It was the fall of 2015 & I had just finished 4 years in Cincinnati. This effectively completed another bachelor’s degree & well, I was in need of a change.

My project had recently been deployed in our German plant and I was hopeful to get a chance to travel at some point. On a random Wednesday morning I received a call from a +49 number. It was my project lead. As it turns out, ‘some point’ was on Saturday.

I scrambled over the next couple of days, to get in my preparations and in the blink of an eye, I found myself at the airport gate, all set to fly. I used my first leg to New York, to get some reading done. During my layover, I enjoyed the New York City skyline transition from a silhouette basking an orangish sunset, to a shimmering cluster of city lights. My Lufthansa Airbus A340 was all in readiness and we began boarding.

After 6 hours of movies and no sleep, I landed at a cloudy & grey Dusseldorf. It was time for some Deutche Bahn action next. I had to get a train to Cologne & then another one to Euskirchen. The first step was easy – the station was right outside the airport and the ticket agent was very helpful – describing the details while meticulously pronouncing each syllable of English with a characteristic German modulation. What I wasn’t expecting, though, was that all announcements were going to be in German. And what the locals around me weren’t expecting was to see a grown brown man staring at every passing train with the wide eyes of a little kid who had just seen a unicorn. In my defense, I saw an ICE – one of the fastest trains in the world and to say I love trains is an understatement.

After 3 hours of drowsy gazing at the towns & fields of North Western Germany, which had an uncanny resemblance to the plains of Northern India, I made it to Euskirchen. I greeted my hotel receptionist and exchanged some pleasantries, which was clearly a waste of time for him. In fact any redundant question was answered with an “of course” in a tone that would make me question my entire approach to life. The dinner later that evening made up for this cold encounter. They call it wurst, but it was by far the best. Of course on the side of my sumptuous swine delicacy was a beverage that the Germans do better than the rest – Beer! With all my prior knowledge of Germany based on Hofbrauhaus brewery in Cincinnati, I instinctively asked for a Hefeweizen (wheat beer). I would go on to learn that here at Nordrhein Westfalen, most imports from Bayern were considered “shit”. I was recommended the Kölch. For the remainder of my time in Deutschland, wheat beer, along with a plethora of excuses to avoid Kölch would be my order.

Jet-lagged, I spent the night surfing through the all-German TV channels. I didn’t find anything interpretable that night, but one fine evening I would end up catching a couple of Bollywood movies, in German. Watching Shahrukh Khan say Ich liebe dich in Bis Dass Das Glück Uns Scheidet (kabhi alvida na kehna) in a German accent was perhaps as awkward as his acting performances in 2017.

Next morning, it was time to get started on my first real leadership assignment. Along with the work, I was also determined to learn some German outside of Ausgang & Eingang (exit & entry) from the flughafen (airport). The work part was actually made easy by my German line team. Seeing their work ethics, it was not hard to see where the “German Engineering” stamp came from. And they also helped me in my linguistic quest. It obviously started with sheiß and Ashloch, (no, I am not translating that), but they also taught me other key words & phrases. One that stuck with me was from a sign in the bathrooms –  Hande Waschen Nicht Vergessen which meant – “Do not forget to wash your hands”, Valuable indeed!

A thing about human nature is that when you capture one frontier, you want to conquer the world. I was all set to start decoding train announcements now. Before my stop, it would say – Nächste halt, Großbullesheim! Ausstieg infarht richtung -rechts. Over multiple hearings, I concluded in my head that infahrt must have something to do with infraction, which is close to ‘entry’, so the doors will open to the right? Well, it effectively meant that, but each & every word (except for the name of my stop) was incorrectly interpreted by me. I would go on to learn to understand a lot more of German, but only manage to perfect answering in numbers – that too with my fingers gesturing simultaneously. Fun fact – Pineapple is called Ananas which is the same in Hindi. (& several other languages)

One of the downsides of business trips is the fact that more often than not it will only be you for a good part of the time. Germany’s gloomy fall weather did not help. What did enthrall me was, the evening crowds. Even in a small town like Euskirchen, the shopping streets were always lively & bustling in the evenings -people having beer, school kids getting excited at the site of Starbucks (of all places)  and many others like me, just aimlessly wandering around. It offered a good middle-ground to the eerie silence interspersed with vehicular whooshes of the U.S. and the ubiquitous chaos of India. These lively evening excursions would also go on to show me the warm & helpful side of the initially cold folks. The pitfall was that I discovered multitudes of sweetmeats, which would contribute towards me carrying back a few more pounds as souvenir.

Next in my bucket-list was a mandate from my friends back in the U.S. I had to hit the famous Autobahn. I decided to rent a car for my trip back to the airport. The agent asked me if I was fine with a manual. Of course I was! I took an 18-day course on the roads of Bhubaneswar, India, 5 years ago. It’s muscle memory after all.

So I took to the streets of Euskirchen. It was the first roundabout after my hotel and my Volkswagen Tiguan stalled. Five attempts at first gear and the seven cars lined-up behind me, was evidence enough for me to ditch my ego and switch to auto. Only one issue – their last automatic vehicle, according to the agent, was a small Mercedes. Heart said wow, head said wait now! It turned out to be a variant of the 2-seat Smartcar – a product of an arranged marriage between a scooter & a car.

My luggage barely fit in and I apprehensively pulled on to the Autobahn. With every passing truck, the car would sway & I would experience life from the frame of reference of a Salsa dancer’s hip. Anyway, I did enjoy the beautiful backroads which were just seeing the dawn of fall colors. I made a brief halt at Cologne to get another look at the majestic cathedral and then drove off to the airport.

After an eventful 2 weeks it was time to head back to the States. That pureness of feelings of the first time was drawing to a close and those very feelings demanded an encore. Well, destiny did have an extension plan lined up. I would end up returning for a 6-month stay at Cologne with several solo & group weekend trips around Europe. But more on that later…Tschüss!