Danke Schön

Heute ist mein letzter Tag hier in Augsburg, ich möchte all jenen danken, die dazu beigetragen, dass dieses eines der besten Erfahrung, die ich je hatte.
(You guessed it right, two months here and all German I know is .......... this much!)

Kinder

Kidos

I met all kinds of them here; the big, the small, the naughty, the budhas, the mowglis, cindrellas, all disney characters.... The best part was having a kindergarten right next to where I live and be defeated while playing football with them. :P

Universitat Augsburg

University lake

I spent most of my time here in amazing company of people at the software engineering department working on my organic computing project and learning plenty new stuff which I can broadly classify into layman keywords like robots, simulations, traffic, manufacturing systems, touch screen computing (Microsoft Surfaces), safety and everything else that you can connect with them. I would thank Prof Reif (Even though he had been all over the world and I met him like 2-3 times only , that was adequate) and the DAAD for the opportunity and of course Mr. Khaldy and his team for the Berlin 'towel' trip.

University lakeside 2

The university did provide a lot of glimpses into European culture as the above picture does not illustrate. I added Mexico and Turkey to the places i would go to and met people from Central Asia (China,Japan, Kazakhastan, Afghanistan,Pakistan, Iran,Palestine, Iraq, Turkey,...), Eastern Europe (Hungary, Romania, Russia,...), Africa, North America (Canada and U.S ob), North pole (Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Eskimoes,.. ) , Australia, Honululu and of course my favorite being South America (Mexico :P and maybe venezuela, Brazil, ...). Apart from the numerous Barbeque parties, the picnics, hikes and trips I learned a lot of history from all the discussions and deliberations with Mathhias, Frank, Jan-Philip, Nina, Hella, Flo, Simon, Kurt, Alwin, Andrea & Andreas, Michael,... and yeah thank you all for the amazing company!

And my interest in all kinds of Flora and Fauna, animals and birds helped me gather knowledge like which animal is responsible for the maximum number of deaths in Germany.

Rhinos!

Nein, it wasn't that mean looking creature, but rather the cute looking Hippo!

The very efficient and exorbitant transport system constituting the trams, S-bahns( Surface trains) and U-bahns (Underground metros), buses that are long enough to be mistaken for trains and the Mercedes, Audi, BMW, Volkswagen, Volvo (which the entire world knows about and they come from here!), Toyotas and Suzuki's and people being impressed by the Nano and yet guzzling gears on their sedans on the AutoBahn @240km/hr with ease. The bicycle friendly roads with streets and signals especially meant for riding bicycles and the routes along the rapids which are used for the Kayaking World Championships constructed during the Munich Olympics 1972.

Trams in Augsburg

The Food which I still am not able to name but was amazingly delicious, the desserts and chocolates and icecreams and the Turkish food I discovered just recently and not to forget the Italian Pizza's which were cheaper than bananas and water made sure I got my daily bread and butter: milch brot and chocolate cream to be precise. I also had my fair share of cooking and burning my taste buds with the chilli powder and garam masala added to camouflage the taste of the food.(Mayonnaise and Sauce too helped :P)

There are too many things here to thank, the friends on gtalk, facebook and orkut who stood by me in all those times of 'imboredandineedyoutoentertainmesomehow!'.India is famous and for plenty of reasons as you can see from the city gallery shop above.However what came as a bigger surprise is below:



Well i had met people who had been to Goa and loved it and rest who were curious about its beaches and spirituality (!?). Well I love Goa for my own reasons but nevertheless I had people who shared common objectives here too. That's some globalization!

..and yeah not to forget the costliest smses I had to send for both silly and sweet reasons.Thanks :)

So Danke Schön, Auf Wiedersehen.

Chao

See you in Goa :)

Pratik Mandrekar

Another Legendary Weekend :)

The party was planned, the grills were ready, the meat was about to be bought; it was all planned out when all of a sudden there was a storm predicted for the evening.If it were in India, I would have of course switched the channel when the weather report would have started but out here that wouldn't be the case.Even the clouds seemed to obey the weather report and started darkening. It was 3:30 PM and the party had to be called off.It was 5:00 PM and the weather cleared all of sudden.The forecasts go wrong here too :P. So the party was hurriedly fixed up albeit without those who wouldn't be reading their mails again would miss it.

