Friends & Music

It is amazing that so many of my friends are part of a band and I can watch them perform from time to time. I feel somewhat special to have my friends on the stage...doing a great performance. I can walk with a little pride in me silently communicating - "you know what, that person in the band is my friend." :)

The first invitation was from Michaela. She is part of a choir and I went to watch her choir in the Rathaus of Speyer. A really nice old building. Many of the ByD UX team members were around for this concert. The whole choir was dressed in Red and Black...I didnt know all the songs they sang as some were german. But they did sing some popular english songs too. With a twist. A 'choir-like' twist. Interesting...

With the next invite, I was more privileged. I was on the guest list of Eva Markwig - The sax player of Ngobo Ngobo. Am I honoured?? She and her band have groupies in Tokyo...and I was part of the guest list!!! how cool is that ???? :D
Ngobo Ngobo played at the Schwimmbad in Heidelberg. I had confessed to Eva that I was not aware of the genre of Ska music before I met her. She ensured me and others going for her show were prepared - she sent around some youtube videos of the famous Ska dance. I couldnt take a close look at it. For a layman, Ska is somewhat close to reggae. I was definitely looking forward to it.
Once Ngobo Ngobo started playing...man!!! I felt this was a lot more peppy than reggae. It was amazing to see the entire crowd on their feet, moving to the music. There was bunch of guys dressed in 'Ska' style, doing the 'Ska' dance...they were really really into it. Ngobo Ngobo was really cool. V and I picked up the Ska dance quite quickly...and we were doing it ourselves...we were telling ourselves, if we did this everyday, we wont need to work out. It was a lot of fun!!!
Ska definitely now features in my list of interesting music. Ngobo Ngobo ofcourse!!! I even browsed youtube for further videos of Ska music.
Unfortunately we were way too tired to stay through the concert. So we left before they finished. Needless to say, we missed the best part :( - reason enough for me to work on my 'staying up late' capabilities.

Besides Michaela, Eva...there is also Heinz who is part of the SAP Big Band, Sylvia's husband plays in a band too...I am so glad to be around such friends and in the midst of so much music :) - of different kinds.

Turkish food in Mannheim

Vikas came up with the brilliant idea to drive down to the Turkish area of Mannheim for dinner. I had my eyes set on the restaurant named 'Istanbul' since the last time I was there. I had never eaten Turkish food (apart from the ubiquitous Doener). This was the perfect opportunity to explore.
Walking down the streets, we checked various menu's but hardly found anything vegetarian. It wasnt a surprise. But the menu as Istanbul definitely was!!!! It had close to 2 pages of vegetarian dishes on its menu. To add to it, a whole assortment of Baklavas too.
They make their own bread in this place and it was delicious. This was just the starter. Then the main course. The portions were HUGE!!!! but everything we ordered was EXTREMELY TASTY. We stuffed ourselves as much as we could feeling guilty to leave behind such good food. But we did leave some space for the Baklavas...they were just amazing!!!!!!
Having such a variety of vegetarian dishes in a Turkish restaurant was a big, big surprise to me.

Post dinner, we were forced to take a walk through the streets of Mannheim to let the food settle down a bit. But it was all worth every bit.
I cannot wait to get back to this place!!!

Painting the house

I had help pouring in when I said I need to paint my house (thanks to all of you who offered). Everyone who offered to help said, "I love painting..."

I had never ever painted a wall before and perceived it as a hassle. Untill the day we did it!!

Daniel and Eva helped us a lot with this. We first made a trip to Praktikar to know what we needed to buy, the next day we worked on the walls.

Daniel, Eva and Vishal coincidentally wore white tee and black pants...they looked like they were wearing a uniform :)

As we waited for the paint to dry, we cooked and had some 'indian' food, some 'chai'...

It was definitely a lot of fun. I too join the list of people who "love painting."

Grocery stores

Ever since I learnt that Rewe is open untill 10:00 pm, it has become the (default) grocery store for me. However, depending on where I am, I have also occassionally shopped for groceries in other stores.
What's interesting is the amount of 'indian' stuff that has crept into these stores. Where they always there and I never noticed? Or is this a recent phenomenon?

I have seen packed 'naan' of various flavours; pickles, chutneys, briyani, papadam...recently Lidl had 1 week of Asian items. This included 'onion bhajji' and 'samosas', 'tikka masala...' its amazing. I never imagined having onion bhajji or papadams being available in a regular grocery store in Germany!!!

Wonder if these grocery stores stock up such items across the country? I would be extremely surprised if the answer is "yes."

Autumn colors

Trees are turning yellow, orange, red, pink, brown...between the evergreens....its a riot of colors all around here...beautiful.
Its been a long time since I am living in a place that has 4 seasons. Its been a long time since I am experiencing autumn.

'chai-biskoot' in Germany

Like most Indians, I love my 'chai-biskoot'. Especially with Parle-G (glucose biscuit) .
While I dont find Parle-G in the grocery stores in Germany, I did find a decent replacement for it in Germany - the Vollkorn (full corn) version of Leibniz Keks. It goes equally well with chai...


I realized Leibniz Keks and Parle-G go back in time and history of Germany and India respectively.
Leibniz dates back to the 19th century, Parle-G has a background of over 65 years.
Leibniz Keks is infact one of the classic 'design icons' of Germany...

A day full of surprises

On my birthday, I believed that none of my friends, aquaintances here know about it. I got calls, emails, chat messages from friends and family in India ofcourse but I went past the day without declaring it to people around me that it was my birthday. I didnt have to.
I spoke to V's parents. For the first time in 7 years, my birthday was significant enough for this. I was surprised by how 'pleasant' the brief talk was. Surprised by being encouraged by them to have a nice time, with their son. (earlier, they wouldnt want their son to be anywhere close to me) *sigh* - sometimes its interesting to be a specator to my own life and see what turns it takes...

So V and I were going to eat at a Persian restaurant - Darwish in Heidelberg. So we tried our best to get out of office at a decent time and get to Heidelberg. As I was leaving office, I get a call from a friend to wish me!!! I never thought he'd remember. I must have mentioned my birthday casually to him many years ago. I was really pleasantly surprised.

As we walk towards the restaurant, I suddenly heard V say "hello" to someone. I looked closer and I see Daniel, Eva, Fariba, Vikas walking towards us with flowers n stuff!!!! woohh!!! That was a BIG SURPRISE!!! Fariba sits across me, knew it was my birthday and did such a great job pretending not to. Amazing...!!!

Then Jeremiah joined too....i had met him during the day as well. Then Jean....i didnt even know she was in Germany. Apparently Toby and Natalie and Matthias couldnt join. So all my friends knew!!! I kept thinking nobody did.

Some great Persian food @ Darwish was followed by a heavenly BlueBerry (my favourite) Panna Cotta at Daniel & Eva's house. Jeremiah had to leave early as he had a morning flight to catch. But the rest of us were up untill 2:30 am over some esoteric topics. We pushed ourselves to get to our respective houses...

It was a great birthday. Full of surprises. It was ages since I celebrated it with such a big group of friends.