My stint at Deutschland - chapter 2

The next few days went away like hurricane. The next day I had to get up and join office. I gave a miss to the breakfast thinking that it would cost me when all the time it was just free (an information which I got later from other colleagues), took a taxi and landed at Am Wallgraben 129, the DaimlerChrysler (erstwhile, now it is only Daimler) ITM office address. Our team was sitting in the ground floor on the right hand side and since it was befor 9 AM, very few had bothered to turn up, one of them being Paparao Venkata. An intelligent and extremely helpful chap, he soon provided me with basic ingredients of information for my survival, including a 5 Euro calling card for which he atfirst refused to take the price but upon my insistence relented. Then slowly came the others and I met them one by one, all the voices that I had heard over telephone or all the names that I saw on the emails now became a full blown person. "Oh my god, she looks like this!" or "Well, this guy has a mild voice but looks rather vast" kind of thoughts flooded my mind. Then I got my laptop, met my manager Ritu and other colleagues and got to know my work along with another fat lot of helpful information. Amit Bobade for instance showed me how to use vvs.de and locate all transport schedules in Stuttgart. But I still had not mustered enough courage to venture out in local transports. I met my German team lead and client Helmut Gann, who later proved to be an antithesis of a stereotype German. He was affable, emotional but great and able team lead, always maintaining a personal touch, and very eager to reach out and help.

I had to go for local registration to Moeringen Rathaus and then to the foreign office for my visa extension. I had maintained constant touch with our immigration consultant from KPMG, Naveen, and he was working on my work permit extension. In the meanwhile the Mueringen Rathaus gave me a breather for three more months by extending a temporary residence permit, with which I was even allowed to travel to Schengen countries, an imperative for me, as the project location was Netherlands. On the way to foreign office from my hotel I got into one driven by a female Turkish taxi driver named Gul, who had a hearty discussion with me in broken English - about her son, about Stuttgart, Germans, how India is like, etc. On the way back from foreign office, in search of taxi, I happened to get into one driven by a Pakistani fellow from Multan with whom I had a wide ranging discussion, from politics to movies and we agreed that all problems between the two countries are owing to the "gore logs", meaning white men.

By now I had become acquainted with the free breakfast served by Mercure. However a pressing problem was on my mind, after the first 5 days I need to find an accomodation of my own.

Infy had a policy (or still has) that it would pay for hotel accomodation only for the first 5 days, within which the employee would have to find an accomodation of his own. Therefore I got into the search mode with the help of my colleagues, none of whom had a vacant space to share. I was also not too keen on sharing. Therefore the first option was to look for houses coming up in Daimler employee bulletin by ex and prsent Daimler employees. This would be the cheapest option. However my luck did not work out. So I got the number of Night and Day, an agency who provides pointers for accomodation and takes a fee from the house owner. The catch here is, you cannot see the apartment before you finalize the contract, and once you finalize the contract you cannot back out. Therefore its a little risky, but beggars are not choosers. After some search and plenty of advises (often contradictory) from colleagues, I selected this small studio apartment in Bopser area (near downtown I was told) and confirmed it. At 530 Euro per month, it fitted my budget nicely (even though it was fairly expensive by German standards).

On Friday evening I got my luggage from the hotel, took a taxi and headed for my new abode. The taxi driver like a typical Germn was not very communicative, but on entering Bopser area he said, "You stay here?", I said yes. He said "Its too expensive!"

I met my landlady who opened the street door on my ringing the bell. She was a French married to a German and was very cordial (obvious, somebody paying such an astronomical sum for a measly one room must be either a Maharajah or a fool, in either case he needs a good treatment). She could only speak a few English sentences, along with some French and some German. I could only speak English and a few French words like "Bon Jour Madame", which impressed her a lot. So we got along falrly well and I settled down in my tiny but comfortable room. Here are three pictures of that room along with the small kitchenette.

I went hungry that night, there was no restaurant nearby or I could not locate any. Next day was a saturday. My young colleagues had planned to take me out for a city tour and also get me familiarized with Stuttgart, the transport, grocery shopping, Indian stores and Koenigstrasse, the hangout place for weekends. I bought some rice and pulses from Maharaja cash and curry, the Sardarji shop at Stadtmitte and that evening tried cooking a "Khichudi", sans any salt, because I had none. After about a week without Indian homemade food, this tasted like heaven. I also bought several calling cards to make calls at home and got my mobile phone SIM card (Vodafone) which cost 40 Euro. Then I wrote a long letter to my Mom describing all the experiences and posted it from Deutsche Post @ 3.50 Euro, but sadly it never reached her (Indian postal system must have been the culprit).

My stay at this place was uneventful except for the fact that on weekdays I worked till 9.30 or 10 PM in the evening and came home late at night (integration test and training document preparation was going on and everything was on fire). There are few incidents which are worth remembering - 1) I had wrongly disposed of my garbage much to the chagrin of my landlady who bought along her sister (who knew English reasonably well) to tell me how to dispose off garbage (bio in bio muell or brown bins, others in restmuell or blackbins and papers in papier basket, green bins) 2) I was not getting hot water and hence bought it to the attenion of Night and Day and my landlady came rushing and showed me how to operate the taps. Still I did not get a running hot water and often used my rice cooker as a container to hold warm water and bathe with it everyday 3) On the weekends I was working from home and listening to music and at the same time singing myself.MY landlady came one afternoon, knocked my door and made a very polite request - "you sing very well, I like your songs, but please, if you do not sing after 9 PM in the evening it would be good".

I was almost driven out from this house owing to my abject misunderstanding with regards to cleaning the rooms and kitchen, but thatanother story and would tell it in the next chapter.