Learning German

I am just back from a good dinner - chinese. This trip I had only three meals - twice chinese and one spanish. At Fulda its good the restaurants have good veg food which makes my meal comfortable. Today I had a great company of Stefanie and her colleaue Nicole.  I had a free morning as my meeting was in the afternoon. The meeting was good with good future prospects for LNM. My host company had arranged for a dinner in the evening with two beautiful hosts. Frank, the Operations Manager jokingly mentioned that he is sending me for dinner with two beautiful girls and gonna take pictures which he will send to Minoo if I dont give him a better price. With this wonderful dinner I would be tempted to give them good price but I always give good price to my customers as I believe I am in business as long as my customers survive.

The weather was better today. My fortune cookie after the dinner said that I will inspire others and I am sure if not my accumen as manager but my luck with good hosts will always inspire people to work hard.  Nicole is working as an apprenticeship. After her schools she goes to college once in a week and works for four days. Her work is part of her studies. She would be completing her apprenticeship this November. Its such a betterway as she is able to complete her studies working for herself. She would learn more this way than she would in college studying. All the freshers that we hire in India are so immature about work culture because they have no practical knowledge when they join.  Here in India everyone is working so hard towards going to the best college and only a few are able to go to the government funded places and rest end up paying so much of money for there higher education which is a burden on the parents. This way atleast she is able to take care of her own expenses and learning. This November after she clears her exams she will be ready to take up permanent position in the company. Srves good for everybody. Also one more thing I liked about the culture here is the outdoor activities they do with sports and travel. Both Stefanie and Nicole are widely travelled across the globe. I was seing some pics of Stefanies last holidays with her fiance to US and was nice to see that they experimented on lot of things which we Indians usually dont try to do to save money. They would prefer to stay in cheaper hotels but try things which you get an opportunity to do rarely. Like at the grandcanyon they took the one hour journey on the Cessna plane or at Hawai they took the helicopter ride. They try there hands at so many adventure sports. I learnt couple of words in German like Thank you is said as Dankeschon and sorry is said " Es tut mir leid" pronounced "S toot meer lide". Very difficult to pronounce. Sorry is always difficult to say and specially Germans dont easily say sorry.

Sorry - Samvatsari

I reached Fulda from Rottweil in a four hour train journey. The journey on ICE is wonderful. Travelling at more than 200 kms hour in wonderful comfort. Indian Railways has lot to learn. But then its pretty cheap travelling in Indian Railways as compared to the 80 Euros I paid for this trip. The countryside train journey is beautiful with big farms all around and cattle and horses gazing.

I was going through all my mails of last week on the train and came across a mail from Ritu mentioning Samvatsari on 9th. I was curious about this and was really amazed about this annual Jain community 'Sorry Telling Day'.Samvatsari is considered as the most pious day of a year and Jain people do prayer on this day to ask for the forgiveness for anything they did to hurt someone by means of thoughts, words, acts or deeds. They would ask for pardon from all the living being - human, plants, animals etc. Any word , action that might have hurt anyone. It really takes guts to say sorry and that too for no reason (thats what everyone thinks). Just imagine what state this world would be without this single word and another word close to this could be Thanks. I have seen lot of misunderstandings, my sudden wrong actions - intentional or unintentional just getting sorted out when I said sorry. We copy so much from other culture like Thanksgiving day, Valentines day, mothers day ...... archies has created a day every day but I see no effort from these marketing companies to promote this great day. I think we should try more to look into our culture which is tried and tasted over the centuries. Lets take the first step to say sorry to atleast those we know we have hurt intentionally , forget about unintentional or to other living things. And lets also remember to say Thanks.

As I watch the news in my hotel room - the world economy looks in a mess. Lehman Bros has gone bankrupt, Merrill Lynch is being taken over by Bank of America, AIG is being funded. Share markets world wide has taken a beating. Currency fluctuations is mind boggling. Dollar from 45 to 39 to 46 , Euro from 55 to 70 to 64 against the rupee in a span of one year. I dont know how do we manage this at LNM as every time I tried to hedge I am loosing.

