First wedding anniversary

We stayed in a hotel that claimed to have Gothic foundations dating back to the 14th century on the main Karlova Street - two minutes from Charles Bridge. Aparently, the building originally housed goldsmiths. Looking at the building and its architecture, I could believe how old it was. The entrance was through a big black wooden door and each room occupant had a bunch of old fashioned keys (not chip based plastic readers) to first open this big gate; then, a smaller wrought iron gate; a new(er) wooden door to the gallery of rooms; finally open the room door. It had two levels below the ground level...very interesting, maze like place.

We welcomed THE day, sipping Champagne and watching the hustle bustle of this east european city, the lit up castle providing the backdrop. Having been to Bratislava, we discussed how Prague/Czech Republic looked and felt a lot more prosperous than Slovakia...
12:00 midnight, the city was still bustling, younger generation all set to hit the night life - Prague is so well known for.

 After ages we shook a leg untill the wee hours of the morning at Lavka. The music was not our favourite, the crowd around us was way younger...but what the heck!!

It was definitely cold, but all those Christmas Market goodies kept us warm. There was a lot on offer even for vegetarians like us. The mulled wine, along with some yummy Trdlo, Langose, roasted Chestnuts kept us warm enough to walk around the Old town, braving the weather.

The decorations and lights everywhere with light snow made it all look quite pretty.

Other than the 'romance' of celebrating our anniversary together, Prague, to me, offered lots of interesting aspects that could be delved into and explored further. Some of them are:

• The Marionette (puppets) scene...I learnt that Prague has a long tradition of puppet arts and theatre.
• Walking through the city, browsing various books, looking at paintins, I realized there are very many characteristic styles of illustrations to be found here especially for childrens books and storytelling.
• Wooden toys
• The 'Black Light Theatre' : We watched a 1 hr show 'Aspects of Alice' presented quite a fascinating show.
• The place of Kafka

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Overall, loved being there!

Learning by introspection: 2

For an Indian like me, cultural diversity starts at home. I have been an advocate of cultural diversity all along. My family breeds it. We have different religions, different nationalities in it. I always considered cultural diversity as an opportunity to learn from one another and get different perspectives to things. So, here I am:

• Living and adapting to a new culture in Germany
• Working with the most culturally diverse set of colleagues ever
• Married to my husband who is from north india - a different cultural background than mine. I belong to south india.

While the positives of cultural diversity still remains, I now experience the darker sides. The whole concept of diversity falls dangerously when:

• one culture starts to be judgemental about the other
• one culture starts to force itself on the other
• one culture claims superiority over the other
• when the parties are not open minded to give each other their space and time

A multi-cultural experience can become a nightmare when any/one of these situations come up. There are lots of challenges involved in making a culturally diverse relationship to work:

• Striking a balance between keeping ones own identity and integrating with different cultures so one does not stick out like a sore thumb.
• Stereotypes are the first point of easily available reference of any culture. One has to make efforts to break some of them down and communicate the realities that these stereotypes tend to generalize/over simplify.
• Language and spoken communication has its challenges. The sense of humor is different - phrases mean different things in different cultures.
• Remain objective and refrain from being openly judgemental about a culture (despite personal opinions one may harbor within)
• Sometimes visuals work better than words while communicating...because translation can often miscontrued the meaning of words.

However in my experience a BASIC prerequisite to making any headway and achieving the potential of cultural diversity is to be OPEN MINDED and NOT JUDGEMENTAL.

If we start out with a judgement - especially a negative one, on a particular culture, most often it will be counter productive. This is like closing doors instantly on someone who MAY have been curious or interested in knowing more about your culture otherwise.

The idealistic me still looks at cultural diversity as more positive than negative...and I wish people were more receptive to it - treat it like an opportunity to unravel what was a mystery...treat it with the surprise and delight of opening a gift - not knowing what will be inside...

I also realize that every country has its domestic cultural differences as well. A learning here is that dealing with "international" diversity is RELATIVELY easier than "domestic" diversity because domestic diversity carries the baggage of some deep rooted social stigmas, social heirarchies etc - things one tends to be (initially) oblivious about when dealing with an "international" diversity scenario.

Learning by introspection: 1

It is close to 1.5 yrs of living in Germany for me. The 'starry' eyed and 'settling down' phase is over. I am now in the phase of introspecting on what am I learning, what am I achieving...what do I value being here.

I have been experiencing how my friends here go about with their life. Their priorities, their thinking, their approach to things. Ive met some of the older generation too...
While there are lots of similarities, there are lots of differences too. The different cultural, society set up calls for a different lifestyle and perspective to life.

