Passenger to Frankfurt

I never would have imagined a few months ago that I would be flying to Europe. Well, it so happened I did after all. On official duty. I left from Mumbai's Chattrapathi Shivaji International Airport on an Air India flight to Frankfurt, Deutschland. Air India! I learnt a new form of hospitality. The air-grandmothers and the taklu stewards pretty much leave you to yourself. They give you all the time you ever needed for introspection and meditation. I would say, if you want to attain absolute salvation through undisturbed meditaton, fly Air India!

Eight hours later, well meditated, I was on European soil alighting at the Frankfurt Main International Airport.

We find the way to our office comfortably by public bus. These are Mercedes ultra-modern pratically self thinking things!! Office is the Braun Factory complex in Kronberg which is 5-6 km from Oberursel.

The First Impression:
A taxi took me an my colleague to the Hotel we had reservations in. The Gestatte und Hotel Zum Studtzenhof is a small homely hotel with nice propreitors. I like the town. It is called Oberursel and is about 15 Kilometers from the city of Frankfurt.

This whole town is so quiet and quaint and refreshing. Meadows all around you and wonderful sophistication complement each other in fine fashion. Having been to the USA a few months back, I cannot help but notice a big difference between the land of plenty and the seat of ground-breaking Engineering. It is the people who are different. Germans seem a friendly sort mostly and are helpful. They believe in sophistication and technology, but not in making it part of their life where it is not essential. There has to be a value-add to their way of living or they would rather use old fashioned, simple ways of doing things like they have all along.

Conifers all round and mountain-scapes in every direction sooth your senses and sweet aroma of acorns pleasantly fills your olfactory lobes. You would inevitably hear the crunch-crunch under your feet as you walk and you cannot but gawk in awe at the scenic set-piece you find yourself in.

Lingua Franca!
My first attempt at conversation was funny to say the least. It was when we arrived at Hotel Asia. We had moved to this hotel after a couple of days in Oberursel and the Studtzenhof as it is very close to office. We checked in and signed our names in the register. The elderly Korean Lady who runs this establishment asked me something in a dialect of her own which was a mixture of English, German and Korean! I understood it to be something about the toilet. Why would a respectable old lady ask me if I really needed a toilet! In the end it turned out that she was letting me know that the toilet and bath for me would be a separate room which I would have to access from outside! So much for thinking that English would be sufficient all over the world.