BArbequing at the lakeside

I went with Alwin and Andrea to the mart to get the necessary stuff and an authentic Bavarian Shopping experience.Even the coal comes packaged for barbeque here!So all setup we headed to the lake, setup the grill, got everyone ready, discussed things about the guy who came from the same Romanian village that dracula did and all kinds of blah..with a dose of grilled meat and drinks to drink.Two students who hadn't read their earlier mails (fortunately!) turned up and well..! An advisory to all who go swimming or diving in frozen lakes, take a roap with you 'coz once upon a time a couple of swimmers did go and were lost inside, normally you would just blow the bubbles and see where they head, but with the ceiling packed with ice you have no option but to....so be careful...That was the middle of the week.


The next night I left for Werfen and Salzburg where the Biggest system of Ice Caves in the World and the life of Mozart awaited us respectively.The German trail at Munich for Salzburg was canceled and we had to board the Austrian Express with a DB pass and surprisingly no-one noticed.The Nordic woman sitting with me again had an Indian connection;she had seen 'Little India' in Singapore.Its surprising how everything somehow connects to India here and even Goa.

From the top of the Cable Car at the largest network of Ice Caves in the world

So we finally reached Salzburg, shopped a bit and reached Werfen which is an amazingly beautiful town with the Austrian Snowy Alps,' Gaei ' and deers, flowers with houses or atleast it looks like that, castles on the horizon and our journey to the top of the Alps where the Ice caves with all the stalactites and stalagmites, Elephant like structures with the ashes of the guy who discovered them , chilly high pressure winds blowing us away, magnesium ribbons to illuminate the interiors and Govinda burning his pant at the -10 degree Celsius or so temperature inside the caves will remain legendary! That sure was an experience..

We returned from Werfen only to realize that the optimal solution would mean we skip Salzburg night to spend time at the Munich station so that we could be early next morning to the Disney castle.So our second sleepless night at the Munich station with the blabber king from Pakistan and some more cute people, along with a walk on the street which would put Amsterdam to shame helped us stay awake till we took the train to our next destination

Bridge et Fall

The less I say about this place where Michael Jackson spent most of his time the better.However a few points to note:

1. The Japanese love this place and are have inbuilt GPS systems which aids them reach this place without looking at any map or sign.They have mastered the art of digital photography in positions we would refer to Yoga.
2. No one knows why king Ludwig and his doctor were found dead just 172 days after this Disney castle.It wasn't even completed and the Servants quarters here are too awesome for modern day Kings.
3. One of the many enlightening international conversations we overhead :P
   

Joy(An American lady)-My name is Joy.
Prachi (An Indian girl)-Did you know that Joy means happiness in Hindi?
Joy(spitting chewing gum)-Oh..that's nice !
Prachi- Gum means sadness.....

Next we headed back to Munich where the Deutsche Museum-The worlds largest Science and Technology Museum made us feel tiny and amazed at everything from Nanotech devices that could play football, to the Inside of Space Shuttles to the Sundials and Pianos which almost led to another WW.Dachau was next and we made a bus tour of the concentration camp with a guy holding a knife about to....err I guess he was trying to open the ventilator coz his doggy was feeling stuffy :)

Dum Dum

Allianz Arena, Food, food and time to board for our next destination:Lindau.The plan was to catch sleep at the Lindau station.We reached at midnight and for the first time this station had to close down at midnight.What followed was a nightful of experience roaming on the streets, the seafront bordering Swiss,Austria and Germany on Lake constance providing the perfect backgroud for drunk guys and girls trying to think we were the Loch Ness monster and monsteresses and ofcourse for the set of decent guys et gals who almost ran over us, shocked, awed, made us sleep in the Deutsche Post Office, PDA's that were passe by now and in general A Night to remember.That made three sleeplesss nights for me.Amazing Euro Trip :)

Lindau :)

Lindau is an amzingly beautiful Island and we experienced the Sea and Europe at its best with its set of Ducks, Swans and Lions. Alligators and fishes or poodles and dragons-They all looked same to me in the end, I had seen sooooo...much.

As Pure White as a ....(I did offer my donut, but she wanted a pizza..ofcourse its more than just a birdie :) )

On my way back I was almost fined for having my shoes resting on the seats, simple strategy of not understanding worked and I didn't have to attempt more advanced acting skills like getting hysterical and making monkey grunts and scratches.

....Sing

Finally I was home :) .The sign above is almost home. I love you :)

Another weekend, another week-Time just flies by with or without you...

Chao

Pratik Mandrekar

Check more pics here

We saved the world!

