Gondola ride in Venice (Europe tales)

When I had been sent to Germany on business I was very excited. Having a schengen visa enabled me to travel across Europe and one of the places I really wanted to visit was Venice, Italy.
There is a history behind it. When I was in class 6, I had read this book called "Phantom of Venice" from the Nancy Drew series. That was my first introduction to this magical city of the lovely backwaters and Gondolas.

I knew I just HAD to visit this place at least once in my lifetime. Naturally I was super thrilled when my colleagues and I decided to visit Venice one weeekend. It wasnt really a complete weekend. The plan was to just go there for a day (which was by the way quite sufficient). We took a night bus and landed in Venice in the morning. The entire city was in water! As soon as we landed we took a speed boat to the centre of the city. From there we wandered around to various places of interest. My colleague was into Christianity in a big way (though she was born Hindu and hadnt converted) and was super excited to see a church and explore it. This other guy I dont recall what he was up to. As for me, my main aim was to ride the Gondola.
There were a number of Gondolas waiting to ferry tourists. They were just ordinary rowing boats ornately decorated in gold and red with the gondolier dressed in white black and red.
I went up to one Gondolier and asked him how much for a ride. He said 100 Euros. My colleagues were shocked and told me outright they woundnt shell out that kind of money for just a silly ride. Gondola be damned. I begged and pleaded with them. It would be 100 split 3 ways. 33 Euros was ok - this was once in a lifetime! They wouldnt budge. I was in tears.. seriously.
I asked them to go back to their church and whatever place they wanted to and went back to the Gondolier. I told him I was going to come alone and to name his price.

He said "For you, 60 Euros". Fine, I took it. He took me all over the city. He showed me centuries old buildings and pointed out to some famous people's ancient houses. He even sang a song in between. I was pretty conscious being all alone in a Gondola. All around I saw couples . One middle aged gentleman must have been so fascinated either by my nativity or the fact that I was alone on a Gondola, he videotaped me!
Whatever said, I had so much fun that day!! I had finally lived my dream!!!

Marijuana? One scary morning! (Europe tales)

When I was working for HP, I was sent to Stuttgart, Germany on business twice. First time was for a month and second, for three months. On both these occasions, I wasted no weekend, and since I had a schengen Visa I traveled across Europe wherever possible.
On one of these occasions I went to Amsterdam, Netherlands. Now what happened there was exciting but that can be told on a later occasion. What I am going to describe now is what happened on my return back to Germany. This colleague of mine and I had travelled by train, met up with few other colleagues at Amsterdam, had a fun weekend and the two of us were returning back by train. The train reached Stuttgart by about 4.30 AM. It was biting cold outside.

We collected our bags and stepped out very groggily. Apart from us there was only one other guy who got off at Stuttgart. As soon as we got off we were swarmed by 4-5 hefty looking guys who started speaking in express fast German with us and showed us some ID as well. We told them we didnt know German and could they please speak in English.
We couldnt quite understand their English either. My colleague was totally clueless but I heard the word "Marijuana" . I could kind of understand that they were asking if we had marijuana or any drugs with us. I just told them "No". Then these guys asked us to hand over our bags for our inspection and also wanted to verify our passports. Dutifully but extremely scared, we did so. It made sense that this was happening because we had just come from Netherlands where drugs was legal and Germany did not want any illegal trafficking. But at 4.30 AM in the morning and in a Foreign land, we had no clue if this was official inspection or if these guys were out to rob us of our money and passports.
While a couple of them were looking at our bags, one guy held our passports. My colleague asked him if he could return them back. The guy said No and zipped it inside his jacket!! This was when I really panicked. I was trying to recollect the mobile number of the Financial controller of HP, Germany with whom we had been interacting at work. Just in case we were left stranded there..
Finally, having found no drugs in our bags they returned back both our bags and passports... whew! Sigh of relief! My colleague and I ran down to the local train station without a word. This incident really shook us both up! One thing I was extremely glad was that none of us bought the drug laced chewing gum which was sold in Amsterdam. Unlike real drugs they seemed innocent enough, however common sense prevailed due to a life time of listening to "Say No To Drugs" campaigns! Else God knows I'd have spent a day in a German jail..!!