As a result of experiencing all this, one of the things I have learnt (even more) is not to be judgemental about things. Knowing that there are DIFFERENT ways of doing things, of looking at things, of thinking...tells me everyday that there is no single source of truth. In a world as diverse there can never be. Once has to understand these different perspectives and make their own sense of it before discarding it/ adopting it blindly.

Unless there is some prescribed, 'right way,' I can no longer make statements like, "hey, your thinking is wrong/ your way of doing things are wrong." I can only say that "your thinking is different from mine/ your way of doing things are different from mine." Each has its pros and cons. One makes a choice which one to discard/ adopt.

Things are too relative to be judged upon in a jiffy.

discovering myself

In the last month of being in India, I ralized one more reason (among others) why I like living in Germany.


My parents always encouraged me to make my own choices in life. I was encouraged to use my freedom responsibly from a very early age. As I began to question things around me and make my own sense of things, I realized that somehow I never went in the direction of following the 'perceived' norms. Not because I was a rebel without a cause, but it just so happened that MOST often, norms were not convincining enough for me to follow them.

• Norm = focus on academics and getting high marks
  My path = mix academics (do reasonably well) with extra curriculars


• Norm = serious sports is not a place for girls
  My path = I was in every sports team in my school. I went through a Sports Authority of India cricket camp where I got trained by members of the Indian Cricket team. I played badminton every night with a bunch of men in our apartments in Delhi. (was obviously the only woman playing with them)
  I still play this sport religiously 2-3 times a week in Nussloch :)


• Norm = If interested in music, girls should be learning classical music
  My path = I learnt classical music, but sang in the western music band of my school.


• Norm = Girls should stay home as much as possible and learn to excel in household chores.
  My path = a totally outdoor person.


• Norm = Girls should always have long hair and wear 'girly' clothes
  My path = sported a very short hair cut. jeans and tee shirt was almost like a uniform.


• Norm = Be true to your religion. Follow rituals.
  My path = Be spiritual, try to be an honest and good human being ( i have my own definitions of this too)


• Norm = Take the educational path of science/ engineering
  My path = Took up humanities and arts.

This list goes on...


At the end of the day, I was definitely not a 'role model.' Many parents would not let their children become too friendly with me fearing I would influence them. I never cared because I happened to be around like minded friends - very few in number, but very true friends.

• I was always percieved as someone who is frivilous with life.
• Who wont be able to manage a house
• cant cook n clean. If required, at max I could cook an omlette.

All of these prejudices were bestowed on me simply because of:

• how I looked
• because I choose the paths I did
• i was not pretentious and superficial
• i was not hypocritical
• i was not very talkative

I lived with these prejudices all my life. Fought them, accepted them, eventually learnt to deal with them.


Finally I am in a place where the norms are different. These prejudices are not relevant anymore. V and I jointly set up our home from scratch. Not sure about what others think about it, but I am satisfied with how I am able to manage our home among all the other tasks we are to do ourselves in this DIY country. Tasks which all my fellow indians get done by paying someone.
I have definitely been cooking a LOT more than just omelletes.

When I describe a 'day in my life' in Germany to people here (in India), they are quite surprised. Perhaps because they never believed that this person who they had written off would be capable of doing all of this. Making things worse, they realize I still do all of this with my individuality. Since individuality something that is so hard to swallow (culturally) for Indians, they find new ways to break my self confidence. E.g.

• All the 'non-indian' dishes I try cooking are all branded as 'silly' things to cook and eat. :D
• Since I use gadgets that are meant to make our lives easier (and not follow ancient ways of doing something), I dont know how to do anything/ I simply dont do a good job.

I couldnt help but smile and tell myself, I never was in the race to prove anything to anyone else. But the opportunity of setting up a whole new life; home; making new friends; understanding, accepting and respecting a new culture has somewhere deep down, given me a higher self esteem and a much broader perspective to things. Hence, I will always cherish this phase of my life - the phase where I can live without all those prejudices - the phase of being "me."


As for some Indians, I will always been seen as a maverick.

annual vacation

have not been motivated to write anything here off late.
have been going through a lot in our first trip back 'home' as husband and wife. ceremonies, rituals, traditions, relatives, sweets, crowds, arguments, fights, discussions, debates, food for thoughts, change, friends, struggles at work, treatments, stupid soaps on TV, new age Bollywood movies, emotions, pragmatism...a lot to deal with in a month.

a lot of things are running in my mind, but i have no time to bring them together and blog.
trying to spent as much time as possible with mom and dad before we fly back on Saturday night.

