The Colorful Black Lady At the German Office

Our German office in Endingen was a small one. My table was shared by a middle aged diminutive African lady of slight build with a prominent lump on her nose, let's call her Ms K, who sat opposite my seat. She was the personal secretary cum stenographer of our German boss.
She sat facing me on the other side of the table pecking at a German language computer keyboard with two of her fingers.
Since office hours turned boring after some time we got around to chatting with each other when the boss was not around. I cracked some sardarji jokes for her benefit and she seemed to enjoy it.
Ms K was not yet adept at the German language. Half the time the German boss was at her side correcting her grammar mistakes.
"German grammar is hell", Ms K commented to me once. "Especially when inanimate objects are referred by gender. I find it a hard time to pronounce the 'ich' sound too."
Well genderization of inanimate objects is a trait common to a lot of Indian vernacular languages too, so I could understand her distress. She was obviously a new immigrant to Germany and she was still getting the hang of German. For her to work on stenographer tasks with this handicap she must have been getting paid real cheap.
Once on my request she handed me a German to English primer. I went through it in bits and pieces and before I left for lunch, I declared "Ich haben hunger" which loosely translated means "I am hungry" and pronounced as "ist haben hoonger". She laughed at this.
It was also she who introduced me to the word "Samstag", German for Saturday, that I needed to know to make an appointment with my German barber that day.
Ms K it seems previously worked in the US at some airport, I learnt from the talks we had. She was single and I guess  open to dates too. One of the other German programmers, a tall hippie style blond, once asked her in English whether they could make it out that evening. She was all for it.
I had to work some Sundays too, and I was a bit embarrassed when I found her alone in the office premises talking on the phone for long periods of time in what seemed like German. She never explained to me who she was talking to or why she had to come to office on a holiday to speak privately. Maybe she didn't have a cellphone.
One day Ms. K called me to her side and pointing at her computer, she said she wanted to Google but was not able to. I tried the URL on the browser but that didn't work, neither did it when I tried changing her network settings. It was then I realized that she was not connected to the world wide web. She was only on the office intranet.
When I told her this, she was distraught and asked whether she could use my computer for a while, to which I agreed.
Ms K was very moody and whenever it rained she took leave.
"I like the weather when it rains", she told me. "In such good weather I rather be outside rather than sitting here in the office."
One day she was very cheerful and she told me that the coming Sunday there was a potato exhibition in a nearby village and she asked me whether I was interested in going. I said yes, but come Sunday, I decided sleeping it out in my studio apartment was more agreeable than looking at some damn potatoes which I decided might look a little like that  lump on her nose.
Come Monday, and I asked her about the exhibition, but she said it had not taken place after all, her face falling a bit.
Ms K was remarkable as much as every individual on this earth is unique. I think I saw one more facet of human nature in her and she did add some color to the office that German summer.

My Last Day in Germany

Return train ticket to Frankfurt on my way back home



The usual mode of commute from our Endingen office to the nearest airport was by Airport Taxi. These were crammed vans full of people starting off early morning to the nearest airport (Flughafen in German) - either Frankfurt, or Munich, which was nearer, but Frankfurt had more international connections. They were cheap and on time, so were handy.
My airport ticket was from Frankfurt by Qatar Airlines. But I had decided earlier that I would not want to miss one of much touted European experience - journey by Rail - even if it cost me my own money.
I made this clear to my boss' sidekick who immediately pored over the train timings from Endingen to Frankfurt - there  was just one train with three caboose which was a connection to the Frankfurt bound train from Freiburg Railway Station, our nearest major rail link.
My German boss appeared shortly saying that the railway website was not updated and all the train timings were obsolete (so this not just happens only in India!). He said he would book a ticket for me from Freiburg to Frankfurt with his money. He mounted his bicycle and disappeared in the direction of the Endingen Bahnof- German for Railway Station. He reappeared soon with a bunch of papers and handed me a ticket that indicated my starting point as Freiburg and my destination as Frankfurt Bahnof that terminated just below the Frankfurt Flughafen, as I have mentioned in an earlier post.
He said his just over-teen girlfriend would drop me by car at Freiburg as part of her daily commute to Freiburg, where she worked as a salesgirl in a pharmacy store.
The day of the journey I got up a bit late, so got into the car driven by the German girl in a bit of a hurry, just making sure that all my hurriedly packed luggage was in place. As soon as we hit the Autobahn - the famed German super highway where you cannot go below a certain speed limit, I felt an urge to smoke since I had not had my customary morning smoke in the early morning bustle. We had both fastened our seat belts and I was on the right side of her - Germans drive on the right side of the road and their vehicles are left hand drives. I requested the cute lady whether I could have a quick smoke. The lady nodded disapprovingly, indicating that she didn't entertain smoking in her car.
But in a minute she relented and lowered the side window on my side a wee bit, so that the wind made a terrible whooshing sound as it entered the car. Go ahead, she said.
But I declined, deciding not to take advantage of this lady's gesture of courtesy.
We were at Freiburg Bahnof in no time, and though I protested, the boss' lady friend carried part of my luggage, took me to the  correct platform - all of these which I would have found very difficult to do, had I come alone. She looked at the arrivals display and said my train would be coming very soon.
Soon enough I was within the ICE -the Inter City Express train- that ran between Freiburg and Frankfurt. The kind lady shook my hands in a gesture of goodbye before she left, and I found myself a window seat near an old lady and a young man listening to music on his disc man.
But still I had a gnawing doubt -was I on the correct train? And the correct class? I didn't want to get into trouble at this juncture which could make me miss my flight in case of any mistake.
Soon enough my doubts were dispelled when a short bespectacled man in some kind of uniform asked for my tickets. I handed them over and asked him with growing uncertainty -
"Correct train? Correct coach? Frankfurt Flughafen? OK? No problem?"
He obviously didn't understand a word of English but he understood the point I was trying to make and said "Ja! Ja! No problem", and proceeded to the next passenger.
I was reassured to some extent but pestered the guy who was listening to the disc man, asking him at least three times, "Frankfurt Flughafen?"
He got a bit annoyed as he had to remove his ear plugs, and said "Ja! Ja!", repeatedly to reassure me. The old lady sitting next to me had a hearty laugh at my discomfiture the third time I asked him.
The rest room system on the train was unique and one which I had never seen on any class of Indian trains or airplane.
When I rose to answer the call of nature, I got into one of these, and  found that I had to lock it from within, but the locks were so puzzling and mysterious that I decided not to lock it for fear of getting locked within, so I left the door open while I emptied my bladder. That must surely have got some curious looks from the by passers in the aisle and indicated a bad opinion on Indian hygiene!
I had counted on viewing some beautiful European landscape on the journey but was disappointed. It was still early morning and all I could make out through the sealed glass window was barely visible wooded landscape through the thick morning mist.
It was I think about three hours when the train reached Frankfurt Flughafen.
Wearily, I picked my luggage and took the elevators that led to the Foreign Departures. While in Germany, I had not experienced the highly rated city experience, having been confined to the small village in rural Germany for more than three months. But I was glad  that it happened that way.