Before I start with my usual prelude, with great pride I present to you the chicken hat. You may choose to ignore the person wearing it like I did. If you don’t know him already, he is the only swiss knife wielding Mexican who has been featured continuously in this series. Before anything, I would like to thank the chicken hat for giving just the perfect posture for me to capture it through my lens.
Now to my unrelated introduction. Hyperbole could be placed under level 1 of cryptology. In mandarin, eight is pronounced as ba (not bae unfortunately) and written like a hyperbola. Rather than naming this blog as hyperbola, I chose to name it hyperbole since many of blogs can be profoundly associated to being hyperbolic. As for the justification of resorting to mandarin for this particular blog, 8 is considered to be a lucky number by the Chinese. Since this blog would mark the end of the first semester, let us finish it on an “auspicious” number (fun fact: I was born on the 8th day of a month, still searching for a little luck in my life).
Let us now proceed to our story shall we? Before my final exam for this semester, I had about a month to prepare for it. Let me recollect for you from the previous blog, where I proclaimed being well prepared for this particular exam. Fellow batchmates would instantly recognize it to be “Parallel programming“. I was determined to be done with this course within this semester. Preparing for this exam was quite gruesome since it consumed most of the vacations, and would definitely have taken my wretched soul if it hadn’t been for my pseudo-European friend. Between the two of us, going through countless revisions, making each of us understand every concept, code and discuss about the same. Words cannot provide justice to how much he was helpful to me in being able to crack this exam. During these “vacations” we were about the only ones in the study room, highly intoxicated by the amount of coffee we had consumed for about a month. He was far more motivated than me, which helped me immensely to stay focused to the task at hand. I remember one particular day while we were studying in the study room, two of our batchmates had entered the premise. Let us the name the two of them F and D, while us being B (here indicating brown :p) . The conversation went like this :
F: Hey, so what are you guys doing here?
B: We are studying for the Parallel exam (which seemed obvious with the course material spread around us).
F: Pfft!(sniggers) Parallel is easy. C’mon, you don’t have to prepare so much.
B: (visibly annoyed) So what are you guys here for?
D: Ah, you know it is vacations now right? I am helping F install the graphic drivers to play this game.
F: *Laughs* Yeah, I already got a (insert grade here) in parallel.
B: Good for you.
After which we proceeded to discuss our previous exam papers. In about five minutes, we heard a roar of laughter of obnoxiously high magnitude. And then, they were making unnecessarily loud conversation again, and again. It got to a point where it was unbearable. We left for a coffee break, and when we returned, thankfully they had left. This faux pride is something I greatly detest. One’s “achievement” in obtaining a certain grade speaks so little about one’s character. But we never conveyed it to them back then, for we would be travelling our graduate years together and it would have made little difference. About three months back, when we had received our exam schedule, I was confident that I would be having a proper vacation after the exams. Since, it had been my dream to watch a football game in a stadium once in my life, I booked the tickets for the friendly played between Germany and Spain. Usually before the world cup, these friendlies are played with the first team players (top professionals), which excited me even further. I invited some of my friends to watch this game together and several of them had agreed, which had been a surprise to me. Being students, we only paid half of the normal fare and were able to obtain decent seats to watch the game. Being neither a supporter of Spain nor Germany, I was a perfect neutral for this game.
Fast forward to a week before this exam, the match was scheduled on this very day. I was paranoid about attending the game, since my exam was so close by and there was still a lot to revise. My friend encouraged me to travel in order to witness this match, stating that we have revised enough and I required some distraction/rest. Heeding to his advice, and not wanting to disappoint my fellow companions, we travelled to Düsseldorf to watch the match. After travelling about 2 hours to get to Düsseldorf main station from Aachen central station, we needed to take a U-bahn (underground train) to get to Esprit arena. For the record, this had been my first to travel by a U-bahn. What made my travel extra special, is being crammed for space by overenthusiastic German supporters. This train was particularly in service for the match that day, which was quite common in Germany during match days. Throughout our travel, we were pumped up my chanting, excessive drinking around us and loud talking. Very much unusual to how we usually travel in trains. For the majority of the travel through trains that followed in my later semesters, there was pin drop silence with hushed talking. Maybe alcohol brings out the best (worst) out of a human. This is a mystery I chose not to resolve.
In about three stations before the final stop, an unfortunate Spanish herd entered our coach. And there started the sneers, and chants aimed at Spanish fans. My Celta Vigo fan friend (such a lost cause really) who could understand both German and Spanish perfectly, served as the perfect interpreter. We naturally did not pay him for this service. While the Spanish also had some healthy jabs at the Germans, we reached our station near the stadium. I was totally taken aback at the sight of this lustrous stadium from the entrance. Before we could proceed to enter the stadium, we had to undergo a security check. And that is where our trouble had started. Let us call this companion Y. Y chose to carry some strong alcohol along with him in his backpack. It is common knowledge that we weren’t allowed to carry any drinks along with us to watch the match. It made total sense to me for two reasons. One being that it could be made into a particularly sharp object once broken, and the other, the vendors inside the stadium would want to make their margin by selling their drinks. A wise decision should have been to dispose of the drinks before entering, but Y did something that none of us would have even dreamed of! He drank the whole content in one gulp :O . We were asked to deposit our bags, and I cursed at myself for carrying it after looking at the long line for storage rooms. But I thanked myself for not carrying my camera, since I would not have been able to take care of it through the clutter of before me.
Y was slightly tipsy after entering the stadium, but chose to buy another beer along with my other friends (definitely not recommended), while I bought the ever-loved pretzels for myself. We split into two groups, since I was not able to secure seats with all of us together. I was a bit disappointed with myself for not being tall enough to have a clear view of the stadium. Thankfully, we went in the end of the seats for the particular section, we were able to stand if we wanted to. I can definitely not explain in words about how one feels under the wave such positive energy propelled through the chant by the fans. Even, if you are not a football fan, the coronation of people forming their flags is spectacular to watch. To our much delight, Germans displayed their colours in golden and black while the Spanish in vibrant red. The Spanish scored a goal in the second minute, much to the disappointment of the Germans. To be fair, until the 88th minute, it was fairly slow paced game until the Germans scored and ended it in a draw. What proved to be extra special to me, is to watch legends of the game play this match (Iniesta, Bastien, Villa, Lahm). Depositing the bag felt like an even graver mistake when we witnessed the line formed to retrieve it. We had little time until we could catch the last train heading towards Aachen. Two of my friends abandoned the rest of us in order to take an earlier train, while we waited to collect our bags. After we collected our bags, we ran for the time of our lives to catch the final train. We made it just in time, and were able to catch the last train to Aachen. After completing my final exam, I had about a week of vacations before my next semester started. I invested this time wisely by doing nothing worthwhile and rejuvenating my energy. Alas, the story of my initial semester ends with this statement. I am not sure when I would be able to write the next one. Until next time!
Karthigeyan's notes 
I suggest you apologize for what you said about Celta
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I cannot hear you, being so far away from me.
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Remember the old drunk lady screaming in the station during Oktoberfest? The part on your U-bahn ride reminds me of her
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Oh yes. She was babbling in English which made things extra special.
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