The openSUSE Conference 2009 on Germany was my first overseas trip. A small twitter style update about it is:
Pre-Travel- The VISUM (German for VISA) processing for the Germany trip began very late, owing to the budget discussions. At last, Thanks to Zonker and Nat Friedman, all these issues were settled and the budget sources were found.
- YSR's death caused grief to various people in various ways and I was no exception. My first visa interview date became a state Government holiday because of it and so visa interview got post-poned
- Got the visa approved just two days before the actual travel date and began my travel (and purchases)
- Big Thanks should be given to Alexia Henrie, Jacqueline Junghanns, Vijayalakshmi Sharma for all their timely help
Travel- The flight started at 2:00 am from Bangalore. Suresh and Nikanth who came with me clarified my few inquisitive doubts. After long travel and a two hour wait in the cold Paris airport, we reached Nuremberg at around 5:00 pm local time. Somehow I did not feel one bit sleepy.
- Nuremberg is a lovely place and I immediately fell in love with it. It is not a crowded, traffic-filled modern city but a small city with lots of green fields, clean air and water. The day we landed the sun was shining brightly, much to my relief.
- There is a castle in the city center and every wall of this castle and every building around this castle has a story behind it. My friend taking me through this trip patiently explained me all the stories in detail.
- Met a lot of people in the conference. The openSUSE conference had people coming from all corners of the world - Australia, China, India, Europe, England, US, Mexico to name a few.
- It was good to meet all the great people of the openSUSE community in person. Some of the people were drastically different than I have expected.
- I was
interviewed by Sirko Kemter (gnokii) for radiotux. The audio podcast is
available here. Listening to this audio clip helped me understand the things that I need to improve in my future interviews ;-) It is indeed a great honour and I should thank Sirko for this.
- Attended a lot of talks. But my "Session of the conference" goes to a talk with a noble purpose. The unconference session on Accessibility by Stephen Shaw and Bryen Yunashko is the one that I felt the closest to my heart. It motivated me a lot to contribute to a11y. Let us see what I can do.
- After the conference I spent about 3 days in SuSE offices in Nuremberg. The facility is fantastic and ~3 people get a private office with a glass wall on a side. The whole building is naturally lit and aesthetically designed. It is a real A+ facility.
- The Internet connection in Germany is the fastest I have ever been. For someone coming from India (where we have to still pay a fortune for 2 mbps connection) when the speedtest site showed me download speed of 64 mbps, I was awestruck.
- I did not have much problem with food. Contrary to what I expected, Not everyone in the western world is a meat-eater it seems.
- The Germans seem to eat breakfast like a king and their dinner like a pauper ;-) The breakfast is too extensive with a huge variety and the dinner is very light and with less choices. (may be a flawed observation)
- Germans prefer to call their homeland - Deutshland. The term "Germany" is given by british people who have the habit of altering the names they cannot pronounce. We have these cases in India as well.
AutobahnThe thing about Deutshland that impressed me the most is:
Autobahn . It is an engineering wonder. It can be roughly compared to the national highways in India for purpose - but way beyond comparison in terms of quality. The suggested speed in the Autobahn is 130 kmph and everyone exceeds this. There are _no_ speed limits on these roads and you can go as fast as you can. Travelling in a sports car in this road felt like flying. The roads and traffic lights are so well planned that I didn't find a single speed breaker.
The first thing that impresses any Indian going out of India is the awesome roads. The congress primeministers who ruled India for more than 50 years and travelled to Europe and USA were able to find Girlfriends but not the fact that good roads are vital for a country. Thankfully we had one Mr. Vajpayee who realized the need for world-class roads, after more than 50 years of self-governance.
Post-travelAfter 9 days of trip, I found that: Sorkkame endralum adhu num oorai pola varuma (Even Heaven cannot come close to hometown). : It is such a nice feeling to be back in India and feel the humidity in the air, hear the horn sounds again, and feel the warmth of the merciless Sun. I believe The lack of sun and the high-cold is probably the reason for the low population (humans and insects) in the western world ;-)
Some of the photoes are published in
my facebook page.
