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.

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.

The case of the mysterious fowl

Another hilarious incident took place at the supermarket when I was out shoppping for some fowl which I thought would be a change from my daily rice, fried vegetables, ground pork routine.
I stared hard at the meat varieties that were available at the meat section of the supermarket. I saw a rather large sized bird stripped of all feather and minus its neck on display. I could not discern what it could be. was it a turkey? Or a big chicken? Not ready to take any chances with unfamiliar items I asked the person in charge in English what kind of bird was that. But as usual the all German staff covered in sterile clothing had little to tell me that could be of help.
An elderly lady with a fractured hand was watching this strange one way conversation and felt she had to contribute.
Turning towards us she started flapping her hands vigorously making cackling sounds as she did and we all, including the old lady ended up laughing up hilariously.
What she was saying was that it was a bird, probably a big bird and was safe to eat. But that didn't answer our question- what bird was it.
So I left it at that and went for the usual ground pork routine and headed home with a light heart. These Germans.. they were funloving and..... crazy!!

The Language Barrier

Language seems to be the main barrier for visitors to Germany. I was in the supermarket the other day and I was looking out for some sunflower oil to cook the vegetables which happened to be my staple diet. Unfortunately I just failed to recall where the mall guys stocked the oil. To add to the problem I didn't know the German for sunflower. Sunflower oil was closest to what we use to cook in India so I had not bothered to experiment with the other cooking oils.
I asked a lady mall assistant in English, stressing on the word "sunflower". She was at a loss to understand so she asked her accomplice for help. Help from three or four people was sought before I was led to the mall supervisor.
Thankfully this guy knew a little broken English and his puzzled face brightened suddenly. "Sonnenblumen" he exclaimed, and took me to the shelf where they kept the sunflower oil. I mentally made a note of the location, lest I find myself at odds once again on my quest for sunflower oil on my next shopping trip.

Adventures at the SuperMarket (MiniMall)

The supermarket is one place where you bump into German people with whom otherwise you would not interact much. I had some interesting experiences at the MiniMall a popular German retail market chain in Endingen.
You entered the supermarket with a push cart in which you dumped all the stuff that you intended to buy before checking out at the cash counter. The supermarkets had an intricate way to make sure that the push carts were replaced at their original place after use and not scattered all over the supermarket frontyard. All the push carts were qued up in a line, each one coupled to the other through a locking mechanism. You could extract a cart from the que by inserting a low denomination coin which would open the lock and you could later get back the coin when you placed the cart back to the que after shopping.
I was under the impression that the slot in the push cart took only one and half euro coins just like the cigarette vending machines did.
One fine day I was at the supermarket and was about to remove a pushcart from its que when I noticed that I didnt have the correct denomination coins, only small loose change.
Desperately I tried to get my 5, 10, 20 cent coins exchanged for one or half euro coins which I thought would allow me to extract a push cart for my shopping spree.
One old gentleman looked at me with disgust as I thrust the loose change I had towards him. At that moment I didn't understand why he should be so offended.
Anyways, he gave me a couple of half and one euro coins but without accepting the equivalent 5, 10 and 20 cent coins I had with me.
Gleefully I went over to the pushcart que, inserted the coin and got my pushcart.
It was later I realised that the locking mechanism in the push cart que also accepted 5, 10 and 20 cent coins.
No wonder the venerable gentleman who had handed me the one and half euro coins was not happy with me. Most probably he took me for a beggar!

Close Encounter of the Barbie Kind

I made the mistake of not closely cropping my hair before I left for Germany. So by the end of the month I was sporting unusually long hair.
Not wanting to be categorized as a hippy, I decided to visit the hair cutting saloon. To my surprise all the barbers were young women. Flabbergasted I asked for a quick haircut since it was still office hours.
The person in charge, a short bubbly woman, said something in a torrent of German which I could hardly discern. She waved her hands about, gesticulated, but to no avail. I could not understand what she was trying to explain to me with so much urgency.
At last she took out a notebook and showed it to me, turning the pages.
I understood that it was some kind of appointment book and that they were booked for the whole week.
I could not risk going out again on office hours again so I said "Samstag! Samstag?" Samstag means Saturday in German, one of those few words I picked up in my first month there.
She agreed and gave me an appointment for afternoon on Saturday.
Dutifully I reached the marketplace where the saloon was located, on the appointed day .
A stunning slim blonde girl showed me my seat. She looked just like a life-size version of a Barbie doll or one of those cute girls in animated action movies, complete with tight fitting jeans, a sleeveless jacket over a low cut T-shirt, hair cutting tools in a waist belt. I guess she was chosen to cut my hair because she knew at least a few bits of English.
She then asked me in broken English to what length I wanted my hair cut .
I gestured with my fingers.
It was a regular hair cut except for the fact that she never used the comb. She delicately took each tuft of my hair, measured it with her fingers and snipped it to size. I knew it must have been exhausting because she took a fifteen minute break in between the hour it took to get the task done.
When she finished and done I was 18 Euros(900 Rupees) poorer!

