My first day in Germany

When I alighted at Freiburg in the wee hours of the morning from the ICE train I had taken from Frankfurt Flughafen(Airport) the previous night, I expected to see a bustling railway hub full of people, considering the fact that Freiburg is one of the prominent towns in South Western Germany. Instead what I found was a neat, almost empty complex with a few people huddled around tables in a small tea and snacks outlet, in complete contrast to what you would expect at an Indian railway station.
I decided to have a cup of tea, since I had nothing to eat save for vitamin tonic from a dispensing machine at Frankfurt airport the previous night. It was Ceylon tea and I didn't take a particular liking to it, but which seemed to be a hit in Germany.
I killed time waiting for my German sponsor to pick me up, as he had promised, to take me to Endingen.
I walked out of the railway station onto the clean cobbled pathway outside and had my first glimpse of a German town. There were neatly arranged quaint buildings on either side of the smooth tarred road. The air was crisp and cool and clear too, inspite of a light mist.
I decided I badly needed a cigarette after all that hectic travelling. Luckily I still had some Camels left over from the pack I had bought at the airport. I had just lit one, when a very official looking police car drove up in front of the railway station.
Wary of the ban on public smoking in India, I expected trouble, but the uniformed men were not at all interested in my preoccupation.
When I had consumed most of the cigarette, I looked around to find somewhere where I could dispose it, aware of the fact that littering was a punishable offence in most Western countries. Not finding any proper place I gestured to a German gentleman walking past me. He pointed to one of the trash buckets fastened to a pole just a few yards away from me. I was puzzled. Throwing a lighted cigarette into a trash bin was new to me.
Then he pointed to the metal plate fused into the mouth of the garbage bin. With his hands spread wide he gestured saying "BOOOM!".
I understood. He wanted me to stub out the butt on the the metal plate before disposing it in the bin, which for in any case might be filled with a lot of inflammable material, maybe paper too. And he was implying that if I directly put the lighted butt into the bin, there was a risk of explosion.
Well, that interaction was going to be the beginning of many future brushes with other Germans, later, when I would be gesturing with my hands and trying to convey my thoughts that way and being answered with shaking of hands and legs and a onomatopoeic sound to follow it!

Black Forest - not a cakewalk!

I have few regrets of my German sojourn. Not even of not carrying a camera with me to record for posterity. But one thing I really miss doing was making a trip to the nearby Black forest - a major tourist attraction in those part of Germany. Administratively, the Black Forest belongs completely to the state of Baden-Württemberg to which Endingen also belongs.
Black forest is also the famous German cake originating from that part of Germany and named after this forest, now available in most popular Indian bakeries and restaurants.
I asked my hosts in Germany whether I could do a bit of hiking in the Black Forest. I particularly asked them whether it would be dangerous with snakes and ferocious wild animals which I should look out for, like maybe wolves or wild dogs. My host laughed out loud and commented that there were no snakes in Europe - at least of the venomous kind, and none of the wild creatures one would expect in a jungle. And he added that the only thing I should be afraid was of getting lost.
I found that strange. A forest with no ferocious creatures! And getting lost! And about smoking, my host had said there were no restrictions unless you were responsible for a forest fire!
One Saturday evening, when I was off work, I decided I would at least try to see if I could make it to the fringes of the Black Forest. I walked to the outskirts of town and I could see the hills comprising the famous Kaisertuhl (seat of Kaiser). I started sweating as the temperature was unusually high for a German sumemr. A few kilometers and I would be well into the black forest. I wished I had someone to accompany me as I neared the hills when I remembered with a start what my host had said - nothing to fear, except getting lost.
I chickened out. I didn't want to get lost in a forest in a strange land. I had hiked in many a Indian jungle, but I knew what to expect. But not here. So I gave up my plans for the Black Forest hike and glumly returned to the safety of my room to cook my evening meal with a late night German TV show for company.