Dhaka – Abu Dhabi – Dubai – Abu Dhabi - Milano

Writing the last page is never so easy as it may seem...

This morning we left our Hotel at 0600 to go to the airport. The city was almost empty, it seemed completely weird and we thought the place is actually not that bad, imagining half of the people living here….
“A very warm welcome to Abu Dhabi, where the local temperature is 29 degrees Celsius.” – we couldn’t be more happy – two days of proper holidays in Dubai ahead of us… The arrival was a complete shock. From possibly the poorest city in the word to the richest place on earth….
The Etihad Airways Bus took us from Abu Dhabi to Dubai – an 1h20min drive through the desert… nothing to see but Porsche Cayennes, Lexus’, BMW 6er and 7er, SLs, CLs, MLs… We also figured out that EVERYTHING in the UAE is under construction, especially in Dubai. They’re currently building the Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world. sth like 850 meters high… at most building sites, people (mostly Bangladeshis, Indians and Pakistanis) are working 24h in three shifts…After checking in at our Hotel, we went straight to the beach…walked around, chilled, swam… for dinner we went to the Marina for dinner– an artificially built harbor with tons of yachts and surrounded by sky scrapers . We wanted to go out afterwards, but no way, far too tired and jet lagged.
The next morning Ferdi and I went to the Old Town which is incredibly old – as old as the most modern part of Milan probably. Gold Souks, Spice Souks, and loads of fat American and European Tourist in tank tops and trainers… Then we joined the Italians at the beach – a very nice and clean palm beach with sand imported from Saudi Arabia. So what else is there to do in Dubai? Skiing of course! The slope is attached to the Mall of the Emirates, a huge mall in front of our Hotel with 450 Stores… It was completely weird to experience to ski inside a building on artificial snow, restaurants like in the Alps, artificial trees etc…. but very much Dubai style. After checking out a fraction of the 450 stores afterwards we took a cab to the bus station where our bus left for Abu Dhabi at 2300. At 0230 we then left for Milan…
It really was a great trip, a good mix of work and leisure, incredibly interesting in terms of what we saw, experienced, the problems we had, impressions we got, from shocking extreme poverty in Bangladesh, to impressive mountains and temples in Nepal, to incomparable luxury of Dubai. We are grateful for having had the opportunity to do this trip; the thanks go to our parents!

Thank you all people!
Consti, Ferdi, Jac, Nico

Ready to leave

Hey everbody,
sorry we left you uninformed for more than four days but things here got a little crazy. I myself got sick and have not been feeling real well in the last few days, and the others have been probably either too tired or too overwhelmed by this chity, namely Dhaka, to write a decent blog post.
So... yeah, basically this trip is over. We're leaving tomorrow morning at 9 from Dhaka Zia International Airport going to Abu Dhabi and then Dubai for the next two days, hoping to get some good food and breathable air in the Emirates.

We've done a couple interesting things at the Bank in these last four days. We visited two garments factories and the guys also went to a solar pannels plant (or something like that) while I was sick.
We also had meetings with the general managers of other sister companies like Grameen Danone which produces yogurt for the poor, Grameen Telecom which we really did not get what they are doing cos the guys barely spoke any English and Grameen Trust which replicates the microcredit models they use here in Bangladesh in other parts of the globe (they are even starting a project in New York City!)

I'm not gonna tell you day by day, meeting by meeting how things exactly went and what happened to us cos I'm too tired and can't be bothered! Sorryyyyyyy!

This experience as a whole has been a great success, despite of the quality of food, various illnesses, weird people and weird places. It's been amazing but we're more than glad to return to our normal lives tomorrow (to Dubai) and on Sunday (back to Milan!!)
And on Tuesday... back to Uni! Now, i really do not know what to write anymore. I'm too tired, too dizzy, too looow! Get back to you from Dubai maybe! I'm leaving the hard task of completing this post to someone whos in a slightly better shape than I, Jaco perhaps.
Actually not, cos we just figured out we wouldnt be able to post any photo cos we've already packed everything!

Baci
N.

