Most of you are aware that Facebook has a Timeline and one can trace back to the date you started sharing and receiving information of friends and relatives. You can also ruminate through the various anecdotes and photographs you would have uploaded and I am sure these bring back nostalgic memories.
More recently I happened to lay my hands on my passport and while leafing through the first booklet issued to me in the year 1993 my eyes fell on the German Visa issued for a month long stay in that country. Incidentally, a passport can be compared to Facebook's Timeline, albeit a hard-copy one, with a time stamp of our international visits in a chronological order. Anyway, this was the first Visa stamp on my passport and I distinctly remember that it felt great to travel out of home country at a point in time when there were many travel restrictions imposed on Indians by our Government. It meant travelling to an alien land and resorting to sign language to make ourselves understood. You see, the Germans in smaller towns and villages did not have any need for knowing English. My travel to Germany was organized by BMD Industries Ltd. – I had joined this company when I stepped into Bangalore after my 10 year long stay at Kolkata. BMD was known for its Foundry Machinery Manufacturing expertise and as part of forward integration, they had tied up with a small entity ‘BMD-Garant’ to manufacture air pollution control equipments. My assignment was to learn and transition the technology to BMD India. How did I do this and how long it took to transition, is an entirely different story and something that is not in the scope of this short essay.
What I set out to talk about was a comical episode that still brings a smile on my face whenever I recall that incident. The manufacturing unit of Garant was situated in a small village Friesenheim, tucked in the southern tip of unified Germany and close to the Swiss border of Basel. After landing in Frankfurt, we took the underground metro to Frankfurt Central. We were scheduled to board an express train operated by Deutsch Bahn or German Railways that would take an hour and half to reach the nearby town, Offenberg. None of the express trains halt at Friesenheim as it is truly a tiny village with a population not exceeding 10,000 people in the early 90’s. Thankfully we were informed that a gentleman would receive us at Offenberg station and take us to Friesenheim – the final destination being hotel Gasthof Krone. Typically like most Indians who take pride in weathering any storm in scant warm clothing, my colleague Ramkumar and I travelled wearing just a simple cardigan and a wind cheater. Although the weather was biting cold at minus 4o one does not get exposed to this extreme temperature while changing from planes, trains and buses. We got our taste of the cold atmosphere, the moment we landed at Offenberg – the station is designed similar to our small town stations in India, not enclosed and open to general atmospheric conditions. The temperature was a couple of degrees lower than in Frankfurt and we just got frozen the moment we set foot on the platform. Being the only two Asians around, it wasn't difficult for our host to spot us and quickly usher us into his car with heater turned to its peak! For a pretty long time we could not utter a single word as the lower jaws were uncontrollably chattering…
Having had a taste of the extreme cold conditions, the following morning we set out by foot to BMD Garant from out hotel which was just half-a-kilometre away. This time we were careful and had completely en-caged ourselves in layers and layers of warm clothing, mufflers, monkey caps et al. Being a tiny hamlet, the town is built around the National Highway,called Autobahn. Our hotel Gasthof Krone was situated very close to the Autobahn and we had to negotiate a signal crossing to cross over to the opposite side and walk towards the factory. So far so good…both Ramkumar and I came to our end of the zebra crossing waiting for the signal to turn green. Being a highway, cars are restricted to 40 MPH within village limits, but it is still a tad too fast for us to attempt bolting across in the typical Indian style. Wanting to place our best foot forward and show these Germans how disciplined we Indians are, we decided to wait for the signal to turn green. And unbelievably, it remained red. We were dumbstruck and were mentally cursing the German traffic engineers for having provided a zebra crossing but no opportunity to use it! Between the two of us, we even tracked the pattern of traffic lights to see how traffic flow was regulated and at what time intervals the signals turned red or green. While we were oblivious, a young kid from his room in upper floor of his home on the opposite side was watching us from the glass window and was equally puzzled why we were standing at the same spot for such a long time. The smart kid however guessed that we were not aware about the pedestrian override button provided at the signal post and started waving his hands wildly trying to convey a message that we had to press the green switch provided.
The kids frantic gestures caught our eye no doubt, but we mistook that to be an enthusiastic greeting and waved back in acknowledgement, wearing a guarded smile. You can imagine the frustration of the kid when we failed to follow what he intended to convey. Looking at our sad plight, the kid came down from his home, walked to his end of the pedestrian signal and pressed the green switch meant for the pedestrian ‘override’. Only then did we realize what the kid was trying to convey through his frenetic gestures.
We thanked him profusely, waited for the signal to turn green for us to ‘Walk’ and walk we did, into our future…