I had a wonderful dinner at a spanish lounge here. First time I had spanish food. It tasted awsome but had lot of cheese. Well I had reason to celebrate - I won a good order for my company today.

On my shortest International trip

Here I am at a place called Rottweil in Germany after two flight and two train changes. My ultimate destination is further 30 kms away and has no train or flight connectivity but my customer is good enough to provide me with a pick up. Well you can imagine how lonely i would be in this small town south of Germany near Switzerland border.

I am on a 48 hour trip to Germany for couple of meetings. It feels great to travel light with just the laptop bag. Its been a long day getting up at 5 in the morning for the flight and reaching my hotel after 16 hrs. Since my last trip to Munich last year the Lufthansa flight is better. Food was good. Saw couple of movies. I am forgetting the name of the English movie but I am pretty sure that Aditya Chopra must have been influenced by this movie for his DDLJ or may be viceversa - the director of this movie has copied DDLJ. Punjab is replaced by Scotland in this movie. By the way Scotland seems to be a beautiful place - have to find a customer there :-). another movie I saw was Zannat - the first time I dared to see Emran Hashmi - as I had no other choice. The movie was good but how can some one make this guy a hero and how can he have fans.

After my meeting tomorrow I have another 4 hours train journey to my next destination. My internet hour is gonna finish and I have to eat my home bought food before i sleep for the day. By the way its cold here - colder than Delhi's coldest.

Summing up the trip

Today is my last night in Europe. I am at Stuttgart and fly to Frankfurt tomorrow morning for further connection home. This has been a great trip as I got an opportunity to go to places which you usually dont travel. In my last trips to Europe I had visited only the metros but this time I got an opportunity to go inside small towns, villages - places like Bad Salzungen, Leimbach, Fulda,Burghaun, Rottweil, Aichhalden in Germany - Graz, Zeltweg in Austria, Turku, Tampere, Lahti in Finland. I travelled on planes, cars, trains and buses. This gave me a great perspective about the continent. I went into mines 800 meters into the ground and 110 meters up on the tower. I went into the Eastern part of Germany , the historic border which at one time was making so much of tension in the world. How removing the borders has bought peace and triumph. Is it not so unfortunate that how much trouble we create with these man made borders. The trip in the mine was so enthralling. How difficult it is for some people who work there in the dark. Such a hard job some part of the society is doing to make our life comfortable. Touched World war 2 history there. Theres a cave in the mine where Hitler had hidden tons of Gold, Billions of Dollars and best paintings of Berlin Museum but unfortunately US noticed it and after the war dug out every thing. Its said they carried every thing and till recently have been returning to the different countries there Gold and money. I saw a Crystal mine there with sparkling crystals and they do a light and sound show there. So dazzling.

I got an opportunity to try different food. Things I don't eat at home. It was difficult to get lot of choices in vegetarian food but never slept hungry and unsatisfied. Drove motorboat in Baltic sea and Dakota bike - so much like our bullet. Was so close to nature. Air never breathed so fresh. By the way I had mentioned name of a place above Bad Salzungen. Bad does not mean BAD but Bath. At all places in Germany where they use Bad before the name of the place means there is a natural water source which cures diseases. The walk around one of these source - gives you such a wonderful feel. It really feels something has touched you in.

but the biggest gain has been the people with whom I interacted. They were so nice and homely. The hospitality was so great that we don't even do anything like this in India though we call ourselves good hosts. How happy these guys live - not creating unhappiness by there own doing. They accept the situation as it is not trying to worry about things not in there control. I am really bowled over by the touch. Another lesson I learn was punctuality. How I was able to plan every thing nicely as every thing moved in time. A train, a bus, an appointment, a taxi call. If we can do this back home how much more we can deliver. I have a whole day journey tomorrow and it will be tiring. I hope I carry on this writing once back to the daily chores at work and home. I also look forward to my trip to US which starts in a fortnight.