Edinburgh Festival

(one big struggle to get the visa - we were finally in Scotland)

B'fast at the accomodation was different cereals and SCONES!! (yummmm scones)
Walking around, we LOVED everything we saw and SMELT - smell of fresh porridge being cooked.
Very typical 'scottish' landscape...OH so different from what we've seen in mainland Europe.

Discovered HENDERSON's was just there - the vegetarian restaurant (didnt realize it untill we enquired at the counter) "everything here is without meat." yes!! the right place for us.

While placing the order I realized it was hard to orient myself to a place where I could be understood...I can understand people - people are speaking in ENGLISH!! I was still taxing my brain to frame my sentences, pick the words to speak in German.

The Fringe Festival had plenty on offer:
2:20 pm - The Tron 
Stand up comedian Yianni ...
Was DAMN GOOD. he mixed dialogs and music and singing...nice!
 
5:00 pm, @ GRV for some more comedy...this guy was rather imaginitive, wild and evidently gay.
I learnt, I will never sit in the first row during a comedy act again.

11:40 pm - the guy threatened to do the full monty...the audience spared us.

NEVER LAUGHED SO MUCH on a SINGLE DAY before.
We realized we were so starved of this sort of sense of humour (considering we live in Germany :-P)

Other than these specific shows, during the Fringe, there were tons of street performers all over the Royal Mile...acrobats, jugglers...singers...the entire place is alive untill late in the evening. The Scottish weather of unpredictable rain is in no way a deterrant.

Capturing some of the highlights of our days in Scotland post the Fringe Festival:

• Ghost trail took us through the torture sites and 'underground' world of Edinburgh where hundreds of people took refuge trying to escape the plague but eventually died of it..."Edinburgh was a disgusting city in the middle ages" - the tour guide. There was not enough place to bury its dead, so they just threw them over into the river. "The souls of all the dead could not rest in peace...they wander as ghosts..."
  
  They build up the story and the end of the trail well enough to scare people like me...only to have a hearty laugh later. :D
• Baked potatoes with vegetarian Haggis on Hunters Square
• Breakfast with Burns @ Hendersons: Some yummy scones, juices, fruit salar for breakfast while listening to a duo play the pipes, singing songs of Robert Burns.
• The characteristic Taxis
  In Edinburgh, it is possible that a Taxi driver refuses to take you where you want to go. Reminded me of the auto drivers in India :)
• The 'Red' public phone booths.
  In this world of mobile phones, Im surprised this still exists. Some of them smell like urinals...perhaps thats what they are being used as these days. yikes!!
• The drive in the Scottish Highlands (From Edinburgh > Fort William > Fort Augustus > Inverness and back)
• The Thistle growing on the tree less hills of the highlands made the hills look purple. Very beautiful.
• We spotted some dolphins frolicking in the bay of Inverness almost by accident.
• The hike to Crow Hill in Holyrood Park
• While using the Lothian Bus service, its extremely important to have the exact amount (of the ticket price) in coins. We handed some paper currency to the driver and he did not give us the full balance back to us. When we asked about the remaining cents, the driver shrugged his shoulders and said, "i dont have change to give you. if you want the balance, i can give you a note, you will need to go to the main office of Lothian to claim this." phew!! we gave up.
• Again, reminded me of the small change that gets gulped down by all saying, "i dont have change."
• Drivers hit the gas pedal on amber - before the traffic light turns green
• Unruly, misbehaved teenage kids get into a row, fight, argue with a 'government body' - a bus driver on being asked to behave. 

Do I see some legacy here?? :D :P
The cultural experience was very different from rest of Europe. A lot of the older generation we interacted with had been to India/ knew a lot about India. A large digital chain store is called "Curry's Digital" :D
I percieved the 'integration' of Indians and Indian culture with the society here was different from other countries, e.g. USA.

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Cant wait to visit Britain.

Figuring out the German public healthcare system

Am getting to figure out the German public healthcare system hands on.
Am yet to get a grip on it.
One thing that is very clear is - in the month of August either be very very sick (to justify emergency service) or be very very fit. It is the worst month to have health problems that are persistent/ nagging/ not so serious however needs a doctor's attention.

Also, this is one of the situations where knowing the German language is very very much required. While most doctors speak english, the process to getting to meet a doctor, explaining the basic symptoms to the doctor's admin, or to understand the results of a test, is done primarily in German.