German chronicle 2

NOTE: ALL CHARACTERS AND INCIDENTS POTRAYED IN THIS MAIL ARE REAL. IF ITS IS INSULTING OR DEROGAROTY TO ANY PERSON, RACE OR COLOUR.... IT WAS MEANT TO BE.......hehe...



"I think life should be more like tv. I think all of life's problems ought to be solved in 30 minutes with simple homilies, don't you? I think weight and oral hygiene ought to be our biggest concerns. I think we should all have powerful, high-paying jobs, and everyone should drive fancy sports cars. All our desires should be instantly gratified. Women should always wear tight clothes, and men should carry powerful handguns. Life overall should be more glamorous, thrill-packed, and filled with applause, don't you think? "

Bill waterson for President !!!!!!!!! Man I so agree to this. Life is so deadly monotonous here. I am missing the din of Bannerghatta Road. If u find that this mail is not finished, its probably because I wud hv dozed off in this monotony. These ppl r so machine like and rule abiding, if some one is walking on the side walk, they will overtake u only from the left !!!!!! ppl wear such drab colours everywhere u almost crave for colour.The ony colours u see here are balck , white, gry, beige, peach... i really feel nice when i see the cleaners here cause they wear bright orange.......aaaahhhh... get a life....

chuck it...let me talk abt some thing brighter !!! I ahd been to this place called Cologne. Yes !!! u thought right !!! the original Cologne from the "Eu du cologne" fame. Its one of the most beautiful cities of Germany with a long history. The hallmark of the town is the Dom or the Cathedral almost 800 years old. You feel as though the city is somehow built around the Dom. I guess u guys hv seen the grandeur of the place in the snaps which i hv sent. The Rhine flows right through the city which makes it a major commercial centre beacuse the ships dock right in the city. The journey was the best part of the trip though. The train passes through beautiful valleys all along the river. With the river on one side , rising hills on the other, long winding roads in between... man it looked right out of some post card...hmmm, a weekend well spent.

Oh by the way,I hv to tell abt the trains here. There are different kinds of trains The U-Bahn is the underground train, S-Bahn is the normal one... the ICE trains are the fastest ones which touch upto 300kmph. ( but thats only in France which encourages fast trains ). The whole setup is made up of both public sector and private sector players which ensures gr8 service and amzing accuracy.If u buy a weekend ticket, u can travel from and to any city in the whole country for a gr8 bargain.

When it comes to apparel Germans seem to hv only one choice. DENIM.... man u find Jeans everywhere.... office, pubs, streets, TV..... fatsoes, kaddis.... girls, guys,... aunties uncles... buddhas buddhis....bachas bachhis eveyone is in jeans.Torn...printed...shot...faded.....bootcut..the list is endless. They all look right out of some cowboy movie. I really dont understand their facination with it. And the only other kinds of trousers u find will be the ones coming along with suits. I didnt carry a single jeans with me and ppl look at me like I am from Mars or something.. hehe

Now that u know of their facination for clothes, u shd also know their preferance for the lack of it. Their concept of beauty is nudity. Every ad u see on the Tv or print has a model nude ( with the appropriate things covered ..dunno why..makes me feel likethat guy Gopal in Inscrutable Americans..." what will their mothers say when they see them like it on the road?" hehe..). I guess its so cold here that ppl r fully clothed through out the year, that they r waiting for an opprotunity to shed their clothes... whatever it is I am not complaining...hmm, wonder whn we r going to hv nude models on hoardings in India !!!

The German laws are very srtict about marriages. Children actually become a huge responsibility for ppl here. So the Germans hv a simple solution. dont marry !!!!!! Infact the govt is so concerned that ppl r not marrying that u get a tax rebate if u tie the knot !!!!! man if we that back home... the govt will hv to end up bankrupt ina day.. My german counter part here ( alex ) says " well i hv been with her for four and half yrs... i think maybe she is the one i am going to marry... but i dont dar tell her that if i do it will be for tax svings !!!!!!!" Can u believe it.....imagine all the aunties breathing down on 20 something youngsters back home with proposals and here, those aunties still cant decide bw a wedding or a live in relation for themselves..Infact they hv kids so late that i am really not sure if its the mother or grandmother beside the child...

If i am talking abt Germany how can i stay away from the topic of beer !!! We had been to this very popular pub here and none of us were ready to believe our eyes ... they actually brewed their own beer in the pub !!!!!!!!! so there we were sitting behind those huge tanks, all neat and polished and seeing ppl drinking themselves silly. Infact at the table nxt to ours there were these two guys who had ordered something ( i forget the name) which had a long boat shaped wooden plank some 1 merte long and it had 12 glasses in it..wait or were they mugs???

We do run into some funny incidents because we dont know how the things happen here. We were in hotel once and I discoverd that there was no fork on my table ( sincewhn did I start using a fork ???) . So i got up and started searching for one. There were these nice plates kept on the bufet table, clean and shining with a fork and a spoon. So I decided to pick them up as no one was using. Then my team mate signalled that I shouldnt pick up the fork like that. I thought ok maybe thats indecent and stuff so i decided to pick the whole plate. My frnd came running upto to me grabbed the plate frommy hand and kept it on the table. The guy behind me had a look as though I had murdered his mother or something. Only later did i come to know that they were the plates on which ppl kept the fork and knives, which they had used to pick stuff from the buffet !!!!! Man i didnt dare raise my head through out the lunch.Man we laughed our heads off after we came out. hehe......

It sometimes becomes tough to get used to words which sound similar in ur language but mean something totally different. Ppl out here dont say bye, they say 'choos'. yeah... now u know our situation when they say that. "Nahi !!! mai nahi choosonga. kya karoge ???". by the end os the day eveybody comes to us and say 'choos'!!!! We swallow ( no puns intended ) the laughter and say byeee. Yesterday I guess some one told bye to my colleugue and he replied back with a choos... man , we burst out laughing right there and the German was wondering what he had missed and my colleugue was standing there with a red face looking down on his toes....

Guess, its gone pretty long ha, i shd stop now..... enjoy madi...