Munich's Oktoberfest 2009

I donno if you have heard about Munich's Oktoberfest before or not, but for surely I did not hear about it. Well, it is all the fuss about "Drinking Beer". It is one of the biggest Beer festivals held every year in Munich. I donno why it is called Oktoberfest (October festival) as it starts in September. But it does surely ends in the beginning of October every year.

The much-awaited 176th, 16-day long Oktoberfest (locally called as "Wiesen") has started on 19th Sept., 2009 at Theresienwiese Fairgrounds in Munich. People started thronging the place from as early as 7:30 am on the first day so that they can get an early access into the massive beer tents which can seat upto 6000 people. Well, about 6 million people from across the world are expected to arrive at the Oktoberfest this year despite the Swine Flu scare.

Well, people throng the massive tents set-up there for drinking beer. You need to wait longer to get access into the tents as they are very much crowded. The tents are buzzed with the people, beer and music. They are very loud and hardly you can hear to your neighbor. But the atmosphere seems to be amazing with everyone in a party mood. You get beer in big mugs called "Mass". And each Mass costs approx. 8.3 to 8.6 euros.

I am hereby posting some pictures which highlight the Oktoberfest hype. Well, guys if you are interested, we can plan to visit next year, wats say!!!

Image Courtesy: www. spiegel.de

                         www.oktoberfest.de

Range De filling new colors in the lives of the needy!

Today when I was browsing, I came across rangde.org. The concept has really impressed me a lot. Rangde is India's first online micro-lending platform offering low-income households micro-credits with low interest rates. Rangede provides the platform for the individuals to make social investments by lending small amounts of money (in multiples of Rupees 500) to the small business peoples from Indian villages and towns who have less access to the bank credits.

Anybody can be a social investor and can choose their borrowers from the geographical area of their choice by selecting the potential borrowers from the lists which are consistently growing in Rangede.org. The investor gets a nominal financial return on the money they invest and they also get some tangible social return through evaluation reports and updates from the field.

Rangde provides loans for micro-enterpreneurs at 8.5% interest rate and for students at 5% interest.

May be small investments we make can bring big changes in somebody's lives.
Rangde: http://rangde.org/home.htm#s/109
Range Education: http://rangde.org/rangdeEducation.htm

Image courtesy:www.boston.com
Article Excerpts:www.siliconindia.com

Non-traditional German names are discrimated by Teachers

Well, I happened to read a news article on the results of one of the strangest research conducted in Germany. It seems are German teachers are prejudiced against certain school students by their names from they moment they first read the school registers.

According to the research, the majority of teachers make presumptions about the behavior and performance of a student based merely on their first names. The students with traditional names like Charlotte, Marie, Hanna, Sophie, Alexander, Simon, Lukas, Jakob etc are considered to be well-mannered and intelligent. Whereas the students with non-traditional names like Chantal, Mandy, Angelina, Kevin, Justin, Maurice etc are regarded to be weak and ill-mannered or with bad behavior.

Undoubtedly, the names with positive connotations are among the top 10 names given to the newly born in Germany.

Well, if teachers themselves dont have faith in students just because of their names, then who will? Obviously the confidence of the students drop and may lead to negative traits and low performances.

Im wondering how Indian kids with Indian names are being considered by teachers???

Image Courtesy: http://learnsomethingnewtoday.us
News Excerpts: http://www.thelocal.de

Travel into the Future with German trains :-)

Recently, I was traveling from Düsseldorf (the city where I live) to Dortmund (city where I used to go for my German language course) in famous Deutsche Bahn (German Railways) Regional Express from Düsseldorf to Minden. I found some unsual thing in the train, the display in one of the wagons I was sitting in showed as you can see in this picture below

Well!! Well!! the train was a time-machine leading me into the future :-) . Wow! I wished it would have been true so that i can travel to the future and sneak into where and how I would be after 20 years!!!!

Düsseldorf - Kaiserswerth

After 3 weeks we have relocated to Düsseldorf from Oberhausen, we could manage to find some time off from busy unpacking, adjusting and building furnitures to visit Kaiserswerth, one of the oldest city parts of Düsseldorf. Well it is a worth visiting place in Düsseldorf. You can find a different glory of river Rhine. I never did enjoy the sight of Rhine as I did it here. It was an amazing place.

We took U79 Undergroung Tube which nearly took 20 minutes to reach. As soon as we got off it, we were welcomed with traditional German Beer tents at the centre. Lots of people are gathered and enjoying the beers in the warm sun. Well, we managed to grab an Ice and started walking towards the river Rhine. Then we came across the Flea Market for books and paintings. We just hurried towards the river Rhine just looking at some of the paintings from the distance.

