Alles Gut {All is Good}

In a new country where you get the chance to experience a different lifestyle and assimilate new ideas, I had so much to write about my short stay here. I even kept jotting things on & off, but could not shape them into something “postable”. Now that I am already returning, I thought it would be better to chronicle half-baked thoughts than lose them completely, so am posting one of the whatever state post I had started writing…

The past month in Germany has been quite a pleasant one and as has been apparent from the past few experiences I shared, I like the place & whatever it brought with it. However, a single puny incident is enough to make you long for home – that is the power of India.

Shops in Bonn close at 8:00 PM, and I don’t need to add “sharp” here. And to top it all, the whole market place is closed (save for some eateries) on Sundays as well as holidays. So for someone in IT, it might just mean, you never find a shop open except on a Saturday. Not that I can’t plan to leave office early, but there are days when you simply lose track of time or forget the fact that you have such deadlines to live with. Today was one such day…

Though I left office early, I was with some colleagues & spent some time gadding about before arriving at the station some 20 minutes before 8. The train was due in some 7 minutes; it would take 6 minutes to reach my destination station and 4 minutes more in walking to this superstore. Don’t be surprised… this is how your mind starts functioning when you spend some time in Germany – I’ve starting planning & calculating down to the very minute! I knew already, it was a losing battle, but decided to give it a shot by running to the store, laptop in tow, as soon as I got down from the train.

I was surely at the store before 8 PM, a couple of minutes to spare, and saw this lady ushering out another woman and her daughter out of the door. Of course, they had been able to shop as was evident from the shopping bags they carried. Off the track, but another inconvenience in shopping at these stores is you need to carry your own shopping bags or buy one from the counter! I have had to buy the bags on most instances, as I forget to carry them and the only time I acted money-wise, I regretted it all the way home while literally doing the balancing act.

Anyway, back to my story, I peeped in to see there were still some customers inside and tried to make my way inside. The store lady persistently kept closing the door indicating that I could not enter now.

I frowned.

I smiled.

And gently requested “Zwei Minuten, pleaseee!” {Two minutes, please}

The lady retaliated with a bigger smile and said “Nein.” {NO}, before pushing the door shut.

I was hurt & turned back home; it was no use trying further.

Funnily, my initial thought was if I had used “Bitte” {German for please} in place of its English counterpart, she would have relented. But then I knew this was wishful thinking, Germans are ruthless when it comes to time.

When all these days I have been all praise for the punctuality of transportation services & other things in general, I wonder what made me so bitter this time. There have been multiple instances when I have rushed to reach just in time for a bus/train and even missed it on a couple of occasions.

Maybe, sometimes, you miss the litheness back home – where everything can be twisted, turned and made-to-work when it wouldn’t have under “normal” circumstances.