and it is all coming to an end...

What took you so long?? It would be exactly that question most of the people who read my blog would be asking right now.. I have to admit, yes, it took me some time. There are several reasons..some of them are related to my own laziness, some of them to the fact that the past days and weeks were quite busy! Nevertheless, since my flight to Germany is already tomorrow, I would like to sum it up: What has happened since 1st January??

Actually, a lot of things happened! To me, to the outside world, in Germany, Egypt, Lybia, India...
Some of them spectacular, some of them rather not so spectacular, some of them affecting a whole country, some of them affecting a single person..
Since this is not a blog about politics, media etc. I will skip most of these news. To make it simple and to give an overview I'll start with:

1) Belur, Halebid & Shravanabelagola (that is not an illness or sth, that's a name of a place ;))
One of our weekend trips took us to the locations mentioned above. It was a weekend full of temples, gods and legends. Once we had to climb a hill (which took us quite some time as it was quite steep) in order to visit a temple. The view in Halebid was breathtaking and the temple fascinating. The temple in Belur was very old as well, the details of stone carvings, statues and so on flabbergasting. All in all a very interesting weekend with lots of memories :)

2) Kerala (1)
The weekend in Kerala was one of my best here in India. It included a 24h house boat ride, canoe ride through the backwaters, a visit to Kochi and its famous fisher nets as well as my very first time on a train in India. Fascinating :)

3) Coorg
Our weekend in Coorg included a tyring I-dunno-how-many-hours ride in a car on bumpy streets, sleep not included...still, it was worth it :) our accomodation was a small apartement in the middle of coffee and pepper plantations. A lot of insects were joining us, including a praying mantis and two huge spiders, one of them only 50cm away from my pillow *yummy* I enjoyed the night to its fullest -.- The next day we went on a hike and had great views from the highest mountain in Karnataka. Sun was burning (also my skin...yeay..), hike was tyring, weekend was great :)

4) Kerala (2)
It is, what they say, something you need to experience, while being in India - an Indian wedding. Luckily I met an Indian trainee back in Germany at Bosch and we met again in Bangalore, India. He invited me to his wedding and also some friends of mine. Since it was another 10h drive we decided to use the whole weekend for trips to the beach and old, ancient forts. We were also lucky that we did not have to take the bus since one of our friends here also went to the wedding and owned a car :)
One story I have to share...when we were visiting the fort in Kannur, we were taking rest under a tree in the shade. Lots of school classes were also visiting the fort that day. Some of the kids started waving at me as soon as I was looking in their direction. As I waved back, the whole class got enthusiastic and all of them started waving. After some time they curiously approached us in a small group of 4-5 guys, but when they were close to us suddenly all the school children ran up to us and were standing in front of us :D they all wanted to know our names, where we were from, how old we were...and when one shook hands with me all of them wanted to do the same^^

Well, this is it then... I had a long run, almost 5 months, lots of precious memories, a wonderful country, lovely friends, a rich culture, traditions, festivals, celebrations, great landscapes..I could go on for hours. I just would like to thank every single person I met during my stay in India because all of you made this experience unforgettable as it is!! I hope to see you guys again soon and if you come to Germany make sure to drop me line about it :)
Take care and all the best!! See you soon, Incredible India...

Christmas and New Years Eve

After a long time, here is another story about current and past events in a country far, far away, let us call it India.
Recently, as probably all of you know, there was this holiday called Christmas. India is a multi-cultural country with I'd say a lot of different religions. Christmas does exist, actually, but not in way you are used to when you are from a western country dominated by Christianity. What I missed a lot was the snow...honestly, although I don't miss the cold temperatures, I have to admit that falling snow comes in quite handy regarding cosy and merry ambience. Obviously, the part of India I live in currently does not have any snow. Well, we might have temperatures of about 25°C and yes, it is hardly raining, so that could be considered awesome preconditions for a merry Christmas. On the other hand there are no Christmas trees! Wait, there are Christmas trees, made out of plastic, more decoration covering the tree than it can actually carry. One could say, that the decoration is decorated with the Christmas tree! Some families have a Christmas tree, so that is quite nice. But however the atmosphere is not the same as in Germany.
So what exactly do you do when you are in India and you would like to be part of the Indian Christmas? What three other interns and me did was joining a festive buffet in the Oberoi Hotel in Bangalore. On the menue there was a lot of European dishes like roasted turkey, duck, plum pudding and so on and so on! It was an awesome evening accompanied by loads of delicious food. Interesting fact: around 80% of all people attending the event were German ;-)
On 25th all German interns were preparing dishes for a nice and cosy evening. We had Käsespätzle, as a dessert apple pie and mulled wine (Glühwein) for drinks. Great food, great beverages as well and a very nice evening with all interns.


Unfortunately holidays do not really apply to the festive season. Although a lot of the kids who go to school are on holidays, many employees (and employers as well) are working. Especially when you are used to the holidays/lecture break it is kind of strange, when you have to work on 24th and 31st of December.


So what about New Years Eve...however, since there is also Diwali in India, which is to some people also kind of New Years and some people use different calenders and start the year on different dates, New Years is nevertheless an opportunity to go to a lot of parties. Most of them are quite expensive. This is why you should consider joining a private party. And this is exactly what we did. We were invited by an Indian trainee. All people invited to the party hardly knew more than 4-5 people, that made it easy to get to know a lot of different people very well. In order to have a party that is supposed to last longer than 1pm, a farm house was being rented for the occasion. It has been way outside the city and just finding it was kind of an adventure. Collecting all people with cars and coordinating all of them took several hours. This is why we arrived only 40min prior to New Years Eve. Well, I guess this is why most of us were having a blast till about 6am...Unfortunately we had to leave the farm house at 8 o'clock in the morning again...which we didn't know and the wake up call came quite from nowhere.
As soon as I have any pictures I'll upload them to share all impressions as usual :-)