Weekend in Dhaka

There is really not much to do in Dhaka. So what to do on a weekend?
Friday we slept till 1pm and then decided to do a boat tour in Old Dhaka. The lonely planet had said “if you only have time to one thing in Dhaka, take this boat tour. Hire a small boat for an hour go down the river”. This sounded very promising and so we did it. BUT instead of a chilled out boat cruise along the river this was 15 minutes spent on a garbage dump. The smell is indescribable, it is impossible to breath without using your jumper or so as a filter and to keep your nose shut. The water is black and the river banks simply consist of mountains of garbage. Thank you, lonely planet, it was a once in a life experience.

In order not to spend the entire Saturday in bed we went to Dhaka Zoo (pronouced djoo locally). The Lonely planet had described it as “despressing” and “not worth seeing”. So after yesterday’s experience – what was there to expect today? But we wanted to see a Royal Bengal Tiger (home in Bangladesh). So we went there, saw a couple of Tigers, lots of Indian Lions, etc. So it wasn’t all that bad…In fact us four were the real attraction in the Zoo (djoo) though, the locals stared at us more than at the animals. They have probably seen less Europeans than Tigers in their lives…

Since we are all tired of Asian food we found a way to cook pasta in our hotel room now. Take an electric kettle, add water, pasta and salt and press boil… works pretty well! Still we went for dinner to Bella Italia Restaurant… just because we cannot cook Pizza ourselves yet..

Day 18 - Meetings day

crazy eh! Anarchy is taking over, and human race is in serious danger! Breakfasts do not take place at the usual time scheduled by western civilization culture. A bottle of Red Label is waiting on our table for desperation to conquer our souls and for us to give up and give in. Yesterday night the Islamic conference went on till 1.30 am, leavin us not very much time to sleep. A lot of excitement deriving from the fact that an important meeting was planned for us the day after has accompanied us throughout the whole night. (Not true!)
Then morning came and we woke up. Anarchy started playing its devastating role. People kept the bathroom occupied for more then 45 minutes. So guess what!? I had to wait, and in the mean time I had been forced to keep on sleeping. Such a destroying effort!
We went to the Bank where we were told that God, namely Prof. Yunus, would “receive” us sometime after four in the afternoon.
We had to find something to do in the 6 hours of waiting, so… we called the Italian Embassy and arranged straight away a meeting with Mr. Noia who, despite of his last name, has proven himself to be one of the kindest persons we’ve met so far here in Dhaka. Yak, Tino and I had a very pleasant talk with him for approximately one and a half hour, discussing about almost every subject of our interest and concern.


We then had lunch, and time for the Meeting came. We arrived at 3.52 at the International Office, 8th floor, Grameen Tower, having already received a call at 3.50 from our dear coordinator Mr. Shamim who was all worried about our probable delay. We gathered with the other interns and headed down to the 4th floor. We were all put in a big room where we were instructed on how the meeting, which in a few seconds will turn out to be one of the most ridiculous things ever done, had to be. First we, the approximately 20 people in the room, would have to clap our hands when he walks in, second we take some pics, third he signs our books, fourth there’s no fourth cos by the time step number four comes Yunus would be gone already.


So yeah, basically we took some cool pics, smiled a lot and didn’t even geta chance to say “Hi, hows it going? To the Prof.”… whatever!
Think that a couple of guys from Canada had been here for 6 months waiting to see him while writing a film about him and his life and works and he honored them with only 5 minutes of his time, moreover he informed them that the movie can’t be made cos he had already signed a contract with another film producer therefore he’s legally bound to that project.


But anyways, even if, to me he looked more like a popstar or a Hollywood shiny actor, its been a cool moment, plus you don’t get to ““““meet”””” a Nobel prize winner every day.
Afterwards we went back to the hotel, chilled, watched a movie and then Yak and I decided to go for dinner at the only Italian pizzeria in Dhaka, which is called Bella Italia.
It took us about one hour to get there and a ride in a blue taxi cutting through the thick blanket of smokes and smog that covers the entire city.
We had a good pizza though. At ten we were back in our executive room, watched another movie, “I am legend”, with Will Smith, by the way, if you have some time to watch a movie… choose another one! And now… we going to bed!
Night night you all!
Baci
N.

Day 17 - Meeting Prof. Yunus

Hello everyone!

