Durstig, oder?
Well, even in a(ny) strange place so many miles away from home…..after two years of “life” (depending on how it was lived: this is totally another issue of discussion) in Deutschland …..one is more used to the difference or strangeness when it strikes you….but still the musings never fail to dawn.
The money. It was late Saturday evening in winter, dark and cold, darkness driven away by the lights and heat by the heater inside the room but things change when u get out of the room in winter. It was my first experience of the German winter, since it was Saturday I had to run to fetch groceries for the next day, for there is nothing open on Sundays, at least in Kiel. I was in Plus, a retail shop which was beside my dorm, buying things for the weekends; wanted to pick up some juice, turned to the drink section, I had to walk through the alcohol section to get to the other drinks. I always had a fascination for those aesthetic bottles in which these alcohols come in…they have architectural values don’t they…accolades to the brains behind them. I continues checking the prices of bier as I was admiring the bottle and the colours of spirits filled in it, one noticeable fact strikes you that sometimes bier is cheaper than mineral water….call this an excuse or….what, Can any one cerebrate any further?
The Holyness.With winter comes "Weihnachten". Christmas: Time for the advent, the carols, the Weihnachtsmann, the snow, the expenses, the Christmas market, the festivities. The Weihnachtsmarkt or otherwise the Christmas market decorates the country, giving a warm glow in an otherwise-very-cold-winter. I am under an impression that if only Christmas was only celebrated in some other part of the year then winter would have been even more boring and thus unbearable. It is no exaggeration to say that this time of the year the city looks special, with all the festoons and the decorations, city flooded with the effigies of Santa Claus, decorated Christmas trees, and gilded wreaths, and of snowmen and snow…the red and the green and the white hues fighting with each other for dominance. In bigger cities in Germany the Christmas markets are even bigger and more extravagant, well so much about Weihnachtsmarkt, but what is this stuff made up of, one wonders. Well the Christmas markets are made up of shops selling a range of things, gifts, clothes and of course food, one could see, a heterogeneous mixture of chocolates , pastries , cakes ,bread, curry wurst and pommes and what not….and, and, and…ah hun….not to forget the “Glühwein”, nothing but wine heated up and served hot like coffee in small glasses, is typical of the Christmas markets; this drink some how reminds me of Bhang (would it be a sin to to call bhang the Indian version, for the sanctity and respect, if I am not wrong it is also called Shivji’s Prasad and served as a Prasad on the event of “Holi”), not much of an honour to this drink, is however the speciality in Christmas market. One can see potpourri of people in the market, savouring and gulping and basking in the Glühwein.
The Place, the time, the direction. After a Grinding session of “Secure Communications” (trust me communication cannot get secure any more….of the encryptions and the decryptions…..of the enciphering and the deciphering…of the channels and the receivers….of the signals and the systems…of the confusions and the fatigue), we were in the Canteen…it was lunch time, a bunch of us were quietly eating our lunch away it was barely 11 o clock in the day, we notice that there was a queue being formed, we were wondering for what, one from our bunch broke the confusion, they were giving away free bread and beer, imagine, at 11 o clock and where?...in the Heart of the university, which of course is the heart of any university…isn’t it?. Guess what, there was this huge queue, growing right in front tour eyes, no sooner we could witness students finishing up their elixirs in a blink. In Tamil there is a expression : “Idam, Porul, Eval” meaning the place (depending on time), the meaning and the direction……it felt like nothing of these were considered by the authorities who delivered the beers, impulsive indeed…..
The word. It was an ordinary school party, well in Germany there is no parties without alcohol, (why blame Germany, if conditions back home is not any different these days right?) one could hear an array of toasts being proposed, in German, in Polish, in English….well there were also a bunch of Indians there. One lady from Finland, shot a question at the desi crowd, it was simple: how would one propose a toast in Indian? (What inquisitiveness?)Well am sure she didn’t have an idea about the multi-linguistic scenario of the sub-continent, nonetheless, this left our desi colleagues spell bound, some other German students said: “well they don’t say anything they just drink” and giggled. I wouldn’t say India was ignorant to alcohol until the advent of British, no ways, I think we had our own versions of alcohol, some of which still exists, but only that in India it wasn’t so social enough a habit, to propose a toast or to have developed such linguistic equivalents. One desi intervened breaking the silence of the tongue tied desis, he said that the Indian equivalent was: “Sarakkadi”, well, well, this fella had some presence of mind, one has to agree. He was a boy from Chennai, and “Sarakku” in Chennai Tamil means Alcohol and “adi” to drink, both put together literally meant to drink alcohol, such genius. That moment, when the word was uttered the Tamil understanding crowd broke into laughter. The Indian genius settled the Finnish inquisitiveness: a million dollar question thus answered.
The event. Deutschland is a football crazy nation, the “Bundesliga” standing testimony to it. The football Saturdays could be noisy, flooded with people and full of fun. One thing you will notice is that there is no football without beer; one can witness people buying craters and craters of beer. Am sure one could imagine what would have happened during the world cup last here. Beer and broken beer bottles were pouring in the streets during the world cup as people continued to cheer and dance and sing for their teams. Beer is called the thirst quencher of soccer fans; the land went crazy. Unfortunately most Germans have to get drunk to relax, it is the cultural difference, otherwise they are an extremely reserved and polite race.
