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Germany and France 200 |
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I am again embarked on a journey, this time on a train that will take me to a one-week cost accounting training in Karlsruhe, Germany. After 25 hours and three train changes, I arrive to my destination. From Timisoara to Budapest I shared the train compartment with a very enterprising Romanian woman. She studied biology in college and worked several years as a high-school teacher. The salary was very low, the work was not exactly what she wanted to do. She wrote to National Geographic saying that she wants to enlarge her experience and they offered her a three-month volunteer job in Washington state, in a remote research center on top of a mountain. When she came back, she opened her own business, a reseller for several Romanian factories. Several month ago, she read an add in a local newspaper saying that an international food chain is looking for a male manager for their chain in Romania. She phoned to the company and asked “why men only?”. “Because men are tougher”, was the answer. “I don’t agree with you, women can be also very tough”, she replied. She pleaded her cause with such passion that in the end she was the winner, competing with 27 other men. Now she was heading to her one-year training at a Hungarian branch of the chain. It is so refreshing to see that such focused and passionate people exist. My first stop is in Budapest Kelety P train station, four hours travel to see the beauty of a train station waiting room, home for pigeons flying around, with stains of pigeon guano on the walls and on some of the chairs. It is a home for homeless, several people speak loud with themselves, conferencing in Hungarian. A drunk woman is used from time to time by her boyfriend as a punching sack and no one seems to care. A guy that forgot to change his pampers walks around, leaving behind a trail of strong (French?!) perfume, making you wonder where the real toilet is. It is understandable that I had to go out of it. The station is filled with all kind of shops and I knew from friends that the personnel is kind enough to accept payments not only in Forint, the local currency, but also in Euro. I wanted to check if this is true and I asked what would be the price for a pizza in Euro. When I calculated the price in Forint and the Euro equivalent at the bank rate I saw that this kindness has a 70% surplus charge. The second class train carriage that takes me to Karlsruhe has adjustable seats with generous legroom. If you want to be quite sure you have a seat, you can book it in advance. What happens if you do not have a reservation, how can you find out if a seat is already taken? Very easy! On the window, next to each seat there is a note saying the trip legs already booked. Outside that interval, or if no note exists, the seat is yours to grab. On the walls there are electric outlets and many people use the travel time working on their laptops. Outside there is a white heavy fog, then the morning sun sheds a warm yellowish light on wooden hills, scattered towns and villages on the side of the tracks, with houses like in Hansel and Gretchel fairytales. Everything is neat, in order, houses look freshly painted, the grass is freshly mowed, factories have the crates and materials stacked in their back yard, like this is their purpose of existing. Impressive.
Karlsruhe is the headquarter of a business called ABAS, a producer of a very good Enterprise Resource Planning (comprehensive business managing) software. Recently, the Romanian business where I work as a consultant became ABAS partner. I have a lot of experience with business-related software, both written by others and created by myself, and I have a strong interest in the subject. That’s why I was sent for a one-week training at ABAS.
ABAS developed rules to achieve its efficiency and learning how to use the program is a “standard” process of 5 weeks. But I wasn’t a “standard” learner. I want to know out of real passion for something that I like, and before going to the 5 days training I could afford to take, I practiced and read the documentation, which I think, brought me at least to an acceptable level. I know that there is still a huge hill in front of me, but I hope I have figured the trail.
The “standard” training was attended by a people from many countries: Italy, Czech Republic, Romania, Hong Kong, Belgium, Swiss. One day my colleagues had a heated discussion where to place some files. One of them said “Put it where your dic is”. I’ve asked the guy “Do you know what d…means?”. “Yes”, he replied, “it is a file extension for dictionaries.” *** From Karlsruhe I took a train to Strasbourg, in fact to Kehl, a German city oposite Strasbourg on the other side of the Rhine. It was not a direct train, I had to switch trains somewhere in Appenweier. It was complete darkness when I arrived in Appenweier. I got out on the platform and, to my surprise, there was nothing there like a train station, I mean someone seemed to have stolen the building of the train station. There was just a sign indicating a direction to “Platform 9, Kehl”. I followed the rather circuitous trail for about 500 meters, wondering all the time if I’m doing the right thing. My only hope was that another woman came along with me, I said to myself, probably she knows what she is doing. Finally we arrived at the completely empty platform 9, and, again, no building on sight. I wanted to thank the woman that led me so well, but to my surprise she knew no German. Probably she was also thinking that I am the guy who knows the ropes and she felt happy that there is someone to follow. The train that came to take me to Kehl offered another surprise, its final destination was Strasbourg and I felt very lucky that I didn’t have to take another train or bus. **
These are long forgotten stories and the place is crammed today with little classy restaurants and souvenir shops. I liked so much to read the names of the dishes offered on chalkboards outside on the street. The names of dishes sound so exquisite in French. In Strasbourg, my friend’s mother-in-law prepared for me “potage aux potirons” (pumpkin soup), “poulet roti aux pommes-de-terre cuits et legumes” (roasted chicken with potatoes), “filet de porc mignion aux carots” (little pork steak with carrots). French cooks add many times a diminutive like “mignon” to stress that the food they make is delicate, not just a hunk of meat on your plate.
