The Chain that Never Sleeps

While relishing a Fruit Yogurt at 5 am on a Tuesday morning at Karlsruhe station, my mind nostalgically went back to the day on which I had heard this hallowed name for the first time. It had been less than a week since this giant had set foot on Indian soil and my Dad had taken us to have our maiden taste of globalization. It was ironical that we had to wait for almost 2 hours in the queue to grab our meal at an eatery which prided itself on instant service. Well, even the best are helpless when Indians decide to turn up in numbers.

Since then it has rapidly spread its tentacles through the length and breadth of the country, all throughout maintaining its ambition to grab the hottest property. Just as you find an outlet outside Paris Est, at Berlin Hbf, below the Golden Roof or on Mozart street; you encounter one in front of Victoria Terminus, inside Water Kingdom and across the road at Andheri station. It set a benchmark by selecting Linking road, Bandra for its first outlet in India which was soon emulated by Barista and KFC. “If a square is the most visited one in the city, we must have a shop there” – seems to be their motto.

One laudable attribute of this chain is its continual endeavour to blend with the local culture and culinary habits, as is evident from the ingression of the aloo tiki in it’s highly Indianised menu or the accretion of the café to it’s eateries across Europe or displaying the traditional wrought iron nameplate at it’s store on Getreidegasse in Salzburg.

On a personal level too, I have had a couple of experiences with this giant which I deem worth mentioning. Staying true to its word of a free drink if your meal is not delivered within a minute, once when the last grain of sand dropped from the hourglass with my order not being ready, I was immediately handed a cup of coke. The eatery also came to my rescue during our night-out at Berlin station. It was the last shop to close at 2am and the first to open just a couple of hours later.

While waiting in line on that night some 12-13 years ago, I had wondered if it was worth it. In hindsight, it certainly was and much more. It may accrue criticism for its monotony or for being the prime culprit behind an over-sized America, but for a hunger-stricken traveller in alien land renowned for unpalatable bland food, the sight of the thirteenth letter of the English alphabet will always bring solace

Size does matter

One of my notions about the developed nations was cheap availability of basic necessities of life, which in modern world subsumes communications along with food, clothing and shelter. Hence, I was quite taken aback by the exorbitant calling rates in Germany. This topic sprung back to my mind after I happened to read about the proposed AT&T take over of Aircel.

The article mentioned that only about 25% of India’s population had access to cellular services and hence AT&T was keen to capitalise on the immense growth potential of the Indian cellular market. This prompted me to analyse my earlier query in greater depth.

Let’s do some number crunching to arrive at a rough estimate. Considering India’s population to be about 1.2 billion, 25 % of that would mean about 300 million cell users. Leaving out the old Germans, who are certainly not acquainted with the gizmos, kids and the few below the poverty-line, who can’t afford cells, claiming 75% of Germans own mobiles wouldn’t be that wild a guess. Since the population of Germany is about 80 million, that adds up to 60 million cellular customers. Now, say an average Indian talks about 10 times as much as an average German - I am certainly not exaggerating here. Germans could easily be the most laconic people in the world and Indians, the most garrulous – that would amount to 50 times as much talk-time consumed in India as compared to Germany. The local calling rates in the 2 countries are around Re.1/min and 25 cents/min. That would mean that even under current conditions, Indian cellular service providers earn an estimated 3 times as much revenue as their German counterparts. If you also take into account the fact that we in India are charged ridiculously high rentals (I don’t have an idea of the general picture, but T-Mobile didn’t charge me a dime for its 3 month service.) and also the huge gulf in the salaries of the employees in the 2 countries, you realise why they need to have such high calling rates in Germany.

In spite of all this, the above discussion has an inherent Indian bias. While we have to pay roaming rates to make and receive calls once outside our states, the rate is same wherever you travel in Germany. That just multiplies the profits of Bharti, Reliance and co manifolds.

An Aberration

The most incredible litany of events unfolded over the lunch table today. For the 1st time since my arrival in Germany, I shared food with a German. Not just that, in fact I ate from someone else's plate. It might not be an incident worth mentioning for us Indians, but if you have read my previous blogs you will realise that this unprecedented occurence does call for a post at the very least.

To elaborate, a new female student joined our laboratory at IMTEK yesterday. Actually now she is the sole representative of the fairer sex in our hitherto all-guy department. Apparently German Engineering universities suffer from the same fate as the IITs but more about that later. Back to the point. So, I was having lunch with my lab group. All of us had wiped our dishes clean while this new entrant had left half the salad that she had taken, in her plate. I was startled when Daniel, a phd student in my lab, offered to finish the left-overs from her plate. He later even offered me to help him in his task and together we cleaned up all the remnants of carrots and peas. Then, he even gave a - turn back if a black cat crosses your path - type of explanation for his extra-ordinary act. Purportedly, they believed that if food was left in the plate, inclement weather followed the next day and so he was finishing the salad to prevent this bad omen. For once, I was exposed to the superstitious side of the normally pragmatic Germans :)

I have a nice anecdote to illustrate the similarity between the gender inequalities in German universities and IITs. A few weeks back, I found about 10-12 young girls going in and out of the 3 labs in my department. Quite surprised at seeing alien faces in the department, I posed my query to Andreas, my professor(I quite like this way of addressing your prof by his name). His reply was "We here in Germany are facing the problem of not enough girls opting for engineering, physics and chemical branches. So these school seniors have been brought here to aquaint them with technical fields." When I followed this up with figures from my batch in IIT Bombay, it brought a wide grin to his face.