After the Kathmandu - Nepal dream, we came back to work in Dhaka.
This morning, alarm at 9.00h and arrival to the Grameen tower 10.00h, with the morning meeting with our dear coordinator Shamim.

When we arrived, we did not understand what happened, every single tree, plant was decorated with coloured ballons, it seemed that a birthday party was going on...
We went up to the 8th floor, and as I said before we started the morning meeting.

Shamim told us that it was a special day (as we already knew because of the ballons), it was the day of the anniversary of the center managers (!?#), and they set up stands of every sister company of Grameen Bank, Grameen energy (Solar panels), Grameen Danone (yoghourts), Grameen Netwear (export clothes), etc to show their products, and what they do to the Grameen employees...

Obviously, Professor Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Price Winner was present, in the middle of a dozen of photographers that kept on pushing everyone. He was going through every stand.
We were the only 4 people that were and looked europeans, he saw us, he suddenly stopped doing what he was doing and came up to us arms straight, wanting to shake hands.


During this moment we looked like stars, fifty people were staring at us, photographers everywere... He asked us from were we were, what were our names, we talked for 10 sec each and then he continued his walk to another stand.


We stayed a little while to visit the stands aswell and then we left to the international trade fair (it was interesting to see how a fair looke like in Bangladesh...)



In the afternoon, we did not had to come back to the bank, it was a very sunny day, so we decided to chill in the pool of the hotel. jaja.

After a while, we decided to go back to the room beacause today it was a very weird day, all the muezzins of the mosquees next to our hotel kept on shouting and kinda singing, and the traffic was particularly loud... it was impossible to stay outside...

We understood later that they were calling everyone, there is an islamic conference that is going on from 16.00h and still has not ended (it is 00.47h now and the muezzin keeps on shouting with at least 600 islamic followers, preety scarring...)



As Shamim told us, he has arranged for us a proper meeting with Professor Yunus tomorrow.
We will tell you tomorrow how it went...
Good night eveyone, i'll go to bed because it is quite late (I hope that this muezzin will stop shouting soon because I want to sleep well, tommorrow is the big day...)
Nite nite. Peace.
JB

Day 16 - Back to Dhaka

We knew we had to leave this amazing place today so we got up early and went straight to Thamel – the centre of Kathmandu. Not that we did much there – we basically ended up spending an hour at a shop where they were selling pashmina and lambs wool jumpers and shawls. They were all “export quality and good discount price for you ma frend”. Hence we bought “a few”. Thamel is a really nice part of Kathmandu, small streets with tourist shops but also art galleries and Asian antiques shops etc, and on almost every square you find a temple…

Back at the Hotel we had to go straight to the airport, to catch our Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight to Dhaka. The sun was shining, it was warm, with the Himalaya all around the Kathmandu Valley… shame we had to leave!

Once passed immigration at Dhaka Airport we went to Gulshan II to go to the tailor where Nic and Jaco had ordered shirts. Another place with “good quality cheap cheap” so also Ferdi and I ordered some and Nic and Jaco extended their collection. Now we are all broke and will starve for the rest of the trip;) or maybe ask Grameen for a loan…
C.

Nepal - Day 4

You all! why isn't anybody commentin on the blog anymore? We're very disappointed!

Trying hard not to think about you all forgetting about us, we decided that for one day we would enjoy tha Hyatt Hotel at its fullest.


So today we woke up at 10.00, went for a GREAT huge breakfast and then chilled outside in the sun and in the cool breeze of Kathmandu. We basically stayed in the outside hot-tub for 3 hours, played tennis, and sun bathed till 4.


Then we went to Thamel and shopped. I bought a couple of very cool cream pool-overs and a hat. Jaco got a couple pool-overs also and Consti and Ferdi got a lot of Cachemire stuff. Very cool!



Then at like 6.30 Jac and I went back to the Hotel for a couple of hours of SPA, that means sauna, hot tub, cold showers, and steam room! And... a lil work out in the gym as well!
Then for dinner we went to one of the best Italian restaurants I've ever tried abroad, which is in the Hyatt and its called Rox and had a salad and a risotto for me and garlic bread and gnocchi for Jaco. While Consti and Ferdi stayed downtown for dinner and went to the Everest Steak house.
Well, that's all for the day... just a lot of relax and a nice sun tan the morning after!!
baci baci
N.