Truth is stranger than fiction and below is an excerpt from how we just saved the world a few moments ago and then of course to celebrate, 'washed the utensils' !

qwerty:
i can see smthng over der


!@#$%^:
see
if tht s it
dont turn bak
dotn luk bak


qwerty:
it looks like tiny creatures walkin on a mountain


!@#$%^:
haa
it mght b te illusionry one
do u see a blue light onthe top
?


qwerty:
a faint one in d distance


!@#$%^:
thn this one s fake
we need to go ahead
one with red light
run


qwerty: aah
(running)


!@#$%^:
wdont waste tim
run


qwerty:
run run run


!@#$%^:
if u gt tired
remeber i m thr


qwerty:
no tired master
run for life
run for the goog
good


!@#$%^:
we ned to save the wrld
run fr the ppl


qwerty:
save d world yipee!


!@#$%^:
run fr thr happiness
hey i see it
i see it


qwerty:
where is it o lord?


!@#$%^t:
hm lose ur eyes u l se
u wearin skeletons cloak
rght


qwerty:
ya (closing eyes)


!@#$%^:
nw keep thm closed n u lsee wht i m seoin
i dunno hw to pass this mound of ants


qwerty:
oh yes master..i can see it..isn't it huge


!@#$%^:
mayb u l knw coz u r skeleton rght nw


qwerty:
i thnk der will be a secret code to enter
ya i thnk here it i can se the ants clearing on my path
heres d code, i can understand wat dey r speaking!
mus b d coats effect


!@#$%^:
yeh tht s wht
do wht ut think is rght
i l tc of the rest
hey we need ot b fast


qwerty:
d entrance is out der to ur right master
we need to say dis together :hoodibababa hodibaba hoo hoo


!@#$%^:
ok
hoodibababa hodibaba hoo hoo
hoodibababa hodibaba hoo hoo
hoodibababa hodibaba hoo hoo
heya
it opeend
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
..a brave fight later we won! We saved the world!

You may not understand the above but it was one of those moments that come once in a lifetime i.e the chance to save the world! lite :)

I'm very sleepy now and can only tell you one more story.Its the story of how nice things can happen even when they may not appear to be so, This 10-year-old girl desperately wanted to see the new Disney-Pixar movie, "Up." But the cancer-stricken girl was too sick to go to a theater.

Thanks to a family friend who got in touch with the movie studio Pixar, an employee of the Emeryville-based company arrived at Colby's home with a DVD copy of the movie. The girl died later that night.Read more..

This Sunday we went to the Strawberry fields to do some strawberry farming, plucked over 4 kgs of strawberries and had another of those wonderful new weekend experiences.I wouldn't say much 'coz it would only make you more jealous..


At the Strawberry farm,Augsburg

Well I also got into history books.The Trojan Horse for those who remember...Augsburg is named after Emperor Augustus after whom the month of August is named and is the oldest inhabited place in Europe so there must have been some connection :)
(That's all I know of History so you can deduce from there onwards)
The Trojan Horse

Chao again!

Gute Nacht!

Pratik Mandrekar

Week 3

Returning after 3 nights without sleep last Weekend, I woke up late as expected on Monday and soon became a trend for the week.I had excuses ready 'The tram changed its route', 'went to an ATM and was figuring out the German keys for an hour' or 'I found a lost kid, took him to the polizei and then his mom came and it turned out she was the mayor's daughter and ...'; however its so cool out here that I didn't even have to mutter half an excuse.Despite enjoying every moment, work happens in an awesome manner with deadlines being met on time and interactions swinging between politics to soccer to project to .... I love this work environment!

Highlights of the week range from my cooking experiments which have subdued now that I have reached standards beyond the expectations of the finest chefs and cuisines, being caught by the police for cycling on the pedestrian track, withdrawing Money from German ATM's using the 'love me, love me not' protocol to last night's Mexican party.I realized that Mexico is another of the Wonderful places to go to despite being the epicenter of the Swine Flu.Also my first acquaintance here being from Mexico I had a soft corner for that :) and it was well worth it, especially the shredded chicken in (... that was the only identifiable thing in the otherwise delicious dinner).I met this guy called Kevin from France with an India connection living in Brittany and we had a great time discussing business Informatics and life in France,India,Spain and Germany.He told me about a better VoIP service with which you can almost call worldwide for free than SKYPE and I think its way better than anything else available so all students planning to travel over the world should buy some credit,it helps keep CONTACTS :).I also met this German Girl who just came from her exam and every weekend travelled to her home in Munich(Same-Same to BITS and Margao :|)Later into the night this friend of his from Palestine went for a night drive and dropped me home.I'm globe trotting every week!

