jabdakhata

I was really enjoying my stay at Heinzelinweg, even though I hardly stayed there. Almost every week I was away travelling to Utrecht, waking up at 4 Am, booking a taxi the n ight before, rushing to catch a flight at 5.30 AM. The picture is of my one room in Heinzelinweg. The major attraction was a water bed, which comfortably suited me as it was fun sleeping on it. Even then I could manage weekend gateaways to Zugspitze, to Strasbourg in Alsace region etc. I also managed another trip to Paderborn to meet my friend Seshadri who worked with SAP labs and had come to Walldorf near Heidelberg, and we had a rendezvous in Sujoyda's place. It was a memorable trip, culminating in our visit to Koeln and seeing some exotic villages in Northern Germany. The photo below shows our pose in front of Cologne Dom across the Rhine river. Prior to that Sujoyda along with family and friends had visited me in Stuttgart. They had come to tour Southern Germany and enroute they took rest in my cottage. So

Heinzelinweg is memorable for a variety of reasons. I settled down here peceafully for a much longer time and there was no need to worry about cleanliness and relocation. The area itself was very peaceful, far removed from cacophonies of busy city streets. Not far from it were several great lush green meadows,and forested regions.I often used to take long evening strolls in the afternoon which used to take me past the meadows with horses grazing, past a small locality with neat shopping areas and bus stops, towards the railway tracks, or towards the forest. You could walk miles along the railway track. However for the first few months I had so little time to myself owing to incessant travelling. From my place, it hardly took 10 min and 10 euros to go to Echterdingen airport. And return could have been using a S Bahn, only if the time was suitable, number of S Bahns being very few on that route. In October Stuttgart holds what is fondly called as Oktoberfest or Volksfest - a kind of fe

Its now last week of April and I should have to search for a new house. Next month two more of my colleagues were coming, so I decided to share an accomodation for a change and got a pointer from an agency called Schwaben Stern, promoted by Frau Carmen Maier. The house was in Echterdingen Leinfelden, in the suburbs, near Stuttgart Flughafen or airport, the address being Goldaecker strasse no. 1. It was with some difficulty that I finally located the Goldaecker strasse. The bus no. 72 from Echterdingen station dropped me at the bus stop from where it was another quarter of a mile walk. The landlord was Signor Franko Pala, an Italian working in Lufthansa. He was fluent in English, with a goati and specs and we hit on instantly. The rooms were nice, clean and tidy and there was no problem in signing off a 6 months contract. However once myself and my colleagues Shailendu and later Ashish Malik settled down, we had the first signs of troubles. The landlord often use to come to apartment in

By this time I had to start travelling, to Netherlands, Utrecht to be more precise, where our project was going on. It was not a very engaging thought to wake up in the morning at 4 AM in biting cold, take a bath (esp. when hot water does'nt run continuously), pack your bags and hop on to a taxi at 5.30 AM to catch a plane at 6 AM. But precisely those were the things that I had to do. And then for the whole day you sit with a bunch of clients who are still not very warm with you for various reasons. In the afternoon you sometimes have a rather tasteless lunch and yearn for that rice and curry which you miss. And then evening after everybody else in the office goes home, you call yourelf a taxi and go and check in at the hotel, take a shower and even though you are too tired to go out, drag yourself along to a nearby restaurant to have dinner, or else opt for the room service, and then blissfully go to sleep thinking what is awaiting you the next day. The days when I was in Stuttgar

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 gu

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

Driving License I happen to possess a driving license (Fuererschein) of Deustchland. As to how I acquired it is a long story. Driving in German roads, esp. autobahns is a sheer plreasure which few people want to forego. Therefore I also decided to exchange my Indian license for a German one. A German driving license is a lifelong possession because once obtained, you need not renew it, however getting it is difficult. An Indian driving license holder can drive for 6 months in Germany on his international drivers permit after landing in Germany, after which he will have to take a German driving license in order to drive on roads. There are some countries with which Germany has automatic driving license exchange arrangements, inluding some states of US. For others like India, people need to undergo a written exam and a practical test. Some important information pertaining to the same is provided here -http://www.howtogermany.com/pages/driving.html The exchange needs to happen within 3 ye

Other Animals One remarkable thing about Stuttgart is the complete absence of any crow or scavenger bird. Perhaps they dont have much spoils to live on, Germans being quite eccentric about their wastes, a parctice which I shall discuss later in detail. I was delighted to find crows and sparrows when I visited Berlin. I instantly felt at home. Probably thats the nearest perching point for crows flying from east and they are no longer allowed to travel any further. Perhaps crows also have border controls and immigration and thefefore crows from east get to move only until Berlin and no further by German crows(if there are any). I have seen Bavarian crows who are much larger in size than their Indian counterparts and much more philosophical (they can sit at a stretch in one place and think, unthinkable for Indian crows). Bavarian crows can be seen on Zugspitze, the highest point in Germany (3000 m above sea level). How they came to fly above 3000 m is anybody's guess, however they sit

Animals The other day I came across a pathetically black cat near my window. She was perhaps devising some schemes of entering my kitchen in search of some delicacies (Alas! the state of affairs in my kitchen is perhaps not known to her). I was willing to offer her hospitatlity but I wasnt sure about the tastes and preferences of a German cat, esp. a female one. A German cat, like a German girl, is unpredictable (For that matter most girls, irrespective of their nationalities, are unpredictable!). Had it been a Bengali cat, I would have gladly offered her delicacies like fish and milk, but a true memsahib like her may not like such native food, so I offered her some biscuits along with tea. She refused to degrade herself by touching such lowly means of sustenance and looked at me with such contempt and disdain that I was ashamed of myself. Finally she, perhaps being a little irritated at such abject lack of manners, strolled away leisurely. I heard from one of my friends that in Germa