While walking along the Rhine river we came across the ruin remains of Kaiserpfalz (temporary seat of the Holy Roman Emperor) built in 1045.
We had some coffee at one of the restaurants on the river and then spent sometime in warm sun along the river-side snapping pictures in different poses. Well, we could able to snap some beautiful pictures of river Rhine too.
It was quite warm and we were very much tired. Especially, I was very much tired after posing for so many pictures :-)
We set off our return journey, and on our way back to U-Bahn station we tried to snap some beautiful old-buildings.
Well, we found this Lamp post interesting, so we did snap this too.
Though it was a small trip, it did leave memorable impressions as we did enjoy the true beauty of river rhine.

Snoring!! Was I?

Today on my way back to house from my course with the tube, I had a strange incident. I was very much tired as usual, I do get tired everyday after continuous 5 hrs of lectures in estranged language. I have to travel almost an hour to reach my house, well for that I make sure I get a comfortable place in the direction of travel for myself to sit. The train has not left yet, then came a typical German guy and sat next to me. He looked at me and we exchanged greetings, well that's a common practice here that even you greet the strangers.

Probably, I was very much tired today than usual and I did not realized wen I did fall asleep may be deep asleep. I woke up little later to realize that the guy sitting next to me has already left. Well, I slipped back to my unusual deep slumber. I could only wake up after I think I had enough of it and I realized that the train has halted somewhere. It's a halt one before mine. Then I realized the guy who was sitting next to me was getting off and he gave a wry smile at me before he was off the train. I did not understand, why did this guy who was sitting next to me moved away to a different place and why did he give a wry smile wen he set off. Well, I could not figure it out yet exactly wat has happened.

Was I snoring that he got disturbed or irritated with it and moved away from me?????...........

Do I know German?

Well, it has been almost 8 months now, wen I first came to Germany with initial blues of German language. Every now and then frens of mine from India and abroad do ask me if I can speak German. Well, many of my frens start their conversation with "Guten Tag" (Hello or Good Day) and end their conversation with "auf wiedersehn" (Bye). Well, for sure they might have got these words from "Google".

It has been a memorable journey learning German for me. I had no choice but to learn a little of it wen I was in India as German govt has made it mandatory to get thru the first level before we dare to enter Germany. Call it a curse or scare, I was cursing them a lot when I started learning German in Bangalore. It was a nightmare being an Indian learning a non-Indian language in India by a Indian. Yet, I had no choice, I had to clear the first level to be with my hubby. After faltering once, I realized I need to put in more efforts and somehow after joining Goethe Institute, I could manage to get thru it.

Well, now it's the time to go to Germany. I was very confident before coming to Germany that I can manage German a little. But the real fun began wen I arrived in Germany. I felt as if I have never heard this language before. People with blond hair and white skin speaking language which I couldn't follow. I tried very hard to understand them but I couldn't follow a word. The accent made all the difference. All that I knew in German was, "Ich heiße Seema" (I am Seema), "Ich komme aus Indien" (I am from India), "Ich bin neu im Deutschland" (I am new to Germany) and last but not the least "Danke schön" (Thank You very much)...

But soon I realized this wasn't enough for my survival in Germany. I wanted to become one among them. I wanted to communicate with people. Well, many of frens were also excited to hear about me, Germany and my German language. So I decided to join German language course.

My first day in class was good. I was excited and a bit nervous too. As I was new-bee, I was asked to give a brief introduction about myself which I was good at. I had memorized it hundred times before I went to the class though. All my classmates were astonished to know that I knew a bit of German. But little did they know I had already completed my first level but know nothing, well as long as I was in India, I thought I knew a lot, but it's all vice-versa wen I arrived here. Then my teacher tried asking me some questions with his typical German accent which I struggled to understand but somehow could make it. Later when I was asked to ask some question to my classmates I was all nervous and started addressing them in Plural form than in Singular which left a wry smile on my teacher's face.

As the days rolled on I began making frens at the German class and started speaking to them German, of course more with sign-language than words :-). Well that was the only common language for communication as none of my colleagues could speak English either as they are from different countries. Sometimes we struggle to find words in German. But most funny part was we used to talk with gestures and understand everything, well I should say we used to think that we understand each other. Everyone in the class speak German with their own mother tongue accent. Our German teacher used to have tough time many a times to understand the German words he knew from his childhood, as everyone used to pronounce them differently.

Personally I had trouble with reading and speaking. I have a mixed accent of Kannada, Hindi, Urdu, English and Tulu. Now you all can figure out How I speak German??? I read German like English. Even though German alphabets are like English they are pronounced in a different way. German language has 30 alphabets. 26 are English alphabets and other 4 are Ä (ae), Ö (oe), Ü (ue) and ß (ss). Till dated I cant pronounce well the latter ones :). It's been almost a year now that I started German lessons yet I forget the right pronunciation.

I hope someday or the other I might speak good German without my heavy accent and any mistake. A long way to go :). Well, wish me good luck too. Now you know how much German I know :-) Schön Tag Noch.......