Nepal - Day 3

The alarm rang at 06.30 this morning but (this is unusual!) no one of us had problems getting out of bed, of course not, the Mount Everest flight was scheduled to depart at 07.45. Scheduled I said, in fact we took off at 11.30 due to poor visibility in the morning. Ferdi was feeling better this morning so he came with us. Buddha Air is the name of the company we flew with – so we were pretty nervous whether they would actually take us to the world’s highest peaks or maybe to Nirvana…

This is one of the pics we took from the plane. Mt. Everest 8848 mt. (the dark big fat triangular one on the left)

They took us to the peak, but the flight wasn’t stunning, we were even a little disappointed that the plane didn’t go closer to the peaks. Nevertheless the view was well worth it and it was kind of a big moment to see the official top of the earth.

Back on earth we went to Patan – the oldest of the three kingdoms of Kathmandu Valley.


The temples are impressive. Not only the Hindu but also the Buddhist ones, where we were allowed to enter as foreigners.


What is a pity though is the fact that this country simply lacks of money to look after them properly.


In the afternoon, we went back to Kathmandu, lunched at our preferred Italian restaurant to get a break from the Chilli-Curry-Rice-Mixes. We did some intensive shopping and when the bad conscience about the consumption rave packed us we checked out the temples on Durbar Square, whose architecture we highly appreciate. The nine-year-old living goddess that lives in one of the temples did not want to greet us, she was busy with “a ceremony” the guide said. Her position as a goddess is limited for the years in which she is still “pure”, that is until her menstruation starts.



Back in the Hotel we did some kilometres of running on the jogging track of the hotel, then gym and Spa – real relaxation….





Ps. we also went to this special painting school where Buddhists teach and learn how to draw and paint beuatifully colored kinda cotton canvases which take hours and hours of work and extreme accurancy.

Some orange folwers sold outside one of the main temples of Kathmandu. They're used here both as decoration and as something to workship the gods with. Very interesting and once again very colored!

Nite nite you all!
I'm seriously tired...

Nepal - Day 2

Ladies and gentlemen,

tonight on stage exclusively for you: second day in Nepal! Bhaktapur city!
We woke up kinda early this morning cos we really wanted to do a lot of stuff today! So at 9.30 or 10.00 we went for breakfast at the hotel cafe which, since this is the Hyatt Regency, offered us enough food for the whole week! So we thought we'd have breakast, lunch and dinner all together at 10 in the morning! Amazing!
After that, Jaco and I went to book the tickets for our Mountain Flight of tomorrow morning. We're gonna fly over the Top of the World at 8 tomorrow! We'll leave the presidential suite at 6, have breakfast (oh by the way, we managed to get free breakfasts for the whole stay! cos hot water in our suite does not work properly!), and then at 7.45 take off, direction Mt. Everest 8850 mt. over sea level! Im soooooooo excited and lookin forward to that!


Going back to what we did today... we took a cab and went to this medieval city called Bhaktapur. Here, compared to Dhaka, taxis are really expensive, cos the Communist regime poses high taxes on petrol and also does not allow to sell more then ten litres to each car or van. So at every gas station you'll find a huge line of cars, trucks and vans waiting for their turn.
With 16 dollars we got there after a 30 minutes drive through kathmandu outskirts. as soon as we got out of the mini-taxi five or six people kinda jumped on us trying to sell us every sort of things! They even spoke Italian and kept on telling us that our moms would like the stuff they were selling! Dude, we assured them several times that was not the case! But that really did not do much!




These first three pics here are of some temples we found first in Bhaktapur! Here there are different kinds of temples. I dont really no much about the difference in styles but you can talk to our guide-guy (Sir Rojahn) who is pratically a native of this place and nos everything of every single place we go to! Even though we were with him we got this drunk guy who offered himself as a guide for only 4 dollars for like 3 hours and showed us around a bit! He didnt no much but we taught him how to use the camera and took good pics!


Here is one of the first pics our drunkie guide took! As you can see theres still room for improvement but he got better and better!


This is what is called the Golden Gate. Its not even painted with real gold but it looks very cool and it the entrance of one of the three king palaces that are on Durban Square in Bhaktapur.


