize this? All through our life, and more consciously in our adult life, we chase after people or things which we seem to want in our lives. ...

I know you’re thinking “Charles Dickens”. But not this time. This is different. We go through life and cross paths with multitudes of people. People we’re related to, neighbours, friends from school/college, colleagues/friends from our workplace, etc. But surprisingly, only some of these make a meaningful impact on us. We are, more often than not, drawn to people for a couple of reasons: first, they make us feel good about ourselves, cared for, and/or protected; and second, they have something which we admire, appreciate, or want to emulate. ...