In the first 22 years of my life, I have never been anywhere far from home. To be precise, never even been beyond the south of the country. And now here I am… 8 months in Europe, having visited 8 countries, experienced cultures totally different from what I am used to… It would not be an understatement to say it was all a life changing experience.

So what did I find different? The people, the attitudes, the landscape, everything is different, sometimes better, sometimes worse. The most important thing I learned is that if the attitudes are right, and everybody does what they are supposed to do, the whole setup just works. The foundations are similar and it is not impossible to make the setup work even in India, just that nobody is willing to make the change. Ok, I am not going to start preaching… And definitely not everything was perfect here and in a lot of things India has done much better, we just dont realize it.

On to the less serious matters… As you can see from the blog, I did travel a lot and had a lot of experiences. I had a lot of fun. Here I present my ‘Top 10′ (yeah, I can see some of you laughing ;) ) experiences in Europe…

1. Driving in the autobahn
2. Formula 1 at Nuerburgring
3. Ocktoberfest
4. The 5 days spent driving around Norway & Sweden
5. Venice – absolutely beautiful
6. Neuchwanstein – the fairy tale castle
7. Berlin on a rainy day
8. Vfb Stuffgart vs Wolfsburg – the football match live!
9. Trekking in Oberstdorf
10. Europa park

I was also very lucky to have a few of my close friends here with me during the whole time. Having them here, the time spent with them & the trips with them, ranks above all. What would I have done without you guys!

When this gets posted and if everything goes right, I would have already left Germany…

Auf wiedersehen, Deutschland!

The main purpose of this particular trip was to meet Anu in Frankfurt. But this was possible only on a Sunday and we had a full Saturday to be planned for. After going through a list of possible points of interest, we zeroed in on Trier. This particular German city, located right at the border with Luxembourg was quite different from other places in the country. I don’t know how to explain, but let me just say it felt different :)

Trier claims to be the oldest German city and is famous for its ancient roman architecture mostly in ruins now. It was once the capital of roman prefecture of Gaul (remember Asterix anyone?). We started off with Porta Nigra a large city gate now also standing in as the office of the Trier tourism department. It is a nice old building with a good view of the city. After exploring this old structure we walked through the Marktplatz where a friendly German lady offered us some tips and directions to the worth-seeing attractions in the area. Our first stop was Constantine Basilica adjoining the grand Trier palace. Nothing special of note here, except for the sight of some young kids showing off their skateboarding skills in the area around the church.

Our next stops really had that Roman touch. The “Roman Bath” was amazing. An underground network of tunnels which the romans supposedly used as their spas. Hmm.. Why they would ever want to have a bath in a dark spooky place like that is beyond me! Well.. the things the Romans do! ;) We did have our fun though, playing a bit of hide-and-seek & peek-a-boo like little kids and also scaring the hell out of Renu! Next after a long winding walk up some street we reached the ruins of the Amphitheater. It totally reminded me of Russel Crowe and Gladiator and they did indeed have events like that held over heremthousands of years ago. In ruins and still so magnificent! I stayed wondering, how it would have been with the crowds cheering the gladiators along… hmmm.. that would have been an experience indeed! :D We came back to Marktplatz and the whole area was filled with people now. There was another huge Christmas market here, the countless ones I have seen already, but still filled with wonder for me.

After that, we drove in Luxembourg. In 15 minutes we were in a different country! I guess this one is so small that we could have driven through all the roads in the country in a day if we wanted to! Instead we parked in a side street and walked around, seeing what we could. It was all over in an hour and a half. Well that was the shortest visit to any country I have ever done :) We drove back into Frankfurt before night fell and then had the fun of our lives finding a parking spot. Unfortunately our hostel was located right next to the busiest railway station in Germany and had no parking facilities. We drove round and round, until we found a little bit of space just enough to fit a Mercedes C220. With precise instructions from Ginu and Sandeep I somehow managed to fit in the car in that space. The proudest moment in my “parking” career especially after a gang of Germans in a smaller car taunted us shouting that we will never be able to fit the car in there.. ha.. take that!! :D

Next day we left to a quiet suburb to meet Anu in her cousins home. After a while of chit-chatting and a delicious desi-lunch, we set off with Anu to drop her off at the Frankfurt station. Dropping her and the others off there, I thought I would try my luck with finding a parking spot again. Hmmm.. Lets just say I know the surrounding area of the Frankfurt station pretty well now. Who wouldn’t after driving around the same area 5 times!!

Anyway this was my last day before my driving license became invalid in Germany and I decided to enjoy it to the last bit. We skipped the autobahn and decided to take the country roads. Oh boy! This was great… empty winding roads on a Mercedes C class… well it was a dream come true.. :)

Last but not the least the trip in which I touched my personal land speed record… 243 Km/Hr.. yeah, you have seen the videos! :)

Berlin – the capital. It is miles away from Stuttgart, but whats a visit to Germany without at least a peek at Berlin!

