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

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!

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!

Bavaria

FIsh and Turkey :)

Now for some pics too