P.S. - This is not the last you will hear from me about the 'not sharing food' habit of Germans. I have dissected the pros n cons of it in great depth and there's more to follow

Tagebuch – My German Diary – Part I

I have been travelling around a lot in Europe and my stop this weekend was Berlin. It’s a city steeped in history and I had a poignant sensation while learning about the asperities Berliners have had to go through, via the numerous informative writings at Checkpoint Charlie and Reichstag. It was hard to believe that the modern, happening metropolis we were standing in was witness to the worst side of the cold war until 1991. That the Germans have since put their capital on the fast track of development was apparent from the large amount of construction activity going on in Berlin – a fact conspicuous by the numerous cranes that you see while looking in any direction from the Reichstag dome. And to think that this is the scene when the construction business in the developed world is suffering its lowest trough in years, takes the high position the Germans occupy in my eyes a notch higher.

In the evening, with the summer solstice sun still beating down on us, we toured the Olympiastadion. Being an avid sports enthusiast, the sight of the track where Jesse Owens won his record 4 golds and prompted a racist Hitler to storm out of the stadium remarking ‘isn’t there any White who can beat this fellow’, made my day. That was also the very pitch where Zizou showed his temperamental side during the infamous World Cup final incident. From there, on our way to Schloss Charlottenburg, we experienced the rather warm side of the reticent Germans (you can very well imagine how reserved Berliners are known to be when even people in Freiburg call north Germans cold). We were discussing which metro lines to take for our journey, when an old lady realising that we were misinformed, volunteered to correct us.

Later, around dusk-time, we visited the Reichstag, Brandenburg gate and Holocaust memorial. The walk from the newly built, magnificent Berlin central station to the Holocaust memorial has been one of the high points in my Euro trip, second only to the incredible atmosphere of the evening stroll along Champs-Elysées. At nightfall, after grabbing ek-pe-ek free big Mac, we retired on one of the benches at Berlin station.

I had barely slept for an hour when it was time to catch our train to Fehmarn, an island in the Baltic Sea just off the German coast, via Hamburg. We enjoyed ourselves in the chilly, crystal clear water and then relaxed for a couple of hours on the sand. I also tasted the Baltic water to corroborate the claim made by the school textbook of the Baltic Sea having the least salinity and found it to be true.

On returning to Freiburg on Sunday night, I was pleasantly surprised to see the town having undergone a metamorphosis during my weekend away in the capital. It had been cool and sunny during the past week but the mercury levels had suddenly risen in 2-3 days and this had brought about a marked difference in the appearance of the people. By the time I reached my room an hour after alighting at Hauptbahnof – in between I also paused to catch a glimpse of the penalty shoot out in the Italy-Spain match - I had already seen more pretty girls than I had noticed in the past 7 weeks ;). The lifestyle of the people here is so dependent on the capricious European weather that it is no wonder that it occupies such a preeminent position in their topics of conversation.

Euro Update

It's been a surprisingly entertaining Euro until now, although with the knock-out stages commencing today one expects teams to get a lot more cautious as the stakes get higher.

While talking about the group stages, you just can't miss the Dutch. They have been in red hot form and have come out of the Group of Death with flying colours. Snejider and Van der Waart have been a revelation and it's frightening to think that they have the likes of Van Persie, Robben and Huntleer warming the bench. Once they score first it is extremely difficult to come back against them as with the pace they have upfront they are lethal on the counter. What would be interesting to see is how the young team reacts to going a goal down. That would really test their character.

A couple of performances have really caught my eye until now. Croatia's upset win over Germany being one, although you have to say the Germans were quite ordinary that evening.

The game of the championships so far has to be Turkey-Czech Republic. The Czechs looked to be cruising, leading 2-1 with less than 5 min on the clock, but Nihat had other ideas. What was heartening to see is the way the senior pros, Tuncay and Nihat, conducted themselves when 2-1 down and time running out. Tuncay worked his socks off , even running the entire width of the pitch to replace the linesman's flag so that his team doesnt lose those precious seconds and then even donning the gloves when Volkan unnecessarily got himself sent off. Also when Kazim Richards hit 2 wasteful balls when in good positions on consecutive possessions, the skipper, instead of frowning at him, just told the youngster to calm down. A lesson worth learning for many of the big name stars, especially on how to deal with the inadequacies of their less talented colleagues.

