My Experiences in Austria - Part II

First day at McAfee, Linz office – The Keyboards

We were expected to reach office at 9:30 AM and surprisingly enough, we did manage to reach at the work place in time. Surprising, because we had had a long and tiring journey and it felt as if 15 hours of sleep wouldn’t have been enough. Reached office, greeted our colleagues and got all settled with the laptops. The manager of the Austrian team was ready with his training stuff and asked us to install operating systems on our machines so that setup could be done ASAP. We took the CDs and completed the installation successfully. People who have been doing setups would know what’s next. Yes, getting these systems on the network. We installed the network drivers and gave the IPs for all the systems. In order to check if the IPs were correct and pinging each other, I went to the DOS prompt and keyed in “ipconfig /all” (command used for checking IP and DNS). The command didn’t work fine and threw an error. “Arey!!” To my surprise, I could see the command typed in as “ipconfig -all” instead of “ipconfig /all”. Also when I started giving the Computer Name, I could not find “y”; then realized “y” was at “z” location and vice-versa. After some confusion and ingenious findings, we realized it was a German keyboard that we were using. Bizarre, at least for us! We never realized it before encountering this situation. We were experiencing a feeling of amazement and amusement. This was really a new and unexpected experience.
Wait, this is not the end of it. I reported this to one of my Austrian colleagues. Understanding the issue, he asked me “Chetan, what language do you speak??” Pompously, I said, “British English!!”. He was happy to note that, as he was a European. He handed over a new keyboard to me; I changed the Regional Settings in the Add Remove Programs and was happy using the same. After all, I could now type “ipconfig /all”, “y” and “z” was at the right places. But the pleasure was shorted lived. I could not find “@” and “#”. Poor me! After some analysis I realized that it was a “British Keyboard”. "Oh no!" That’s what I uttered in dismay and my colleague who was sited just behind me in the cube did not take too long to comprehend that what I required was a US keyboard and guided me on the whereabouts of the keyboard. I had to open up a rack that was untouched for some years, I believe, to find the US keyboard. I felt glad, a feeling I could only compare with a sentiment of attaining nirvana. (On second thoughts, nirvana is too much to say, but still). FYI, the keyboards we use are called “QWERTY” keyboards, for obvious reasons.

My experiences in Austria !!

It has been while after my trip to Austria and every time I meet any of my friends or relatives that I haven’t, after my visit, happens to ask me about my experiences. So I thought, why not make a diary entry of some sort describing the same. Here are a few, noticeable and funny incidences. Hope you too enjoy them reading.

You find Indians everywhere, almost

Yes, you might have heard many people saying this. I can cite three instances, where I felt the same way during my trip.

Here's the first one: This was on the first day. We had reached our hotel late in the afternoon and in the evening came down to the reception to check out if there were any restaurants nearby where we could have our dinner. Tamara, the receptionist, who had identified that we were Indians (when we registered our names in the hotel guests list) gave the name of two Indian restaurants where we could satisfy our tummies. One of them was “Hotel Taj”, the other being “Bombay Palace”. My manager didn’t commit the mistake of consulting me about the choice of eatery. Invariably we had to go to Bombay Palace, as the name would suggest. Reached Bombay palace and we were greeted with smiles and unbound Hindi words like “Namaskar!!, aaiye, kya khayenge??” . It was Avataar Singh, the owner of the restaurant who made us feel so important, it was a total esteem boost. We were more than happy to visit the café and enjoy Indian curries with delectable Austrian sweet dishes, especially the Apple Strudel. But, this so called “indianness” was not enough. While we were dinning, a group of 10 people came and sat on the table in our vicinity. We could make out they were Indians. My manager guessed that they were looking like Maharashtrians. Listening and then talking to them, we confirmed they were from Mumbai and everyone spoke Marathi. That was like an icing on the strudel. I exchanged notes with them and felt good. First day wasn’t bad after all.

The second one. It was on the weekend when we had been to Salzburg for the sightseeing. Salzburg is a very beautiful place near Switzerland. After the whole day of tourism we were dropped by our tourist vehicle to a bus station from where we had to take a bus to the railway station to catch the Eurail train back to Linz. We were carefully analyzing the chart at the bus stop to find out as to which bus would take us to the station. We knew hbf meant railway station in Deutsche. I could make out that bus no. 3 could go to our destination. My senior argued that it may also go to any other station on which I counter argued stating Salzburg was such a small town and having one railway station itself was too much to have. Our argument had started to heat up when one guy came from behind and politely said “Aap sahi keh rahe ho!! 3 number ki bus hi railway station jaayegi..” We realized that someone had just spoken to us in Hindi in a small town of Austria. Seconds later he disappeared as his bus had arrived at the bus stop. We looked at each other in some kind of shock but then happily waited for the bus number “drei”, “three” in German and reached the coveted destination. After this we had another argument which was based on the person’s nationality. Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi?? Don’t know?? Didn’t matter.

And the third one: This incident took place the day before we were supposed to leave for India. As per our schedule we had to catch a flight to Frankfurt from Linz, 6 o’clock in the morning. Since the hotel booking was on my name, I thought why not complete the check out formalities of the hotel, the night before we were supposed to leave. I was a bit skeptical about this; so thought of consulting Tamara (who was our fast friend by then) if this was possible. While going for dinner we stopped at the desk to meet a person other than Tamara. Didn’t matter, anyhow we had to ask him. I spoke to that guy and told him the case. He said “Koi nahi, sirjee, hum karlenge…aap khana shana kha lo!!” I replied “What??” He repeated the same thing. I could not comprehend what he was trying to say. I started looking at my companion, Sreeharsha. He too looked perplexed, then suddenly realized and said “Abey voh hindi mein baat kar raha hain..” I was highly surprised. I had understood that you can’t even understand a language you are used to talking everyday when you don’t expect anyone speaking the same. The guy never looked like an Indian, his style of speaking, his dressing sense and all never hinted that he was one of us. Anyhow, I was happy that he had agreed and it was possible for me to accomplish the check out stuff the same night. The next morning he was not at the reception and it was Tamara who bid us good bye. Funny and interesting incident isn’t it??

Watch out this space for some more experiences.....

Idli – 8th wonder of the world!!

I have been and am one of the greatest fans of idli like many of you and if you don’t agree that idli isn’t the eighth wonder of the world than I think you need to check your cognitive abilities. In fact, I would go ahead and assert that after James Watt invented the steam engine, the second best invention from steam has been idli only.

Morning 2 idlis with some sambar, podi and chatni makes your day. You can’t think of a better breakfast, once you’re addicted to this savory cake, as people christen it.

Even though I am such a promoter of Idli, you can’t ask me how to prepare that. I am best at eating only.

But if you are really interested in knowing the recipe here’s the URL that can get you to the coveted destination. How to prepare Idli: http://www.surfindia.com/recipes/idli.html

The good things about idli are:
1. Easy to cook.
2. You can prepare it quickly, if the batter is ready.
3. Eat it any time during the day!
4. No fat, calories or anything that’s unhealthy.

And if you are a firm believer of “Pet shant to dimaag shant” and “Pehle pet puja, phir kaam duja” then nothing better than idli to have.

So keep eating idli and keep rocking!