Goldy Locks

My early days at Endingen kept me on the lookout for sources that would break my five euro notes into one and two euro coins because sometimes when I reached office in the morning I found that I was short of cigarettes and loose change too, and the result: I could not get the cigarette vending machine near the office to cough out a pack of fags.
I noticed on one of my forays that the only shop close to the office was a huge warehouse stored with hardware and such stuff high unto the ceiling that reached at least two storeys.
One day, on the way to my office I noticed that again I was short of those elusive coins. So I got into this shop and as I entered I heard a small alarm ring, followed by a movement somewhere on top of a rung at the top.
When the person slowly climbed down towards me I found that the keeper in charge was a tall lithe blonde lady and not the surly gruff voiced warehouse keeper that I expected the person would be.
She approached me and asked something in German that I didn't quite understand at all. Safely guessing that she was asking what it was that I wanted, I looked around for something I could buy. Something small and affordable.
All I could see was tins and tins of paint, varnish, iron and steel, lawnmowers and things I just could not discern.
Then I found them. A couple of small innocent looking brass locks hanging near the wall behind me. The kind of small locks that would hold together the zippers of your travel baggage.
I pointed to them and mumbled in English that I wanted to buy one.
She reached out and handed me one and as I handed her a five euro note I got the small lock with precious booty- two and one euro coins and some cents.
I hoped she would not put two and two together as I headed towards the cigarette vending machine almost opposite the shop.
A few days later I returned to the shop to buy one of those locks that had turned out to be my lucky charm. This time too the lady expressionlessly handed me a little brass lock and saw me hurry eagerly to the cigarette vending machine with the loose change.
I started wondering how many more unnecessary locks I would be buying before my trip home.

Locks over the Rhine

Another memorable experience was the visit to the French border.
The Rhine acts as a natural boundary between Alsatian France and German Baden Wurttemberg in these parts.
The trip to the border was uneventful except that I noticed that the autobahn (high speed motorway) had a lot of motorbike riders on that sunny day. It was quite hot for that summer, but they were all in the same stereotype boots, jacket and goggles pulled over their eyes.
Also I noticed that some of the cars had bicycles or small boats hauled on top of them. Families out on a boating trip perhaps, or simply cycling in the countryside enjoying an unusually hot summer, I guessed.
The first question that came to my mind was why the Rhine needed water locks. (The ones like those over the Panama/Suez canal). The answer is that at some sections the water is too rapid. I guess, too fast for a moderate sized boat or a tug to safely navigate.
The upriver boats enter the first lock whose floodgates are then closed and water fills in calculatedly through sluices. Once the water level nears the level of the upper body of the river, the lock is opened, water fills in, and the boat(s) continue on their journey.
And it is vice versa on the other lock.
There were a good many people on joy cruises in addition to the commercial tugboats.
Some pretty beauties on fancy boats were actually doing crew work.
Wow! Those beauties really knew their ropes.

Wine flows along the Rhine

One weekend proved to be a remarkable day in my life.
I drank wine - all kinds, red, white; beer- the works.
It happened so that an acquaintance I knew in Germany invited me to experience the fullness of a wine festival. He knew that I didn't drink but all the same I agreed to keep him company.
We went to nearby Sasbach, just four kilometers from France, on the banks of the picturesque Rhine that acts as the international border between French Alsace and German Baden-Wurttemberg.
When we arrived it was late night already but the festivities were just beginning. We saw quite a few sodden brunettes sitting bleary eyed by the sidewalk. Some of them ogled at me, perhaps because of my skin color.
Some sort of clubs had been formed at the wine festival and each club had its own stall where it offered its produce to visitors and locals as well.
Our first visit was to the stall run by the mayor of Sasbach. He proved to be a ruddy well built man who kept on offering us more and more of his wine, perhaps to give an alien the best Germany has to offer. I drank a lot but noticed that I was not getting any more drunk.
Then we had another shot of wine at the next stall complete with cherries at the bottom of the glass. The cherries too had partially fermented.
I was desperately hungry by this time so my friend and I went to a fast food stall. We were offered something that tasted like salted dried meat, accompanied with a bread loaf.
I found it extremely bland for my taste. No better than chomping at a tramp's disintegrating shoes.
Soon the place was filling up with people. I had never seen so many people together at one place in these rural parts. A musician was playing on his string instrument in accompaniment to an Italian folk song.
Soon some of the people were up on the benches and were chanting and singing and dancing. The crowed roared in approval when one octogenarian couple did a tap dance.
All of them seemed to be having a good time.
After a couple more drinks I started getting heady and decided to stop the beer and wine guzzling.
Still I was reasonably sober until I reached my boarding.
I pondered over the more subtle nuances of life that did not make much sense to me the next day, before I passed out drunk.