I had predicted the Russians to be the surprise package for this Euro and so was delighted with the way they streamrolled Sweden yesterday after putting 2 quite uninspiring performances against Spain and Greece. You felt they lacked that little bit of quality and composure going forward and Arshavin seemed to have provided that. He was in scintillating form during Zenith St. Petersburg's amazing Uefa Cup run and he has carried it here too. They would need to improve their finishing though to stand any chance against the marauding Dutch juggernaut. I am expecting a sumptutous feast of attacking football when the 2 teams meet in the quarters at Basel. Hopefully Hiddink and Van Basten won't disappoint

Patriotism

It’s funny how quickly we develop affinity for the place where we live. I have encountered quite a few manifestations of this boundless love for your land in the past few weeks.

During the DAAD convention in Heidelberg, I, along with another Badener (if at all such a word exists – Baden is the state I live in by the way) had a gala time ridiculing a colleague of ours for his East German ‘roots’. We were from the far superior West Germany where so many of the Easterners had tried to immigrate decades ago.

Also, during the past week, a heated altercation had ensued on the IIT Bombay Euro-intern mailing list about ‘whose’ country had the more beautiful women. People went to the extent of searching for internet polls and youtube videos to prove their point. And all this when most of us hadn’t even visited many of the countries we claimed to be inferior to ‘ours’ in chick coefficient.

Then the other day I was waiting at Schaffhausen SBB for my connection to Luzern. It had only been a day since I had left Germany but I was so relieved to see the Deustch Bahn ICE arrive and once aboard, I instantly felt at home. The Swiss trains, however efficient they were, could never take the place that the ICE occupied in my heart. It was similar to the nostalgic feeling I have experienced many times while returning to Mumbai, after being away for a fortnight or so, and catching my first glimpse of the beloved Mumbai Local.

I may not have German blood running in my veins but I am a loyal German at heart, at least for 3 months.

PARIS

I reached Paris on Saturday, 31^st May , morning. The plan was to meet in front of Notre Dame at noon. May be the European punctuality has rubbed on, but still it was heartening to see around 15 IIT boys gather there within 15 minutes of the decided time. We then proceded to watch the Palais of Justice, Pantheon, ... , Place de la Concorde, Champs Elysee, Arc de Triumph, ..., The Eiffel and quite a few other architechural splendours that line the Parisian Boulevards and were left completely exhausted by the end of the day.

Sunday was reserved for museums. Not that any of us is a connoissuer of paintings and sculptures, but being obedient tourists, we thought we should pay a visit. The French government's policy of allowing free entry to most of them on the first sunday of a month did play a huge role, I must accept. We reached Louvre early and were one of the first few to enter. No wonder people say one needs days to explore Louvre exhaustively. It is so huge that a mere glance at each exhibit might add up to a day. With 3 wings and 4 floors connected by its many passages and staircases it would be a felicitous venue for the 'Crystal Maze' finale. We finally left the museum at about 1pm and proceeded to have lunch comprising of crepe, a typical Parisian dish and a panino.

Then after a short nap in one of the many gardens, we left for our second instalment of artistic fodder, Centre de Pompidou. If ever doubts arise in anyone's mind regarding the position of Paris as the cultural capital of the world, he should visit the Louvre and follow it up with Pompidou. The two museums are markedly different in both their external appearances as well as their exhibits. While one is a majestic building with 18^th century architecture, housing works from centuries ago, the other is state-of-art structure having external escalators and some of the most unconventional drawings and sculptures. As you enter Pompidou, you are greeted with M.F. Hussain style abstract paintings. But if you manage to get past them, you are exposed to a completely novel branch of art. Many of the ingeniously designed products that we encounter in market everyday are slight modifications and simplifications of the out-of-the-box imagination of these ‘modern artists’. All through-out, there was a great emphasis on modular objects – diverse and complex structures built from smaller simpler ones. One of my favourites was the dinning table fabricated from 2 thin sheets of metal. Then, there were some mind-blowing paintings from a chap named Philip-Lorca diCoria. His attention to detail like drawing cigarette stubs strewn on the footpath – such a characteristic feature of any European alley, or a scrap of paper rumbling in the wind, was admirable. We were completely mesmerised by the photograph-like genuineness of his work.

I will always be grateful to this place for helping me overcome my aversion for ‘modern art’. But the icing on the cake was finding an exhibit from one IIT Bombay alumnus. The 1992 Industrial Design Centre pass out had developed a funky chair-cum-sofa-cum bed. It was a proud moment indeed.

The Centre de Pompidou most certainly doesn’t figure in must-watch places in Paris but we had gone there without high expectations and thoroughly enjoyed it.

(visit -http://picasaweb.google.com/anchit56/PARIS to see pics from Pompidou)

P.S. – All said and done, the most notable feature of European museums are their free washrooms. To save on lodging expenses, we had spent the night below Eiffel tower. Thankfully the Louvre men’s room came to our rescue :P