Not all the food has French names, German names are plentiful. It is normal, the population was once a mixture of French and German people. I say was, because if you walk the streets of little tourist interest or in a tram, you can see an incredible racial diversity: Arabs probably from Morocco, Tunis or Algeria, Chinese, Turks, Afro-Europeans (I tried to figure the politically correct term for European African-American who are no Americans and no more Africans). I am sure that in the crowd there were many East Europeans that I couldn’t detect by their skin color. There are also gypsies in Strasbourg. One day I waited for the tram when a gypsy girl of about 20 planted herself in front of me with a sign saying that she is dying of hunger and she wants some money. I asked her where is she from and she answered “Yugoslavia”. I said in French “I won’t give you any money, you have more money than me” and probably I was right. The next five minutes she pestered me pleading and imploring in all possible variations of voice, facial expressions and posture, trying to make a very public show and embarrass me. It was to no avail to ignore her, turn my back to her, or go away a few steps, she wanted to prove her mastership in the trade; but in the end she gave up. After a few minutes she came back to me and very determined said in French “I am from Romania”. I switched to Romanian and she said “I knew it. You are Romanian, that’ why you didn’t give me any money” and she left satisfied that she has an explanation and a useful learning experience. My conclusion was that French guys give money when submitted to shock treatment and the begging business must be a successful one. I may have gone to the wrong college. *** On my return trip, I first took a train to Offenburg, then to Karlsruhe. The train station in Karlsruhe was filled with drunk teenagers, beer bottles in their hand, waiving flags, probably arriving for some sporting event. The shouting, yelling and swaying gate didn’t bother the police at all. Only when one of them threw the empty beer bottle on the floor did the policemen tell the guy to clear up the mess. I doubt that things would be the same in US. After another change in Munich, I finally arrived next morning in Budapest. I had only one word in my mind, gulash. This is a typical Hungarian food and I had 4 hours to get one. I started to find a restaurant, and all were closed in the morning. Some said they open at 11:00, but this is only an intention not necessarily backed by facts. In the end, I went to a Chinese restaurant. When I will go to China I have to go to a Hungarian restaurant to have my gulash. Finally, after 31 hours and 5 trains, I made it home. Home, sweet home, how good it feels to be back here! December 8, 2004 Dorel Jurcovan |
Karlsruhe is a
very clean city, like all the other German cities I saw. I took with me
some shoeshine, just in case, and I never used it; the streets are too
clean. Still, the respect for law is less absolute compared to 15 years
ago. I saw a significant number of pedestrians crossing the street on the
red light.
The ABAS product was appealing to me from the first
moment I saw a video presentation about it, then I read a lot about it in
the product documentation. The week that I spend at ABAS made me really
fall in love with their software, their general concept. It is so close to
what I tried all the time to achieve when I wrote my own software programs, a
complete cover of the needs of the customer as he/she perceives them. ABAS
has more than 1500 implementations all over the world. Still, each customer
can have their “home-made” version. More than that, each individual user
can have a different view on the program. The effort to customize the
product doesn’t involve much effort, once you know the drill. The product is
updated yearly and each customer receives the updates. And it works in a
large variety of languages; a business can have offices in China, Romania
and USA and each of them sees the results in the local language. It is like
buying an Armani suit in a supermarket. 
There was one
thing that I appreciated during my non-standard training. I had the chance
to ask a lot of questions and the speakers, having rather specialized
knowledge, couldn’t answer everything. I was pleasantly impressed to see
that they readily admit what they do not know and they go find the person
who can give the correct answer. This only increased my confidence in a
future cooperation as they will not give me answers just to get rid of me.
The city
center in Strasbourg is a kind of an island between the river Ill and the
man-made canal, dug in medieval times for defense purposes. The area around
the point where the river and the canal meet is called “la petite France”,
the little France, one of the most important tourists attractions. Flowing
water always gives additional charm to a city. In Strasbourg the water
flows under nice bridges, past typical old Alsace houses, with an attractive
interlacing of blackened wooden beams on the facade, even flowing trough
houses and fortresses. Some of the houses were probably build on former
bridges and you can see the water disappearing into a house, to reappear as
a white foam cascade on the other side. Water-locks make the navigation
possible and tourists can board a glass-covered boat to enjoy the beauty of
the city from the river side.
The main horde of tourists is massed on the narrow
streets, groups drudging their feet behind the puppet carried on top of a
stick or an umbrella by a guide. Such a guide told
her group the origin of the name, the little France: the French lived here
during German ruling. Another local guy told me a different story. At the
very beginning it was a leper-house. Later, the place became very
attractive for millers and tanners that needed a lot of water for their
work. Many houses still have roofs with large vents in it; the attic was
used as a shed to keep hides for drying. The smell must have been awful.
But the place was not devoid of attractions. “Les putaines’, women that
preferred to love their fellow human being for a reward on earth rather than
in heaven, offered their services here.
The food in Alsace
is heavy, with a lot of calories, lot of meat, animal fat, fatty cheese and
sour cream. One typical dish is “choucrute”; “chou” means cabbage in
French, “crut” comes from the German kraut, that means cabbage. A good
English translation would be “cabbage-cabbage”, which is in fact what the
dish contains: a lot of saurkraut with fatty meat and sausages. Yummy! “La
charcuterie”, the meat products, are represented by “le jambon fumee” smoked
ham and an impressive range of sausages and salami. They are so attractive
and they smell so nicely of smoke that I think it would be rather difficult
to be a vegetarian here. I ate bread that has chopped lard mixed in the
dough and I think it has an excellent taste. “La tarte flambee”, another
specialty, is a very thin layer of dough covered with cheese, sour-cream and
chopped lard that is cooked in an oven at high temperature for five
minutes. Very tasty!
This heavy food may not be the first choice of the
healthy conscious person. Is it really disastrous for your health? My
friend’s mother-in-law is 80, and ate all her life only
the local food, is a very pleasant woman with a perfectly clear mind and an
extraordinary capacity to express herself on a very large variety of
subjects. On the wall of her kitchen there is a “post-it” board where she
has, you will never guess it, a large list of internet addresses. One year
ago, she received a laptop as a present and she now sends all her
correspondence via email and she surfs the net for cooking recipes or other
interesting facts. She is a real enthusiast of Google. I would like to
have the state of mind she enjoys when I will be 80.