This one is probably the biggest temple in Nepal or something like that! Its five stories high and the statues at the sides of the steps are: two men, two elephants, two lions, two griphons, and two Gods; and each couple is ten times stronger than the previous one so you make your calculations and see how much more powerful is a god compare to a men in Hinduism.



Here two pics of the one of the most common and probabily most profitable jobs in this city: pottery making. The first guy is actually making the stuff from clay, whereas the lady is just paintin all of them. Theres this one square where all the pottery is laid out in the sun to dry it and prepare it to be cooked.


After Bhaktapur we took another cab and went back to Kathmandu and precisely to Thamel, the restaurant area. We went to Fire and Ice, the first good Italian restaurant i find here in Asia, and had a pizza for lunch.
We then walked through Khatmandus busy streets and checked out all the shops that sell fake North Face stuff! Very cool!

Then we got to the less touristy area of the city and here we found all kinds of shops and boutiques, selling everything, from pashminas to all stars (fake), from meat to spices of every kind and color!



Then at like 6 we went back to the Hotel and went for a 3 km run in the park! Then a lil gym, a cool shower and dinner! Now, its awfully late and I gotta go to bed! Love you all, even those ones who sometimes really piss me off (eh...)! Thanks mom and Dad, this trip is great! EVEREST tomorrow!!!
Nite nite nite nite y'all!
N.

Nepal - Day 1

Hey hey hey hey,

It has been a very intense day today, I´ll explain you why…


This is a pic we took from the airplane! Guess wot mountain is the big darker one on the left!? Mt. Everest 8850 mt. = the Top of the World

First thing, Ferdi woke up very ill, and had some symptoms of Malaria and Dengue.
He was worried so he decided to go to the Hospital and was planning to miss the trip and fly to Singapore to get some better medical treatment.

Constantin, Nicolo and I grabbed a cab to go to Zia International Dhaka airport, while Ferdi was in Dhaka Hospital taking some blood tests.
He finally made to finish them and succeeded to arrive in time for the check in.
(He did not have anything of that, just a normal flu)

Our plane was a Fockker F28, a very small plane, of Biman Bangladesh Airlines.
(not very encouraging…)
Just want to say that this plane is not allowed to fly in Europe any more, too old---




We arrived to Kathmandu and the Hyatt minivan was waiting for us in the airport.
They took us to the hotel and here the problems started.
(We booked the hotel in expedia.com the 4 of us in one room, and it was impossible for them because only 3 people can feet in one room.- it was an expedia mistake.)

After an hour of discussions and the expedia confirmation we managed to get one room for all of us , plus the breakfast of everyone of us for free for for every day, not bad…

A couple of hours later, we checked out the facilities of the hotel, Spa, gym, and surprisingly a running truck of 1 km, that runs through the temples, the yen gardens, etc.
Nico and I (Jacopo) runned 2 km, then did some gym and finally relaxed in the Steam bath, Sauna and Jacuzzis… (because of the very exhausting day…jaja)

Ferdi was stil not feeling well so he stayed in bed for dinner (room service.)
Consti, Nico and I went to the best steak restaurant in town, (at least what the lonely planet guide says) it was really pleasant to eat some good meat and hamburgers after 2 exhausting weeks in Dhaka and 3 tiresome days in the village…



Tomorrow we will go to visit a city called Bakhtapur, which is known worldwide for its hindu temples and because it is the oldest city of Asia.

We´ ll tell you tomorrow how it went.
Good night everyone. Peace.

Day 11 - Ferdi's Birthday!

Hey hey hey, first thing to say, it is Ferdinand's birthday today.
First day after the village and a big change, we are again with the noise, pollution, people everywhere.
We did not went to work because our coordinator Shamim was not able to work with us.
We did some stuff in our hotel, finishing the village blogs, organising the trip to Nepal while our two german friends went to the German Embassy to have some information about the city.

We went to Gusham to have lunch alltogether (the nicest area in town) and checked out if our shirts were made. They were not ready yet.
We also found a DVD store who was selling all copied American DVD's. We bought a dozen of them.
We will be able to improve our movie culture.

