My stint at Deutschland - chapter 1

Let me see if I can remember a major chapter of my life, the eventful stay in Germany, those memorable three years which I would cherish for ever because of a multitude of events that were associated with that stay. I was working as an SAP consultant in Infosys at that time. I still remember that when my greencard came for the CESAR project in Stuttgart, my passport was not ready. It had expired just then. So I had to first renew it with Dada's help, from Kolkata RPO. It took a month and more than 1000 bucks and atleast one agent for my passport to get renewed (even under the so called Tatkal or instanteneous scheme). Finally when it came my German green card (three months duration) was about to expire in 15 days. So I hastily raised a Payana and booked my flight tickets, got approval from Sushil Tiwari (project manager at offshore), got the forex (around 4600 Euro with travel advance) and booked a taxi from my home to airport on 13th March, 2004. The Jet Airways flight to Chennai from Hyderabad Begumpet was at 7 PM in the evening and I reached Chennai by 9 PM. People had cautioned me repeatedly on the amount of luggage that I should carry, "Never, ever exceed the stipulated weight limit of airlines", was their two pennies, "Else, you end up paying hefty fines, which may be more than airfare in some cases". How prophetic, I got a full blast of it while leaving Germany, but thats another story. For now, I had a big bag, one suitcase, and a cabin baggage. At the Lufthansa counter the weights of each individual piece did not exceed by much amount, so the girl at the counter let me go, but she did a thorough scrutiny of my visa. Not without reason though, I had heard horror stories. One of my colleagues, Manjunath, had apparently boarded an airplane to Germany thinking that his visa was valid, but the day on which he was scheduled to land was 24hrs ahead of the day he was supposed to land as per his visa, and he was deported from Frankfurt airport. Apparently nobody noticed the discrepancy, except the German immigration counters, who are pretty thorough and ruthlessly efficient.

For me the story was quite different. Visa was valid for only 7 more days, within which I would have to renew it. But an optimist like me never gets apprehensive about such small matters. With almost a Micawbarian attitude of "something will turn up" I had not given much thought to the whole business.

The boarding pass allocation was smooth, security check and immigration was smoother to say the least ( I had shown my mobile and walkman to customs asking them if these would require any declaration, I had heard horror stories about corrupt customs officials at Indian airports, but they probably took pity and said those things won't require a check) but then came the blow. The onward flight was delayed and hence so would be the fate of the flight from Hyderabad to Frankfurt. Nobody knew the extent of delay. Anyway, in the excitement of my first trip to abroad, I did not mind as long as the plane turned up. So we waited at the departure lounge and met a few friends, esp. with a consultant from HCL who was travelling to UK on a short stint and who shared his "bhujia" with me. I met one of my IIM A juniors, Rakesh Kumar, who was travelling with his boss to USA on the same flight. Then there was this bored looking American Indian couple with two kids whose husband was an Indian with a Geekish look and wife was a white American. At around 2 AM (when the flight was actually supposed to take off at 1.30 AM), the information came that the flight is delayed by 5 hrs and 30 min and would not take off until 7 AM. Instead, Lufthansa decided to provide us with a free meal, even though its an odd hour for a meal and I was not hungry, still queued up in front of the provisions supply and got my share.

Every agony has its end and ours too ended at 7 AM. The flight took off and the 8 hours on the board was uneventful.

When finally the flight landed in Frankfurt on 14th March I had missed my connecting flight to Stuttgart that was booked, but so had other passengers and I had no reason to panic, knowing that airlines would provide some arrangement. The weather was much colder in Frankfurt airport than I anticipated and was simply not prepared for the windchill. However that was just for a short while till I would get inside the airport.

The first thing that I noticed on embarkation was the security with regard to arrival from foreign countries. This was because (I later came to know) the Madrid train bombings had taken place on the same day or day before, which was done by fundamentalists and which killed around 200. So entire Europe was jittery. Security guards escorted us to further checkings but then they let this poor innocent Indian guy go. At the immigration counter the guy checked my passport and visa thoroughly and asked me the purpose of my visit. "Business", I said. 'With whom?" "Daimler Chrysler", my proud reply. "Good business!", a somewhat comtemptuous tone, but maybe I was wrong, maybe that was the normal manner with which German officials scrutinize foreigners or "Auslander".