The umlaut and the omelette

Eating out can burn a hole in your pocket in expensive Germany.
Not having attempted a crash course in cooking I expected major problems with the grub. But it turned out well after all.
I had come prepared on this trip with my supply of masalas (the entire works - including the sambhar and garam masala types) and two packs of tea bags which I had calculated would safely see me through three months; as I had been advised to do so by a contact who has earlier been to Germany. Good thing too - German fast food would have proved too bland for my taste and Indian tea is not too readily available, the locals preferring to go for Ceylon tea which tastes differently.
I made my diurnal visits to the supermarket a fine act of balancing my expenses so that it never went beyond ten euros. Everything at the supermarket was packaged and labelled in German, excluding the vegetable and meat sections. The first few visits to the supermarket were elaborate missions of exploration as I discovered where I could find what; burdened, as I was with the double disability of not being able to read labels in German on the produce and the inability to seek assistance in English.
Before I headed out each day, rucksack on back, I mentally prepared a shopping list that had the advantage of making the shopping easier.
Once at the supermarket I shopped like a programmed microchip. First to the vegetables section, usually for cabbage, cauliflower or potatoes (I avoided the more exotic vegetables that I was unfamiliar with - there was a lot of green stuff around of which I could only make out the spinach and lettuce) and the onions - which we Indians can't do without. Stocks of Sunflower oil once bought lasted nearly a month. (I preferred frying the vegetables in spicy powder; hell, anyway it tasted good !).
Next the rounds for bread, noodles or spaghetti, rice, followed by the usual milk cartons, packaged fruit juice (choosing between banana, grape, orange and maracuja fruit) and a choice between hundreds of varieties of yogurt; and finally some pork or chicken. And some butter occasionally, and mushrooms and ketchup for a change. Yes, they had the Indian variety of rice too. My daily trips always included several packages of what was labelled “Patna Reis”.
My cooking and eating too followed fixed patterns. It was yogurt in the morning before I left for work (that saved me time making tea), rice or spaghetti boiled in masala with meat in the afternoon and gulps of juice in the evening, as I cooked food for the next day, humming to myself as I watched my favorite TV channel that I presumed was the German avatar of MTV; followed by a hot supper of one of my edible concoctions.
I took the luxury of brunching a hot dog at the market place on Sundays.
Wine I never touched - and it must have seemed strange to the natives, me being in the land of the World's best wine.

Money Matters

One of the first things that confuse visitors to a foreign land, I discovered, was getting used to the loose change.
Every visit to the supermarket found me exchanging paper money for coins ranging over all denominations – I never found myself quick witted enough to tender the exact change like those around me did. The result – I found myself unwittingly becoming the owner of a large coin collection.
Not that loose change had little utility; I badly needed coins to feed the cigarette vending machines that I so regularly patronized. But I discovered to my dismay that these contraptions accepted only half, one and two euro coins. Smaller change seemed to be meant for manual and more discrete handling.
At the end of the day I found myself running short of one and two euro coins.
I was perplexed by this dilemma till I found a novel solution.
Endingen had a mini gambling parlor which was patronized by a good number of residents. Loose change was the currency that the gambling machines spoke and the parlor had coin vending machines that broke up your paper money.
The matronly lady in charge gracefully turned a blind eye as I dutifully walked in daily after office hours to get my five euro note broken up into one and two euro coins.
***