..yeah and not to forget today just had its share of Ice Cream and Microsoft Surfaces(Must watch for someone who doesn't know about it), the best part of working in such a high-tech environment is you get to experience everything that would normally would have been restricted to people's gtalk status and news.

Clockwise from top left -Me :), Intentionally embosed pic of the party, BITS Pilani Goa Campus,Collage of Prachi and Me at Bastei in Saxony-Switzerland

Lastly I would like to thank all the 4 (+1 whoz sleeping currently, its late night!) in the pic above for everything this week(And of course plenty in the past and future too) :).The weekends still left, sometime someone nice asks me Y should i have all the fun?

Keep smiling and you'll find out...else add me on gtalk- Pratik Mandrekar, I like reading your smart status messages :)

P.S-All the text in a funny color or underlined as per your browser above can be clicked to access the corresponding entertaining content!

Cam Era

I finally bought my new digital camera today at the City Gallery.My first trip there was a walk through Fuggerei(Click Here and don't miss the video but there's plenty more that I would show you later like the boat trip and water wheels) which is the most amazing place I've been too and is the oldest existing settlement in europe(Around 2000 years).This time I went knowing exactly what I wanted to buy and aware of the fact that I was walking through a 2000 year hold settlement.

This one here helped me in deciding what I wanted.I knew that anything above 6 Megapixels was Perfectly fine and anything above that is almost redundant.Optical Zoom and not digital Zoom is what I should go for coz the later just enlarges pictures reducing photo quality while the former actually involves a lens manipulation.The ergonomics of the camera meant that I should go for something that should be able to be fixed in India in case something went wrong.Battery life,memory, video quality were some of the other qualities I had to filter for among the huge variety.

I got a salesman this time who informed me that the ones priced a bit lower use AA batteries that wear out soon while the ones priced a bit higher used rechargeable batteries and way better.Of course there were other high ended varieties like underwater shooting et all but they weren't in my budget.Before I proceed if anyone is coming to Germany then remember that Germany does not accept Visa or any other credit cards(There are just a handful exceptions).So then I had a selection of the most likely set of digcams I would choose from..there was kodak,sony cybershot(1 with Carl Zeiss (cheaper) and one with Sony Lens), Pansonic,Samsung,Olympus,Nikkon,Fujifilm,Canon and a few others which I did not consider. I checked out all and bought this one, a Samsung I70 which gave me everything I desired and plenty of add-on features like MP3,Textfile reads, WideScreen, Sliding Interface,Lightweight et all.Along with a 2 GB memory card,USB charger with AC/DC adapter,headphones,drives and a 15 Euro Special pouch and a lil' bit of bargaining I settled for a whole deal of 141 Euros(Around Rs 9300) which is way cheaper than what comparable ones were available in India.I even managed to get a Duty free exemption with a bit more talk.

I came to know an Indian neighbour who works for WIPRO and is working for a client in Augsburg for the past 1 year.he invited and treated me to an awesome Indian food and I learnt another set of things about the Sub-continent.Tomorrow's a holiday and I guess I'll be using that cam to click click n click...

...and why doesn't chrome fix the bug for facebook apps or vice versa? I had interesting predictions coming up, one app said I would fall in Love with someone whose name starts with 'A' and aaah..i would have know who it was lest for Google! (:O)

Want to know something legendary about this place? Find out here!

chao

Gute nacht!

Bowling Night

Well for the first time I had Italian Food made by Italians at this restaurant around the corner near the university.Great food, awesome people. T'was to be followed by bowling at the ABC Arena.We talked about the EU and why Turkey is seemingly the sick man of Europe and how everything works out there in bulgaria and bosnia et all.Well I met someone very interesting but I would comment on that only after a week of development.Well the city is seemingly unpolluted despite the huge number of cars and trams and tains and that's coz Germany promote's people to have solar panels on their rooftops and has stringent eco-management laws...psst I also heard some nuclear stockpile will be soon blowing up somewhere in the north and that's y Germany is shutting down its dependence on Nuclear power, well that dawned BARC'ing memories and I had fun discussing them with People.




