Back to the U.S. —- And I Miss Germany!

I just left Düsseldorf and returned to the U.S. last week. It seems like just a little while ago that I began my stint there and now it’s over. While I’m glad to be back closer to the missus, I will be first to admit that

* German bread rocks!  I never used to like bread, but after 6 months in Dusseldorf, I’m sold.  Now that I’m back in the U.S., I’m back to eating the pasty mealy tasting stuff that one gets in supermarkets here.

* German Pommes rocks!  Okay, I’m a sucker for french fries and have always been one.  So, no surprise that I miss the omnipresent roadside vendor with fries, mayo and ketchup.  And no, the fast food places here don’t come close!

* German airport processes rock!  On my return journey, I was stuck in JFK for a good 6 hours before getting an extremely unclean airplane to get home.   German airports, while aren’t close to those in Singapore or Dubai, are clean and highly efficient.  JFK is rapidly becoming one of my most unfavorite airports.  The winner of that one is of course, Heathrow!

* German public transportation rocks!  Returning to the U.S. makes me painfully aware of how poor the public transportation system is here.  The U.S. should tax the heck out of gasoline and use the proceeds to build good public transport infrastructure! Yes, I am aware of how impractical that may be at this point in time! <sighs>

* Finally, work life balance in Germany cannot be beat.  Sure, the workers unions are strong and can be painful to deal with.  But guess what – you actually have a life when you work there.  I don’t know if one can say the same here.

Since I’m no longer in Germany, I guess this blog URL doesn’t make sense any more.  I may shift to another.  Will keep this blog updated on what I end up doing.

Playing Chicken with German Drivers

As in the U.S., pedestrians here in Germany have right of way on the streets….even on parts of the road that don’t have marked pedestrian crossings.

On pedestrian crossings that don’t have a light, I find myself often playing Chicken with car drivers. If, as a pedestrian, you wait at a unlighted pedestrian crossing for traffic to clear before crossing, drivers simply will not stop. It’s very similar to India in this fashion.  You need to actually show your intent to cross the road by stepping onto the road before cars will slow down and stop.  Of course, when you see cars zipping by, the natural tendency is not to step in front of one…but I’ve found that this is the only way to get across the road.   Well, you can also be patient.

Oftentimes, you’d step into the road and cars will not slow down, hoping that you’d see them and abort your crossing.  They got me the first few times, but now I’m onto them.  Now, I’m crossing the road (at the pedestrian crossings) with gay abandon and feel like the king of the road (without a car).

Favorite Floats from Carneval Parade

Here are three of my favorite floats from the Carneval parade that passed right below my window sill in the Carlstadt area of the city.

It seems that the Dusseldorfers are pretty well-informed about the U.S. Presidential Primaries

A macabre image of Osama Bin Laden

And this, well, pictures speak louder than words…

Cool Elevators

When visiting my company’s back-office processing facility in a town near here called Duisburg, I was completely blown away by the elevators in the building.

There were 6 or 7 elevators (numbered) in total.  None of them had the usual ‘floor numbers’ inside though.  Each floor has a touch-screen console with the floor numbers on it.  If you wanted to go to the 5th floor, you’d touch ‘5′ on the console and the console would tell you which elevator to take.  Behind the scenes, the computer figures out everyone’s requests from all floors and then decides which elevators take people to their desired floors quickest!

How cool is that?!?

Carneval in Dusseldorf

Next week, the partying begins in Düsseldorf for Carneval

This festival or event has similar roots as Mardi Gras, that is celebrated in New Orleans and St. Louis in the United States. Essentially, before the season of Lent (40 days of Christ’s stay in the desert that is a season of prayer and reflection) begins, there is a big-time celebration before the austerity begins.

Anyway, in Mardi Gras in New Orleans, women will expose their ummm upper torsos in exchange for colorful bead bracelets. Apparently in Dusseldorf, there isn’t such debauchery. However, there definitely is some mischief. On the two or three days of the festival, women run amok cutting off ties (thank goodness it’s just ties) of hordes of hapless men who may be roaming the streets minding their own business in return for a kiss. I’ve been warned to either wear an extremely old and ratty tie that I don’t care for, or not to wear a tie at all on these days. Wondering if should get 10 or 20 ultra-cheap ties and walk around the Altstadt – at least it’ll be worth 10-20 kisses.

Merry Christmas

This is quick little post to say Merry Christmas to my faithful (and not so faithful) readers. 

I hope that your day is filled with fun and laughter.  To start you off on this track, here is a little Youtube offering:

Last week before vacation

The wife is in town and we managed to sneak a quick trip to Zurich over the weekend.  It’s a lovely city, large but small at the same time.  The city situated around the northern shores of a lake and has picturesque views of the Swiss Alps.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t really enjoy those fabled views because it was a rather cloudy day and visibility was limited.  So we ended up roaming the city itself and taking in the sights. 

 This weekend we’re headed to India for the Christmas holidays – Woo hoo! 

Pictures from Zurich and more news to follow in the next few days.

Underwear

It seems that Germans really appreciate fancy underwear.  Both men and women, but there is clearly more scope for fanciness when it comes to women’s underwear.  In the 8 minute walk that it takes me to get to my office, I must pass by at least 7 or 8 different shops that advertise lingerie in their windows.  And no, I do not live in a red-light area!  I’m not talking about regular cotton stuff – real fancy, frilly, lacy stuff (it’s like I’m passing half a dozen more-more-upscale Victoria’s Secret stores).  There are comparatively boring men’s things too, but tucked away in the corner of these display windows.

As you might imagine, I don’t have any beef with this.  Au Contraire.  But it does seem like a somewhat different culture from what I’ve seen in the U.S.  and India(of course, things may be different there).

Anyway, here one of the stores I that I’m talking about: Hunekmoller.  Curious about India, I did a little googling and found this T.V commercial for good old VIP underwear for men.  Enjoy…

Next posting from me next week after our trip to Zurich.

Internet Outage

This week, I found out that Germany too has technological problems.  My apartment complex had an internet outage for 4 days.  Can you imagine?  That’s as bad as the outages that we have in India.  And there wasn’t bad weather here to blame it on.  Anyway, I’m glad to be back online.  Took me ages to go through my email, even though 90% of it is spam.  I also missed blogging.  It’s quite gratifying to communicate with you guys through this site, even though it doesn’t come close to hanging out with you in person.

This weekend, we’re headed to Switzerland for a two day trip primarily to ‘See the Alps’.

What’s In A Name?

Shakespeare once said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.  No doubt a true statement.  However, if you saw a rose that was named Sulfurous Flora, would you even dare to smell it?

Okay, that was a weird way to segue into what I really want to say, which is: Brand names are so powerful.  In business school, they make this point through a multitude of classes.  But it’s really interesting to reflect on this in real life.  My experience here in Germany is case in point.

When I got here and was trying to figure out what to eat, what soap to buy and so on, I instinctively looked for brands that I was familiar with and trusted.  I use the word trust both in the context of safety, but more importantly in the context of expectations.   Of course, now I have developed a familiarity for the local brands around here too.  But here are some of the international brands that have helped me ease into life in a new country:

Last week, I was suffering from a splitting headache and searching for Advil/Tylenol in the local pharmacy but didn’t find them.  Though I found a substitute, I felt a sense of psychological  dissatisfaction, which probably resulted in the longer-than-usual time for the headache to ease.