Bollywood Comes To Prien

Sonya, the Bollywood fan

One of the first things I learned about Sonya, the cleaning lady who comes in twice a week here, is that she is a great fan of Bollywood. Apparantly she discovered Indian cinema through the weekend TV in Germany and has been watching Hindi films regularly in the last three or four years. She loves Shahrouk and thinks Hrithik Roshan is a great dancer. She generally goes into ecstasies over the Bollywood dance numbers.

Sonya, actually from Croatia, has lived in Prien with her husband for quite a few years and they have a seven or eight year old daughter who goes to the same school as Felix. I love to hear about her trips to Croatia to her home and the way her mother spends an entire month in summer making pickles and jams and all kinds of things to eat over the rest of the year. Last year she brought back a whole string of really hot chillies for me and this time I have been digging into the pepperoni and a red chilli home made sauce. Sonya normally gets in a little after nine thirty in the mornings when I'm having breakfast so we often spend at least half an hour chatting as she tidies up the kitchen and before she goes on to the rest of her chores.

xxx

Günter, who many of you will remember from his last visit to Mumbai, was here for a couple of days and it was lovely to catch up with him. Since the weather was unusually good both days we went to the lakeside for lunch. There is quite a nice restaurant right on the lake where, if it is warm one can sit in the garden. This is what we did and spent several hours chatting about everything from tantra to community life and the difficulties of human relationships.

Now with just two days left to go before my departure for Zürich, I am making the most of my time in Prien. This evening we've organised a musical evening after dinner so we're all looking foward to bringing out our guitars and various instruments and belting out all the numbers we know.