No reason to get my baggage as it was a through check in till Stuttgart, so I hastily went to the Lufthansa official who was helping passengers to get into new connections, and got to know mine, which was to depart at 1.30 PM local time. I had another 30 min time so I rushed to the gate. Not an easy task, considering the vastness of Frankfurt airport and the fact that I had never been to any international airport before and was not conversant with the procedure of locating departure gates. The small gate was packed with people and almost none of them spoke English.

The flight, a small city hopper from LH was on time and arrived in Stuttgart after 40 min. Now came the biggest blow of the journey. One of my bags containing a lot of my belongings did not arrive. So I went to the lost baggage section and explained them my plight and they assured me that it would arrive no doubt and would be delivered to my hotel address which I left with them. I did not have much idea about baggage los at that time and thought that what was gone was gone for good. Anyway, again my excitement took the better of me and left me no time to brood over my apparent loss.

The hotel in which I was booked by my team lead in Germany, Rajesh Singhvi, was Mercure, which was near airport. At the rate of 90 Euro per day and 55 Euro over weekends it just fitted my allowance provided by Infy.

I was in constant touch with my colleagues in Stuttgart before the journey and got a primer in cultural sensitivity. It was told that its considered impolite in Europe if you take a taxi alone and sit at the back, because the driver would expect the passenger to sit beside him/her, and if you really want to sit at the back, take the permission of the driver. Therefore I duely took my sit beside the driver and gave him the hotel address. In German Mercure is pronounced literally as "Mer-Ku-Re", so it was quite natural that he was not able to understand my pronunciation of the hotel name as "Mar-Cure". However on shwing the address, he gave a curt node and started off. We reached in 10 -15 min.

A bright sunny midday, with a little cold breeze, that was my first encounter with German weather. Smaller buildings, no skycrappers, plenty of green and so few people on the street, and everything so neat and clean and well planned, a total contrast to my chaotic, overpopulated India.

I gave the taxi driver 1 Euro tips above his fare (result of a crash course on cultural differences) and took the printed receipt. Then I tugged my luggage along to the reception counter, no porter came to help me, there was none. The reception was manned by a pleasant faced guy called Alex, who took the deposit for the stay, told me the timings for breakfast and handed me the room key and showed me the direction of the elevator. The room was nice and after a tiresome journey I should have slept soundly after taking a bath. But eventually I decided to make a few phone calls, one to my home in Calcutta to assure my Mom of my arrival in one piece. Even though the phone call from hotel was prohibitively expensive, I had simply no option as it was a Sunday and everything in Germany was closed and there was no phone booth nearby.

After a brief rest I decided to take a walk around the place. Got to know from Alex that there might be some phone booths at a nearby place called "Europaplatz, which were red tall buildings" and which was across the main street, I got out of the hotel, clad only in a T shirt, and instantly realized what a big mistake it had been. I almost got chewed by the cold wind (temperature was around 8 deg celius even though the afternoon sun was present). In Europa platz I found few shops which were mostly closed and a few people loitering around. I called Rajesh Singhvi to inform (and assure) him of my arrival and got some initial funda. Then I went to a Thai retaurant and smartly ordered a cup of coffee and asked them if they had rice. When they said in affirmative, I smugly told them, "Then I should come back and have rice here tomorrow!". After the wamth of the coffee gave me some respite, I came back to the hotel and with some peace of mind after those phone calls, went asleep and was awakened briefly by Alex bringing up my "lost" baggage to my room, apparently LH had delivered it in the evening. Another incident worth remembering on that day was my utter surprise in not finding any drinking water in the room (in India room service always leaves a jug or bottle of water in rooms). So I asked Alex and got to know that in Germany people don't leave drinking water in the rooms (as they don't drink much water anyway), however I can drink water from the bathroom taps if I want as all water in Germany is eminently drinkable. I was atfirst a little annoyed as having told to drink "bathroom water", but later when I tasted some of it and liked it, I had no taboo. Later I came to know the truth behind Alex's statement, however its often kitchen tap water that people drank, not the bathroom one, for obvious reasons.