Landed!

The flight from Frankfurt to Bangalore was a direct one and uneventful, if a bit longish at 9 hours. I took us directly over Tehran and I naturally chose that time to drink a glass of wine 😛

We landed at the old airport. It seemed a bit of a run down institutional building and reminded me of the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan, or even more so the army bases of my childhood. I’ll call its architecture “Old US Army Base Rec Center”! My visa says “Wife holds employment Visa” and I thought there was going to be some drama when the immigration officer asked me “Where do you work sir?”. I answered (truthfully) “SAP” and he seemed satisfied. I work for SAP AG in Germany, not SAP Labs in India and hence that is not on my visa. I thought this was going to bring me into a long explanation. I now rather suspect that he assumed there was a typo on my visa in that it indicated that only my wife worked. To be honest, I’m not sure, but my longtime rule is NEVER give immigration officials and cops more info more info than they explicitly ask for.

My first impression of the city, after midnight only – so it was a limited impression – was busy, busy, busy, dirty, run down and did I mention busy? In from of the airport terminal, it already seemed chaotic. Today, we venture out in the daylight. I’m taking my camera.