Going back home, we wanted a taxi, we found some of them, we took the one that offered the lowest price.
This taxi driver was one of the only nice ones we had since we arrived in Dhaka.
He kept on saying that he wanted to emigrate to Italy, and asked us constantly how to plan his trip.
He was a very cool guy, so we decided to take his phone number, we now have a personal driver for the city. (Tonight we went to an italian restaurant to have dinner and we called our driver, he actually came in time. Tomorrow he's probably gonna drive us to the airport...)

Coming back home we wanted to see one of our new DVD's. The sound does not work well, so we decided to go to buy some speakers (they are not bad at all and we did not pay much.)
We now have stereo surround quality sound and cool new DVD's.
We''ll come back tomorrow and we'll explain you how Kathmandu looks like.
Good night.

The Village - Days 2 & 3

After almost 12 hours of sleep under our mosquito nets in this quiet, calm and peaceful village, we attended a center meeting with about 70 women, the center manager, branch (brans manager) and area manager. It was interesting to watch this group of women, repaying their money and telling us what the use it for. Cows seem to be the best-seller in this village – almost every woman here buys one and then resells it after a few month. The village is just incredibly nice, colourfully dressed people working between coconut palms, banana plants and mango trees, rice and grain fields – and spread among these a couple of small sheds or tin roof houses.

In the afternoon we went back to the island in the Ganges were Nico and Jaco had gone the day before, to play football with a group of ten local Bangladeshis and all kinds of bank employees, which was good fun. The locals were of course incredibly proud and happy to get this opportunity and so were we! After 30 Minutes the Bangladeshi border officers made us leave though – they probably thought we were trying to get to India illegally… Never mind.
Back at the Brans we had a two hour lesson with the brans manager (who was basically sitting at his desk smiling at us) and our interpreter about all the operations going on in the Brans.

Meal time was always the most difficult time for us. First of all it was hard to convince them that we didn’t want 5 plates of their spicy-chilly-curry mix vegetables and meat. Secondly we had to concentrate sharply not to burst out laughing whenever they sniffled, burped, slurped and did other kinds of noises with their throat and mouths…

At night lots of local people came over to the branch – the rumour “Europeans in town” had obviously spread… They wanted us to sing songs in our language. Ferdi and I really couldn’t think of a German song we both know the lyrics of so we ended up singing Christmas Songs which was hilarious…Good that they didn’t understand them – I guess songs about Christianity are that popular here….. Jaco and Nico joined in with “Azzurro” and then we all sang our National Anthems including the Bangladeshis!

Today we woke up, it was cold and rainy and we could not even warm us up in the shower as there obviously isn’t such thing as hot water… we went to another center meeting and also met women taking educational loan and beggars taking loans. We realised that the quality of life in these villages decreases by at least 100% as everything is wet, cold, muddy which makes life hard for people living in tiny little sheds…

Although this village trip was really nice and very different to what we had seen so far, we were happy to get on our train back to Dhaka in the early afternoon. The bus driver went crazy again and took it as a challenge to race all his bus-driver-colleagues as if to say “Let’s make a bet who gets to Dhaka first”. And in any case of fiddly situations the rule “whoever has a stronger horn may pass first and bump out others” prevails… Needless to say, we saw at least 5 buses completely demolished at the side of the road – some upside down in a rice field, others fallen off a bridge… but yeah, who would have thought, we made it to Dhaka eventually, of course only after being stuck for 2h in the famous Dhaka traffic jam…

The village - Day 1

Hey hey hey! Technology really does miracles! I'm lying in my new bed here in the village we were brought to today which is in the Northwestern part of Bangladesh, only 4 km away from the Indian border!

Our journey began very early this morning! We woke up at 5.45, checked out from the hotel and met Shamim who was waitin for us at the reception with our interpreter Matin! We caught a couple of CNGs and rode to Dhaka bus station! At 8 we left the city and headed for the village! Four hours of crazy as hell bus ride! Drivers here do not care at all about speed limits and stupid stuff like that. Simply because there absolutely no police around here in Bangladesh. We haven't seen a signle policeman in the whole journey.
Bangladeshi land really is a beautiful one! I knew Dhaka was not representative of the Country and that's also why i really cared a lot about this trip we've had the great chance to do. Rice fields are everywhere around us, and palm and bananas trees just spot the watery land leaving the almost forgotten clear blue sky and its pale sun as the simplest and most gorgeous background to this unseen picture. People are working in the fields and in the villages and we deeply enjoy observing them from the bus that now runs faster than ever on the even surface of the road!