Though they say there never is a bad time to visit Berlin, we certainly did find one :) . It was raining quite bad and we had to shorten our visit to just over a day and a half, due to both bad weather and bad planning. Anyway what we saw was pretty good. We left in the early morning on a Toyota Avensis, a big but comfy car, and managed to avoid most of the early morning traffic somehow. We reached Berlin quite early in the morning and checked in to a youth hostel in the Eastern part of the city. We began our journey from the Prenzlauer Allee railway station. Our first destination was off course Alexanderplatz. It is a very nice open area, right in the middle of the city. Some attractions around were the Fernsehturm (the TV tower) and Marienkirche. We walked around the place and along the boulevard Unter dem Linden with a lot of beautiful buildings all around.

The end of a long walk lead us to a park (I forgot the name) with two huge statues of the founders of Communism – Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Spending some time there we headed towards Bebelplatz. It was Christmas time and the place was lovely with a big Christmas market. We continued our walk through Friedrichstrasse and finally reached Checkpoint Charlie. The whole place spoke of a lot of history. This was the dividing line between East and West Berlin. It is well preserved for everyone to see, including the sandbags for the soldiers and signs warning that “You are about to enter the American Zone”. It is unbelievable that this city was divided between two countries just around 15 years ago.

Tired legs told us to take the train and we reached the most famous landmark in Berlin – The Brandenburger Tor. It is a magnificent piece of art, I must say and naturally it was time for the cameras to click! We then moved to the Reichstag – the German parliament. The sun was already fading and it was getting really cold, so we had to call it a day and went back to the comfort of our hostel.

Next day it started raining, so after a stroll through the not-so-spectacular park built by the Soviets (again my memory fails me to name it) we decided to leave Berlin. We then drove to the famous Magdeburg water bridge, we had seen only in email forwards. It was not so easy finding the place, but for once our navigation system was a great one and we did manage to reach the place, though not after getting misled several times, but I blame human error for this one :) The bridge is a great engineering marvel to say the least. Walking on it was a different experience altogether, fighting off the strong and cold gusts of wind, blowing from all directions. The town of Magdeburg was beautiful too and as Renu quipped, every street in town did have a story to tell.

Well the other highlight of the trip was off course the blitz through the autobahn on the Avensis! Another great trip despite the weather…

Our project team went out for this game of Eisstockschiessen last day. Eisstockschiessen? Yeah, that same expression in your face right now… I had that same weird thoughtful look too while I was reading the invitation mail. ;)

Well despite the complicated name, the actual game is quite simple. It also goes by the more pronounceable name of Bavarian curling. The rules are simple, we take turns throwing and sliding a computer joystick like contraption made out of granite(?) and try to get as close to a small puck. Kind of like bowling in reverse – throw the pins to hit the ball! :D And to make things a bit touchy, all this happens on rock solid ice! My fear for ice is well established thanks to the number of times I have slipped already. But what the heck, team building is more important :(

Anyways I was expecting to use this trump card that this was my first ever time doing this, just in case I sucked at this sport (too!). But alas, apart from 1 or 2, none of my German colleagues had ever tried this before and they had only barely heard of this sport. Hmm… there goes my excuse! And I did pretty badly to begin with. But towards the end, I somewhat got the hang of it and helped my team win 1 or 2 rounds. It was all pure luck, but still we did win them hehe. The other Indian guys except Priya were pretty good at this though, with the newest German team mate Timo even quipping that Ginu “has finally found his sport.” :D

All in all, great fun… Maybe we should start up a federation in India and I could make it to the national team.. Hmm.. evil plan hatched!

It snowed in Plochingen last day. I opened the window and lo! there it was like a dream, from a fairy tale. Beautiful! I walked out first with a group then again alone. It was freezing. But it was such an amazing experience that I stayed out for as long as I could. Walking alone in the night while it was snowing…

I remember an ad I saw long time ago on the idiot box – showing the joy of someone who had seen snowfall for the first time. It was exactly how I felt – like an innocent child playing with a new toy. A grown up kid living the dream he had forever… The Germans around us must have been thinking we must be crazy. Grown up boys and girls – “software engineers” – in their true color.. he he.. Feeling something for the first time brings in a lot of emotions difficult to describe… but simply in 3 letters… WOW! :)

Aside: I hear all this romanticizing of snow lasts only for a week or two. When the cold gets to your spine people say romance turns to discomfort to irritation to anger to submission! :( Oh lord, it is predicted to go down to -10°. Best of luck to me!

Photo courtesy: www.freedigitalphotos.net