Yesterday evening I had a dinner at the Mocambo-Restaurant. I think, it was one of the better restaurants due to the prizes and the audience. I had a Kingfisher-Beer (640 ml), Chicken Oriental and a Brownie with Vanilla Ice. Everything was OK and very good. I payed 450 Rs (these are 8 EUR - most expensive dinner here in India ever, it is up to the prize of a room/night).

It was very interested, that the guests in this restaurant - although they are all from India - spoke only english. Very strange and quite a broken english. I verified this, as I talked with the man next to me. He is a doctor, living in Kolkata…

OK… This day I visited the BBD Bagh Part of the city - “Dalhousie Square“. Went there by taxi and walked around… Very interesting, very british. Many british buildings - you could mean, you are somewhere in the UK.

The gap is very high… The differences… between poor and rich. Best restaurants, top mobile-phones and computers and during watching new cars on the street you have to take care, that you do not hurt people crawling or sleeping on the pavement, street or floor.

Children and woman are begging. “Giving money to beggars is a crime”, I am often hearing from locals.

The hotel, I am staying… Sunflower Guest House… The building is very old and there is an elevator in it. Very very old one and operated manually day and night by a person. Does not look very secure… :)

@Albert: You are right… They are selling teaching books on the street… All kinds… TOEFL-test, German, all computer languages…

Newspapers

I am reading nearly every day some of India’s newspaper. Their names are known from english newspaper and are like ‘The Times of India’ , ‘Telegraph’… there are a lot of papers in local languges and english language. This is good - I like Times of India most out of the sortiment here.

A newspaper costs between 2 to 2.50 Rs (0.04 EUR).

So, there are at the moment a lot of reports about the bomb-attack in Jaipur. I also found one article about HP overtaking EDS and a lot of job-advertisings - Microsoft and Amazon are searching… Interested?

News-TV

Most rooms are having CTV (Cable TV) and most of them are having CNN or some local english speaking news-channels. It is interesting, that local news-TV has got a brutality in showing details in crimes and victims. You see dead people, people who are dying, blooding… Extrem…

It is also interesting, that the earthquake in China has got more  precence in the TV then the cyclon in Burma/Myanmar. It is also much more spoken about the earthquake than about the cyclon on the streets as far as I have faced.

The “Fritzl-guy” was also shown very often on TV as well as the latest “Axtmord”.

SIM-cards

Today I bought a new SIM-card from AIRTEL for 300 Rs (5 EUR) as the last one from Dehli costs more due to roming between the different states in India. This is interesting, as every big region in India, is quite its one state. With their own laws. Owe people. One tradition. Own mentality. Own mobile-networks or -contracts…

If you want to send me a SMS - do it! Here is my local number: +91 990 304 93 70

Cricket

Kalkutta is in Cricket-fever. Tonight is Mumbai - Kalkutta Knight Riders (my favourite team) and on Sunday a match in the local arena. Would have visited this game, but there are no more tickets and I also planned to go to Darjeeling on this day.