First Flight

Last year in May
…late at night I got a call from this German firm saying that they had decided to recruit me on contract and that I had to report ASAP to their office.
Excited and breathless I checked out the net to fish out more information on this company's location.
Endingen seemed to be a quaint little German village close to the French and Swiss borders.
It had its own pretty little website (www.endingen.de) which featured a shot from a webcam that reloaded every few minutes. At Endingen I came to know that this webcam was placed high on top of a building that overlooked the village market place.
***
Later that month...
..I was all packed up and ready to leave. My flight was scheduled to leave in the evening. When I arrived at Nedumabassery airport I was informed that the flight had been delayed indefinitely. The flight people took great pains to keep us as comfortable as possible. Especially since a good many of those flying were on urgent trips, some with tight deadlines on their missions (expiring passports, etc) and who were irate at the delay.
We were put up in a star hotel close to the airport.
But the biggest shock came when we found ourselves boarding the plane, a good 24 hours after the scheduled time.
Technical snags they said. But that was the height of air travel...!
I meticulously went through my check list.
The baggage scanning... Checking in the baggage... The lining up for passport verification.. The final check of the hand baggage.. The body search.. And that was it..!!
I had hardly had any sleep. But when the plane took off I still found myself wide awake while the rest of the passengers wearily dozed off.
I refused the beer one of the hostesses offered meand instead had some apple juice.
I wanted to be in full command of my senses on my first flight...
I plugged my earphones into the sound system and pulled a blanket over me as I awaited the touchdown at Qatar- the transit point on my way to Frankfurt.
***
It was early morning...
when the plane flew over the Gulf. The sky was clear and the sunlight was blinding. From up above I could discern the vast tracts of desert wasteland and then as we came nearer to land, I had a bird's eye view of Doha with tall man-made structures.
The flight captain announced the local time and I adjusted my wrist watch as I had reminded myself to do in my checklist.
There was a warm breeze blowing at Doha airport.
I learnt that due to the delay at Kochi I had missed my connection flight to Frankfurt the day before.
I had half the day before I would be catching the next available connection flight to Munich, Germany instead of the destined Frankfurt.
Again all the transit passengers were checked into a hotel in Doha. On the way to the hotel, I had a glimpse of Doha from close quarters. The buildings were mostly glass and concrete structures most of them devoid of any color. Though inside the air conditioned car we were all comfortable I could make out that it must be pretty uncomfortably hot on the roads outside. I could hardly see anyone on the roads.
At the reception counter, a Filipino receptionist told me that I was entitled to one free overseas call lasting 5 minutes.
When I got to my room I called home and asked my brother to inform my German superiors via email that I would be late. Very late indeed!
Later I came to know that my German hosts missed that piece of information and had awaited my arrival at Frankfurt the day before, late into the night and departed not knowing what was amiss.
***
Later that evening...
I was back at Qatar airport and went through the body check again. The security had some trouble locating my passport, which they had confiscated before my wait at the hotel, but matched me to my photo on it after a prolonged search.
I learnt a few things about Qatar that I had not known earlier. Qatar is one of the few Arab countries that permit liquor consumption. It is one of the more liberal Arab states in other aspects as well.
Though I could still see women veiled in black from head to toe.
At the airport I sat watching the melee of people buzzing around.
American couples riding on their dollars out to see the world. Indians on their way home and some more onto westward destinations on their way to their hard earned jobs…Japanese tourists (or were they Chinese? Or Filipino? ) yapping in some pagan tongue. Young Adonis like males who could be of any nationality.
Just before I boarded the next flight I had to get my flight tickets verified. I was given papers which said that my destination was now Munich instead of Frankfurt and an additional ticket that allowed me to board a Lufthansa flight from there onto Frankfurt.
The Iraq war was just over and with the 9/11 fright, the airport security and staff were not taking any chances, especially since an American Military base monitoring Iraq still functioned on Qatari soil.
I was flummoxed when one airport authority asked me to expand the initials of the company that I was working for.
I told him I had no idea since it was German but he seemed unfazed.
I then heard him asking the next person in the queue, who claimed to be Spanish to intone the Spanish alphabets...
***
Onboard...
the flight to Munich the atmosphere was more informal in every sense. Liquid food flowed. And the scene was more party-like.
The passengers were mostly young German couples who perhaps had some nice holiday in some exotic foreign place and were homeward bound.
The German tongue confused me but I thought I had plenty of time to get used to that.
I would be in Germany for three months.