Finally we get to the village at about one o'clock, we take a rickshaw and ride through the countryside for about ten minutes till we reach Grameen branch's house where our two rooms are located. Jaco and I are sleeping in the same room with Matin, whereas the German boys have their own room.


Right now, while I'm writing, Matin is talking on the phone with his girlfriend, whispering in Bangla. ( He's been with his girlfriend for 6 months and still hasn't even touched her! Impressive enough!)
Going back to our first day in the fields... as soon as we arrived, we went for a quick walk in the sugar canes fields where a guy cut us some pieces and showed the way ones supposed to chew the core of the cane, suck the juice and spit the rest. Every single person person here chews the cane! Hence, we tried it too!


Then we had lunch and discovered that locals all eat without forks and knives, they only use their right hand, because with the left, they say, you do dirty stuff!
After lunch (pronounced "luns" by Banglas) we were suggested to rest a little but everything was so new and interested us so much that we could not take a nap! So we woke Matin, who was already in bed ready to sleep a couple of hours, up. We also tried to wake Consti and Ferdi up but didnt manage to.
So we went for a walk through the village with the Branch (brans) manager and his staff. Houses here are mud of mud and people around are dressed in the most amazingly colored clothes and fabrics! Kids always follow us everywhere and they seem to adore our digital cameras!


Jaco and I got to no the branch manager a lil better and at some point asked him if it would have been possible to go to the near Padma river! Of course it was feasible!For us here almost everythin seems to be doable, we just have to ask! People, especially form the Bank, treat us really nicely!
So we got three motorbikes from the branch and rode to the riverside! A beautiful wooden boat was crossing the halfmile-wide river! A guy of ours gave them a signal to come back and pick us up! After ten minutes we were on the other side, on the amazing piece of land emerged from the water after the Indians deviated the flux of the river further up north.


While we were checking out this smooth white sands some people were loading the boat! After some other 10 minutes we got back an the vessel and sailed across once again.


Riding the bikes back we could not avoid noticin the simplicity and the beauty of this place that looks, I believe, how Medieval Europe on a sunny day probably looked like!
Every peasant is doing somethin, each one has his or her own particular activity, from building bricks and walls to squeezing sugar canes, from harvesting weath or rice to sell groceries, from washing clothes in the river to play cricket in front of the school! And every single person appears to be happy, not needin anything more than what he or she has.


Once we got back to the branch we met the two chickens, at that time still alive, that we had requested for dinner! How sad!
We then had our meetin with Grameen local staff and interviewed them! After a while the zonal (pronounced jonal) manager, a guy that controls about 250.000 borrowers surprisingly shows up. Everyone is honored to meet him since he's one of the 50 most powerful people of the Bank! So he talks to us and asks us questions. At a certain point... here comes the tea! We all drink it or at least have a sip and after few second he just spontaneously burps in our faces! Giving the World one of the most amazing burps ever heard! Somethin I wouldnt be able to do not even drinking a whole bottle of coke straight! I simply could not hold my laughter and so i laughed at him in his face so hard that i couldnt stop for at least the followin five minutes! Amazing! Im still laughin now! Wow! The room kinda went silent and everybody was ashamed and scared for what I did! Fantastic!
At dinner we decided to put ourselves completely into this new experience, except from Sir Rojahn, so we forgot about the silverware and ate everything with our right hand! All meals are served by the center managers who kinda surround us in a sometimes embarassing environment!
Allright folks! Time has come for me as well, to fall asleep! Get back to you soon!
Love Love Love
N.

Day 7 - Ready for the village!