For more pics click here

The Bowling was fun, I finished last first round and pretty much near the top with double strikes the next one, spent what I did when I was at Essel world, and plenty of other amazing things which I'm a bit tired to discuss..I bet i'll get dat new cam 2mrw and let d pictures describe more..i went to buy 1 and looking at the deals found it difficult to make a choice between a handycam and digcam..came back and read blogs and hopefully I should go for the digcam coz that's what I guess I need..

Chao

Gute Nacht

Photostream

I got lost, got random, went to the jungle, walked 2 hours, drank water from the river coz I got tired and reached some a zoo at the end where the lady let me in free coz I reached when it was about to close and camera ran out of steam(Atleast it started to work!)...I guess enough of verbose..now for the Pics..I love Augsburg n Bavaria n smthng else too that sits far away...Phew! Rest 4 later..and I lived the last 2 days without spending a single cent, well Intuition! Someone thought I was from Philiphines, Someone Impressed I was indian, someone by the fact that I was a student, the rest I managed...

View The Pics the day the camera started working@ Countryside and a few at the zoo

Tschus!

Kissing

Ideally Mumbai should have been the place I should have started from.There was an option of doing it starting in flight too as I watched 'The Reader'.Munich was so romantic that morning that well it had to happen but I had to wait...and wait...a few stations later, getting lost in the desperation to not miss it, I finally got it done...

Well its just been three nights here and don't strain your grey cells much for that 'coz the title refers to this beautiful town on my way to Augsburg.

For those who may stumble upon this while searching for summer internships or higher education, I'm on a DAAD funded WISE internship program in which I had to find a project of Interest and a host Institute.I chose this place called Augsburg which is in Bavaria and around 40 kms away from Munich.The universitat Augsburg's faculty of Informatik are involved in the Organic Computing project and I'm currently working on some specifications relating to deadlocks after reconfigurations and the details wouldn't make much sense to you.If you would like to know more about the Internship or the project mail me on pratikmandrekar@gmail.com.

Now continuing with myself, I arrived at the station at around some time close to noon, my watch had stopped working at this temperature and all other devices on me showed Indian time, so I just presumed it that way.However the sun shines all day here in Summer(like 6am-11pm) and so that was a bad presumption.

The streets were almost deserted but I was made comfortable here thanks to the guy with whom I would be working here ofcourse under the guidance of Prof. Dr.Wolfgang Reif and his team.My address to be:Hermanstr. 33a, H.no 30, Augsburg turned out be a room in proper european style house with a window facing an amazing garden and better than most hotel rooms I have lived in.I had my personal kitchen too and am still experimenting with cooking(Have managed my past 3 days of breakfast and dinner in there :) ).

Bavaria is an awesome place with the Bavarian Alps,Switzerland and Austria to the South and Paris et all to the west.The Romantic Road passes right through Augsburg and have a look at this for a rough idea of Augsburg(It's much more amazing though, the city was reconstructed after WW-II bombings and is one of the oldest settlements in Europe-An ideal place to experience europe and have the best of contemporary as well as rennaisance culture)The University is amazing too, have a preview here. I'm supposedly the only Indian studying here amid students from over 95 countries and it seems they have been receiving many applicants from Indians off late and well, lets c :p

I walked up to the university witha 4 euros(approx 250 bucks) map in hand exploring the streets.It took me 2 hours and then1.5 hours back another route.Phew!The next day I got myself a monthly pass on the tram.Either way the transport system is amazing and beautiful in all aspects and respects especially considering the fact that with little knowledge of german I could navigate evrything in German perfectly.The food's more of a choice I have to make based on the price on its appearance 'coz 95% of the times I have no idea what it stands for(I entered a store which was supposedly a Drugstore and picked up some baby food thinking its mayonnaise, fortunately the younger generation knows English and that helped me save a few euros!) but I love the cherry yoghurt pudding and ummm..I don't know what the rest of the stuff's called.

I'm sleepy now with all this cooking and hogging and hard-working and so am sleeping, dats enough for an intro I guess and yeah Augsburg's the place where Mozart spent most of his time and his father was born here, and so was Rudolf Diesel, the one whose engine runs your car...and remember this?



Its the castle you see in every walt disney movie, its not very far from here...prolly I'll be rock climbing, or kayaking at the olympic stadium or sun-bathing at the lake on campus or at the zoo or simply getting lost at one of the streets by now, but I need to catch by 400 winks before that..

chao

Guten Tag!