The money. It was late Saturday evening in winter, dark and cold, darkness driven away by the lights and heat by the heater inside the room but things change when u get out of the room in winter. It was my first experience of the German winter, since it was Saturday I had to run to fetch groceries for the next day, for there is nothing open on Sundays, at least in Kiel. I was in Plus, a retail shop which was beside my dorm, buying things for the weekends; wanted to pick up some juice, turned to the drink section, I had to walk through the alcohol section to get to the other drinks. I always had a fascination for those aesthetic bottles in which these alcohols come in…they have architectural values don’t they…accolades to the brains behind them. I continues checking the prices of bier as I was admiring the bottle and the colours of spirits filled in it, one noticeable fact strikes you that sometimes bier is cheaper than mineral water….call this an excuse or….what, Can any one cerebrate any further?
The Holyness.With winter comes "Weihnachten". Christmas: Time for the advent, the carols, the Weihnachtsmann, the snow, the expenses, the Christmas market, the festivities. The Weihnachtsmarkt or otherwise the Christmas market decorates the country, giving a warm glow in an otherwise-very-cold-winter. I am under an impression that if only Christmas was only celebrated in some other part of the year then winter would have been even more boring and thus unbearable. It is no exaggeration to say that this time of the year the city looks special, with all the festoons and the decorations, city flooded with the effigies of Santa Claus, decorated Christmas trees, and gilded wreaths, and of snowmen and snow…the red and the green and the white hues fighting with each other for dominance. In bigger cities in Germany the Christmas markets are even bigger and more extravagant, well so much about Weihnachtsmarkt, but what is this stuff made up of, one wonders. Well the Christmas markets are made up of shops selling a range of things, gifts, clothes and of course food, one could see, a heterogeneous mixture of chocolates , pastries , cakes ,bread, curry wurst and pommes and what not….and, and, and…ah hun….not to forget the “Glühwein”, nothing but wine heated up and served hot like coffee in small glasses, is typical of the Christmas markets; this drink some how reminds me of Bhang (would it be a sin to to call bhang the Indian version, for the sanctity and respect, if I am not wrong it is also called Shivji’s Prasad and served as a Prasad on the event of “Holi”), not much of an honour to this drink, is however the speciality in Christmas market. One can see potpourri of people in the market, savouring and gulping and basking in the Glühwein.
The Place, the time, the direction. After a Grinding session of “Secure Communications” (trust me communication cannot get secure any more….of the encryptions and the decryptions…..of the enciphering and the deciphering…of the channels and the receivers….of the signals and the systems…of the confusions and the fatigue), we were in the Canteen…it was lunch time, a bunch of us were quietly eating our lunch away it was barely 11 o clock in the day, we notice that there was a queue being formed, we were wondering for what, one from our bunch broke the confusion, they were giving away free bread and beer, imagine, at 11 o clock and where?...in the Heart of the university, which of course is the heart of any university…isn’t it?. Guess what, there was this huge queue, growing right in front tour eyes, no sooner we could witness students finishing up their elixirs in a blink. In Tamil there is a expression : “Idam, Porul, Eval” meaning the place (depending on time), the meaning and the direction……it felt like nothing of these were considered by the authorities who delivered the beers, impulsive indeed…..
The word. It was an ordinary school party, well in Germany there is no parties without alcohol, (why blame Germany, if conditions back home is not any different these days right?) one could hear an array of toasts being proposed, in German, in Polish, in English….well there were also a bunch of Indians there. One lady from Finland, shot a question at the desi crowd, it was simple: how would one propose a toast in Indian? (What inquisitiveness?)Well am sure she didn’t have an idea about the multi-linguistic scenario of the sub-continent, nonetheless, this left our desi colleagues spell bound, some other German students said: “well they don’t say anything they just drink” and giggled. I wouldn’t say India was ignorant to alcohol until the advent of British, no ways, I think we had our own versions of alcohol, some of which still exists, but only that in India it wasn’t so social enough a habit, to propose a toast or to have developed such linguistic equivalents. One desi intervened breaking the silence of the tongue tied desis, he said that the Indian equivalent was: “Sarakkadi”, well, well, this fella had some presence of mind, one has to agree. He was a boy from Chennai, and “Sarakku” in Chennai Tamil means Alcohol and “adi” to drink, both put together literally meant to drink alcohol, such genius. That moment, when the word was uttered the Tamil understanding crowd broke into laughter. The Indian genius settled the Finnish inquisitiveness: a million dollar question thus answered.
The event. Deutschland is a football crazy nation, the “Bundesliga” standing testimony to it. The football Saturdays could be noisy, flooded with people and full of fun. One thing you will notice is that there is no football without beer; one can witness people buying craters and craters of beer. Am sure one could imagine what would have happened during the world cup last here. Beer and broken beer bottles were pouring in the streets during the world cup as people continued to cheer and dance and sing for their teams. Beer is called the thirst quencher of soccer fans; the land went crazy. Unfortunately most Germans have to get drunk to relax, it is the cultural difference, otherwise they are an extremely reserved and polite race.
The all-pervading. It is not only football but also the other festivities of the summer; the Carneval of Köln and the Oktoberfest of München which is otherwise called bierfest, neither is possible without beer. The New Years Eve, birthdays, achievements, anniversaries, funerals, festivities, success, defeat, happiness, sadness and all the other emotions in between is celebrated in Deutschland with alcohol. Not for the weather but for the craze and taste for the drink itself, I guess.
The People: the Bavarians and the Saarlanders are labelled the thirstiest beer drinkers in the world and reports hail that a substantial part of the revenue of the country comes from beer, wine and alcohol to the extent that if the sales percent of these fall, the counties economy will have to fall together with it; does this ring any bell. So much said, I feel a friction in my throat, aaach….. I know what, am thirsty, I think I need a drink, well which one do you recommend I should drink?
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In conclusion , permit me thank you for your patience with my English as (I am sure you have become aware this at this time ,), English is not my main language consequently I am using Google Translate to form out how to note down what I truly wish to voice.