As soon as I disembarked at Munich I had my passport stamped and learnt that I had 15 minutes to catch the domestic Lufthansa connection to Frankfurt. I later learnt that to reach Endingen I could have as well got down at Munich. Endingen is almost equidistant from Frankfurt and Munich.
My watch said it was 9 pm local time, but the setting sun still shone over the horizon. The geography made all that difference!
At Munich I found myself lost in the huge airport complex.
But the airport staff were very efficient when it came to offering passenger friendly services.
Almost every screen I saw at the airport had information on when and where my departure flight was. I made an enquiry with airport security and in a jiffy I found myself riding a mini train to the proper departure pad.
As I boarded the Lufthansa flight I was exhilarated as well as tired. I had not slept a wink since leaving home.
***
It was 12 Midnight at Frankfurt...
…I came down a flight of stairs to the baggage collection counter only to learn that my baggage had been left behind at Munich.
I was devastated but instantly cheered up when the man at the baggage counter consulted his computer system and added that the baggage would be coming in with the next flight in half an hour.
Someone was supposed to pick me up at a place called "The Meeting Place" just outside the airport. This was where the new arrivals met their hosts.
I walked up and down the meeting place baggage in tow a couple of times hoping that the placard sized label pasted on my luggage that shouted "KOCHI, INDIA" would attract attention of anybody awaiting me. No soul. I had some loose change left over after my purchase of a pack of Camel cigarettes and a lighter.
I put some coins into a phone box and dialed my hosts.
I was advised to catch the long distance night train to Freiburg, where my hosts would be awaiting me early morning. I discovered that the subway ran just below the airport.
I bought a train ticket from an airport attendant who spoke reasonably good English. The train was at 3 in the night.
I had some time to kill.
I checked in my baggage at the cloak room manned by a couple of Africans. Then I felt free to walk around a bit.
I took a seat close to one of those areas designated for smoking and pulled out a Camel.
I noticed a couple of middle aged Asian men dressed in suits and ties entering and leaving through what seemed to be a back door. Indian businessmen on a trip I guessed. I seemed to hold their attention and I found myself at pain to explain to them in Hindi that I was waiting for my night passage to the South West of Germany. They asked whether it was Freiburg or Frieburg that I wanted to go. (The Germans would pronounce the first as Fryburg and the second as Freeburg). Frieburg was just an hour's drive by car from Frankfurt Maine. They explained that they were Pakistani taxi drivers and were waiting for their fare just outside.
Then with the camaraderie typical of Asians, they invited me for a cup of tea. I decided I had nothing to lose and cheerfully joined them.
We went through the back door to a seedy room where another Pakistani also spoke to me in Hindi and and asked me whether I would prefer more milk in my tea.
The tea was Indian (Pakistani? Sri Lankan?), he said and I noticed him dipping two teabags into a kettle of boiling water. They had brought them to Germany with them I guessed or maybe an Indian store existed somewhere. After a refreshing drink they took me along to show off their BMWs. They took pains in explaining to me the finer points of the of the various BMW class taxis that they drove across Frankfurt.
We had a hearty chat and they talked about their families back home (a bit wistfully) and when I asked them on smoking restrictions in Germany they laughed and said everything goes in Germany but take care not to litter the street. You could get fined for that.
At last it was time to leave and that was the first and last chat I had with an Asian in Germany.
I had never realized that Pakistanis could speak a tongue that Indians could so easily grasp.
***
It was 3 pm...
…and I was waiting at the deserted subway waiting for my train trip.
All was quiet and suddenly the speaker came to life which was followed by a collective wail from a few Germans waiting presumably for the same train.
I asked one elderly looking person accompanied by his talkative wife (?) what the matter was. He did not understand what I was saying. But then taking the context into consideration and the few English words he knew he explained in very broken English that the train was one hour late.
I realized I would have a very tough time communicating with Germans.
Also I thought to myself smiling to myself, late trains are not just an Indian phenomenon. I realized then that to the passengers, what had happened was a near catastrophe, in punctuality crazy Germany.
When I boarded the train I took a seat near the entrance and waited for the four hour trip to Freiburg.
I guessed it was now 48 hours that I had gone without sleep. I had lost track of the time hopping over all those time zones.
Nothing was visible through the sealed glass windows and I fell into a weary sleep without intending to.
***
I was woken by a jolt and when I opened my eyes I saw a large sign reading "Freiburg". I don't know what fifth sense had woken me up, but I had arrived at my destination. Another five minutes and I would have still been on the express train hurtling towards Basel in Switzerland and definitely in trouble because my visa was not valid on Swiss soil.
***