Appooppanthaadi -14

There are people in Europe, especially in Germany, who search the trash cans in the public places for empty bottles and other items. An empty beer bottle of 500ml fetches 25 cents and an empty water bottle at least 10 cents. In Germany even one cent is valued much. On Saturday mornings, likelihood of spotting more number of beer bottles in the trash cans is high. So, on Saturdays, people visiting these cans are more. Also we can see people standing outside the railway stations and other public places ask for a cigarette from the passers bye.

As I mentioned in my earlier posts, Friday is the weekend for Europeans. Celebrations start even before the end of the day. If we call anyone at his office by noon, most probably we get an answer that we were too late in calling. He/she would have left the office by that time to join the weekend revelries. The effective working days for them is just four days from Monday to Thursday.

In many of the shops, especially malls, goods are priced at 9.99 euros, 19.99 euros, 24.99 euros and so on. At the cash counter, they sincerely give back the balance one cent. There is a big multi-storied electrical and Electronic shop in the city of Mannheim - Saturn. Almost all items sold there are imported from China. It is difficult to get a Made Germany item from that shop. From iron box to cameras, from ipad to hard discs, things are piled up in the shop. All of them have one thing in common- they are all coming from China.


Chinese invasion in Europe is complete. Every electronic item is made in China. Clothes, Electrical items, stationeries…the list is long. The Frankfurt airport and the Frankfurt Main Railway station are swarmed with Chinese. People of any age group from China can be spotted in these places every time.

Indians are also seen there. I met a few Indians. All of them came from India to sell clothes. They bring samples of clothes from our country and promote their business. Indians can be spotted with big suitcases with them in Airports and Railway stations. They travel to different destinations with cloth samples and fix their business deals. Most of the clothes from India are exported from Tirupur in TN and Ludhiana in Punjab. It looks India has a stake in Europe only in cloth business, besides software of course


There sits an old bearded man in front of Saturn. He braves snowfalls and even rains while sitting there in a stool and beg for alms. He wears a long coat. During snowfall, this coat turns white as he sits at the same place even in the adverse climatic conditions. Most of the one cent coins collected from the Saturn shop go to his bowl. This man sits there for long time almost everyday

Mannheim is a nicely built city. On the banks of river Rhein, this beauty lies with an enchanting look. Trams, buses and trains make transportation very easy. There are cinema complexes, Big shoping malls, a big park called Louisen park, Indian restaurants, Casionos and of course a few sex shops


A photo tour of the city of Mannheim is possible if the link is clicked :
https://picasaweb.google.com/ppnatesan/MannheimGermany?authkey=Gv1sRgCPC-k_f9xduAlAE&feat=email



Gunzburg is another city I visited in Germany-a very beautiful village( I prefer to call it a village) that lies close to river Danube. I could not visit the river Danube due to lack of time. There are so many beautiful buildings in this village. Another village near Guzburg has only 100 houses. In this village they have a restaurant and a dance bar to enjoy.


“The Danube (English pronunciation: /ˈdænjuːb/ DAN-ewb) is Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway.
The river originates in the Black Forest in Germany as the much smaller Brigach and Breg rivers which join at the German town of Donaueschingen. After that it is known as the Danube and flows southeastward for a distance of some 2850 km (1771 miles), passing through four Central and Eastern European capitals, before emptying into the Black Sea via the Danube Delta in Romania and Ukraine.

Known to history as one of the long-standing frontiers of the Roman Empire, the river flows through or acts as part of the borders of ten countries: Germany (7.5%), Austria (10.3%), Slovakia (5.8%), Hungary (11.7%), Croatia (4.5%), Serbia (10.3%), Bulgaria (5.2%), Moldova (1.6%), Ukraine (3.8%) and Romania (28.9%). (The percentages reflect the proportion of the total Danube drainage basin area.)”

A few photographs of Guzberg can be seen if the link is clicked:
https://picasaweb.google.com/ppnatesan/GunzburgGermany?authkey=Gv1sRgCNDO7KGU-L7e-wE&feat=email




In Chemnitz, Germany, by the time I reached the hotel it was almost midnight. I had to ring the bell to get the gate opened for me. I was feeling so hungry. Sadly, there was no restaurant in the hotel. I was told by the receptionist that there was a restaurant a few meters away.

The waiter in the restaurant could not speak even a bit of English. My repeated attempts to make him understand that I need to eat something vegetarian were all ended up in vain. At last, as an escape route for both of us, he directed me to a Thai restaurant nearby. The English speaking girl there served me some Thai style food made from vegetables- I can’t figure out as to what I ate however. As I was walking back to my room, I had been wondering how precisely he guessed my nationality…!!

A visual ode to the city of Frankfurt...
https://picasaweb.google.com/ppnatesan/Frankfurt?authkey=Gv1sRgCP7msajmiZSZIA&feat=email