A Vacation in Germany

Here I sit in Germany. This is the opposite of India. It is clean, not rushed, very quiet and English isn't universal. We're in a hotel where what we want comes before anything else, whereas in NuTech Mediworld, it is about our fitting into their regimen. Of course I'm sitting on a veranda enjoying nature and Deb has pipes in her adding and removing the cure and what ails her, respectively. I certainly have the better end of this deal.

You might remember me poking fun at the Indian soap companies for touting “German Technology” in their dish soap. I will bet a Rupee that a bunch of marketing people sat in a room brainstorming and said, what is the cleanest place in the world and let's make them think of there when they use our soap. One said Germany and those from India who had visited voted yes, as it is in fact so much cleaner that it must have made a big impression on them.

Here they have storm drains to carry away rain. In New Delhi, they don't. Perhaps it is too flat in New Delhi to expect pipes in the ground to do more than fill up. Where we are in Germany it is on a big hill, not quite a mountain. The storm drains just have to catch the water and gravity does the rest. Every house has complete rain gutters that carry the rain into the storm sewers. In New Delhi, the roofs are flat and when they fill up, someone goes up and bails them out, or unblocks a pipe that drains the water right onto the sidewalk.

Both places have flies. In Germany because we're in cow country. In New Delhi because the rain hasn't washed the refuge away. Neither place believes in screening their windows, so flies are used to being both indoors and outdoors.

Both places have people who love to sweep. Here they sweep and dispose. There they sweep onto their neighbor's side who sometime later sweeps it back. Of course here the air is dust free and there the air is so full of dust, sand, dirt, etc, etc that before you get to the end of your sidewalk, the beginning is coated, that is if you did have a sidewalk, which they don't. Here you can finish your sweeping and look back at a job well done.

We're far enough out in rural Germany, that English isn't necessarily practiced day to day. It seems like everybody tries, but those further out of practice are less confident with their hold on it. I can't tell who has no English in their past, but almost everybody tries if confronted with me trying to ask a question. A lot of our fellow diners don't seem to have much English so smiles and good mornings and evenings and friendly head nods are as far as we get or give. I'm not critical in the least because my German is limited to having an idea what we're eating and not much more than the type of meat and the fact vegetables are being served. I'm friendly with one fellow who lived in Boston for a while.

This seems like a vacation from India and India is an adventure away from the US. When first saw the German doctor, she said we might like to stop here on the way back to the US. Well, after I had just paid to change our Air India tickets back to JFK, I really wasn't willing to give them up to go to Munich and then to the US. If I'm right, next trip will be a “jaunt” to Germany for a week or two and then a month or so in India and then back to Germany and then back to the US. Why? All the medical people in these two places absolutely, positively, without a doubt believe they can help Deb. And of all the doctors she's been to, these two (Indian and German) are speaking of complimentary therapies. Each is interested in what the other is doing.