It’s a pleasure to share my
experience. I’ll start with a brief introduction about myself. I was born and
brought up in Thane, Maharashtra. At 17, I moved to Manipal for undergraduate
studies, then to South Carolina, U.S.A. for Masters and luckily got the
opportunity to move to Munich, Germany for the first full time job.
Barmsee, Bavaria,
Germany
As of February 2017, it has been
one and a half years since the move to Munich. As mentioned in the
introduction, I spent two years in the United States before moving here. It was
July 31, 2015 – just a week before convocation day, when I got an email from my
contact person that I am being offered employment through Germany. Reading that
email was undoubtedly the most exciting moment of life. My family came down for
the graduation ceremony and with a job offer already in hand, we had an amazing
time together. I left my apartment in Greenville, South Carolina and lived in
Chicago with my sister, awaiting the German visa.
The day had come – September 2nd,
2015 – hardly a month between getting an offer and already being on the flight
to Germany. Moving to USA from India was fairly simple due to several reasons –
language, relatives, class mates to name a few. Since us, Indians always
generalize the terms ‘Western world’, ‘Western culture’, I thought Germany
would be very similar to USA. As it turns out, I have never been so wrong!
South Carolina had gotten me used to the general friendliness and the ‘southern
warmth’. The small talk culture is not a German thing, as it turns out.
First day in Germany:
My company had provided me with
temporary accommodation for the first three months. Upon arrival in Markt
Schwaben (that’s where my office is, about 25 km east of Munich) I got the keys
to my apartment and soon had to go shopping. I needed to buy moisturizer since
my skin felt very dry. Little did I know that no one in the store next door
knew English, and to make things worse, I had no internet access so as to use a
translator. I bought something that said moisture and applied to my face. As it
turns out, it was actually soap and not moisturizer – which made my skin burn
to an extent that I thought it was on fire.
In office as well, hardly 5
percent of the colleagues knew English. Needless to say, the little German that
I had learned through courses in USA did not really help. Markt Schwaben being
a small place, I was a little worried that it would turn out to be boring
experience overall. As it turns out though, Munich was easily accessible within
half an hour thanks to amazing public transportation. Munich turned out to be a
completely different story.
The transition phase:
Thanks to Facebook groups, I met
several new people. Moving to a place without knowing anyone there can be
tricky – you meet say 100 new people and connect well with two or three of
them. The second day in Munich I made good friends already at the
‘Isarinselfest’. One thing you don’t run out of in Munich is the fests, no
matter what time of the year it is! From the very first weekend I started going
hiking in the Alps, joined a running group and hence met more and more nice
people. The transition from the first impression about it being a weird and
unfriendly place to starting to fall in love with it took about a month.
While I was still in the Masters
program, I had the similar thoughts like most others – graduate, get a
well-paying job, buy a nice car and so on. Upon moving to Europe though (yes, I
prefer generalizing this to Europe, not just Germany), the mentality changed
completely. The materialistic mentality does not exist in Europe. Here,
commuting by bicycle is a more common thing. Richness is rather a measure of
experiences and travels. Somehow no one talks about salaries in numbers here –
the salary description is always limited to ‘good/bad/ok’. Without even
realizing it, my priorities changed from saving up for a nice car to travelling
the world.
Blending in with the culture:
As an Indian, one would expect to
find it hard to like German food……and it is! It takes efforts to make food in
the canteen taste decent – adding tabasco, salt, pepper and curry powder to
everything so that it at least has some flavour to it. For a city like Munich,
the restaurant food also doesn’t live up to the mark. Italian food is amazing,
but other cuisines do not live up to the taste standards compared to most other
big cities. The beer, meanwhile is a completely different story. It’s
self-explanatory I believe.
Once I was riding my bicycle and
overtook an old man riding slowly by switching to the footpath for a few meters
since there was no one walking. A brief description – here bike lanes are to
the left side of the footpath. The guy caught up with me while I was waiting
for the next traffic light to turn green. As he approached he screamed out “In
Germany you must overtake only from the left!” I just turned around and
apologized instead of arguing. It’s the ‘when in Rome….’ situation. What I want
to imply is one often comes across the ‘दुसऱ्याला
शहाणपण शिकवणे’ type of behaviour but has
to deal with it. The locals get very frustrated when things get even slightly
eccentric. Being a minute late can also lead to panicky situations. I believe
that is the whole reason everything works so efficiently in this country! It’s
straight forward, respect them and they respect you back.
Germans have several
distinctly positive attributes, but a good sense of humour is not one of
them. Yes, they live up to the stereotype. They often don’t get your jokes and
the things that they sometimes go mad laughing at, you don’t even find them
funny. A British friend (Munich resident) once said, “It’s not the language
that makes me feel like a foreigner here, but the lack of humour does!” Also,
people here often tend to have a short temper. It does take a while to get used
to, but end of the day, they’re all nice and very genuine people. Also, they
always appreciate the effort you put into speaking their language, and never
care about the grammatical mistakes.
One of my favorite thing about
Germans is their open-mindedness. They love to travel – the biggest travellers
in the world. A few years ago, I had never imagined that I would be at home, in
Thane on vacation with people from abroad. The India travel was planned on a
single WhatsApp message that I put on my running group, “Is anyone interested
in running Mumbai Marathon in 2017?” About 6 to 7 people said yes, but
eventually due to inconvenient dates the marathon plan got cancelled, but the
India travel plan didn’t. I expected 2 or 3 to actually turn up when about 6-7
said yes to start with, and it ended up being 11. Also, I really appreciate the
positivity. When the Germans travel, they appreciate the small things rather
than cribbing about what is not right.
One wow moment is the fact that
appointments here- whether personal or professional – are taken very seriously.
If you decide with a friend, for example, to go out for coffee somewhere, you
never need a second confirmation. Both parties are expected to be punctually
present once they have decided to meet. That sounds like a very ordinary thing,
but I realized the importance upon visiting India for vacation – without a
second confirmation no one would turn up, and punctuality is non-existent.
Living it up:
The amount of fun you get to have
as an employee in Germany is out of this world. Short working hours, 30 days of
vacation, 13 public holidays per year, good salaries, open mindset and an
amazing job security – this all translates to possibly the best work-life
balance in the world. I have travelled to several countries, and it makes me
want to travel more. Each time I travel somewhere, I fall in love with that place, but
end of the day, there’s always a voice that says “this place is beautiful, but
as far as living goes I can’t even imagine leaving Munich.”
 |
| Alter Peter, Munich |
टिप्पण्या
टिप्पणी पोस्ट करा