Busy day today! We even woke up early…
We started out with some two hours of work at the Bank where our dearest Shamim explained us everything, or almost, we needed to know about the upcoming trip to the village. In fact, tomorrow at 7 (and as you can well imagine is gonna be really tough for us from the very beginning!) we’re leaving for Rajshahi, a city in the Northwestern part of the country, almost on the border with India, and we’ll be staying there for two nights and three days. Originally it was four days and three nights but on our friends’ suggestion we decided that two nights would have been more than enough. So… we kinda got that whole thing planned and then at lunch time, left the Bank and headed for our travel agency in Gulshan II where the general manager was waiting for us to issue our tickets for… for… for… Nepal!! As you should no, everybody here is a general manager. Every single employee is the general manager of his activity. So in this country you don’t even have tailors or normal workers, you’ll instead find the general manager of the sewing machine etc. etc. etc.
Yeppe Ya Yeeeeah! We’re going to Nepal after our trip to the villages and precisely on Friday the 1st of February! Kathmandu, Patan, Everest!!! So excited bout it!







As general info for all our fans and beloved ones from all over the world: I’m not sure we will get phone coverage over there at the village so… don’t think we’re lost or in danger or that we don’t love you anymore, or that we decided to never come back to Italy and spend the rest of our lives in this beautiful country or anything like that. Start worrying only if you don’t hear anything from us before Thursday. Understand? Good, good, good!

Second stop of the day: the tailor!
After paying for our tickets we had lunch in the same shopping mall where the Agency is located, which is called Landmark, and then on the way out stopped in a tailor shop. Jacopo and I started looking at some fabrics they had there and asking for prices both of the fabrics and of what they call “making charge”. So after a tough hour of bargaining we eventually managed to have 9 tailor-made shirts for as low as 9 euros each. They’ll be ready on the 5th, the exact same day when we come back from Nepal, and we’ll tell you then if we’d made a good deal or not!

Done this, we took a Tuc-Tuc (the three-wheeler mini green taxi) and in about 1 hour and a half we got back to the hotel, risking our lives several times cos of the particularly crazy driving style of our Bangladeshi driver.



At the hotel we bought all the food and water necessary for these three days out of town.



Now it’s 10.40 and I think we should all go to bed soon since tomorrow morning we’ll all be challenged by our 6.00 wake up call!!!
Don’t miss us too much in these three days and… I’ll get back to you on Wednesday!
Ciao

Ps. After three days of pouring rain the sun decided to come back to Dhaka!! And… since I discovered myself to be a very weather-sensitive person I’m feeling a lot better and a lot happier! I almost like this place now!

Day 6 - Raindrops keep falling on my head

Hey hey hey!

Thanks God we are alive, we' ll tell you later what happened to us...

We left our hotel at 13h, and caught a cab to go to a travel agency that our hotel recommended to us. We wanted to buy our tickets to Katmandu - Nepal.

The travel agency did not seem serious at all so we decided to leave, they wanted us to pay for flights that did not even seem to exist - in cash (we won't talk about the amount).

So we decided to leave, quickly checked out our lonely planet travel guide and went to another agency that seemed much better, the manager of the agency explained to us everything so we reserved our tickets.
We are going to go, with a special offer (all included) to the Hyatt of Kathmandu, an amazing hotel...
(http://kathmandu.regency.hyatt.com/hyatt/hotels/index.jsp)

After that, we went for a walk in town, but it was raining cats and dogs so we decided to go to have dinner at 18h to a typical Bangladeshi restaurant. (Let's not talk about the food, very very very very very spicy.)

Going out of the restaurant, we asked for a cab to the security guy. He came with us to catch one, and we gave him a tip.
Apparently, this tip wasn't enough for him, he got pissed off and he said something laughing to the taxi driver.
The taxi driver seemed a bit dodgy but we did not care much at the beginning.
He changed spontaneously the way back home and said to us that he wanted to take a shortcut. He passed through an army control saying that he was "bringing four foreigners home".

Obviously, the soldier stopped us, started asking us some questions in a scary way, and finally - after five intense minutes - said to the driver to go back and take another road.
After this army intervention, we were tired, scared and very pissed of with the driver and the other guy of the restaurant.

I (Jacopo) punched him on his shoulder shouting, telling him, in Italian to go immediately to the hotel. It seems that he understood and we luckily arrived safe and sound.

That's it for today, we'll come back tomorrow with some fresh news of the bank. (Yes, in this country we work on sudays.)

Goodnight and sweet dreams to you all! (especially if you're goodlooking, nice, funny, interesting, sexy girls!)
Ps. Its so good to write stuff here in the blog cos whoever reads it doesn't know who exactly among the four of us wrote it!! Nite Nite!