it has been quite a while since I posted something. I would like to use this post to explain to some extent what kept me so busy over the last couple of weeks and thank some wonderful people that I had the pleasure to work with.

G8/G20 Youth Summit

The project that dominated my life over the last couple of weeks was certainly the G8/G20 Youth Summit. I already told you about the project in some older blog posts so I’m not going to do it again. In brief: The summit is the youth equivalent to the real G8/G20 Summit and seeks to give our generation a voice in the process that is hopefully going to be heard.

In Germany, Model G8 Germany e.V. is responsible for the entire organization, preparation and coordination of the German delegation’s participation to the summit. As discussed in my last entry, we went through a pretty straight forward selection process that led us to three highly qualified candidates per position. The impartial jury had the difficult task to find the best delegation possible.

Early February the selected candidates began their preparation. Being the Head of Summit Organization, I started together with a friend of mine to prepare them. The delegates had to come up with a variety of tasks and each monday a telephone conference call would bring all of them together.

Aside from preparing the delegation, a huge amount of time went into organizational stuff around the summit itself and the workshop we organized in Berlin last weekend. In order to prepare our delegates as best as possible, we arranged for them to meet not only representatives from the real ministries, but as well from the Sherpa-Office in the chancellery. Moreover, we managed to organize within 4 weeks a pretty well-received public event, where we presented our delegation to the public and had a panel discussion about the topic “G8, G20 or UN – Who’s going to rule the world?”. The panel encompassed a variety of distinguished panelists such as Prof. Dr. Hüfner (DGVN), Dr. Christian Humborg (Transparency International), Vincent Klassen (Canadian Embassy) and of course “our” chancellor, Nicole Bogott. Andre Wilkens (Stiftung Mercator) moderated the discussion and afterwards a reception gave everybody the possibility to get in touch with the delegates.

The public event – as well as the workshop for the delegation – took place in the HUMBOLDT-VIADRINA School of Governance, which we won 5 weeks ago as a partner. The school provides us not only with an office and facilities for purposes such as the workshop but has been a outstanding partner in every aspect. Only the cooperation gave us the opportunity to create such a great time not only for our delegates, but as well for our guests.

Both, workshop and event, went really well and happy faces were all around. However, basically Flo and I did the entire organizational part and I have to admit, I really really underestimated the workload. Managing the contacts with the school, the ministries, the chancellery, the delegates and others that were involved really challenged me and my time management to an extent that my “hobby” turned into a full-time job. To that aspect you’ve to know that we’re a very small team that is trying to prepare the delegation as best as we can – but we really lack personal. Over the last couple of weeks it was normal for me to start working for the workshop/event/delegation at 9am up to 12pm with a minor lunch break. Afterwards I would research and write for another 2-3 hours on the India report…

The India Report

Many of you know that I spend three month in India last year and conducted a research project on e-waste. While the presentation in class took place in late January, the report, jointly written by three friends of mine and me, was due this Friday. Having been buried with all the work described above, I used nearly every free minute I got to read through studies and reports to add substance to the interviews I conducted back in Delhi. By the time I started writing, I was way behind my schedule and thus ran into really big time problems. Not only did I start to sleep only a few hours per day, but as well the quality of my (english) written work suffered a lot due to working under constant time-pressure. For the report, the US, EU and India were analyzed and while I focussed on India, we had to come up with a joint report. While working together with the others was really awesome, it’s always a challenge to coordinate the work of four people into one coherent report. Accordingly we had set ourselves deadlines that I unfortunately did not make. Thus, as being the responsible person to do the final touches on the report in terms of layout, I ran into huge trouble by the end of last week. The only way to keep the deadline on Friday for me was to reduce my sleeping time again down to three hours… I did not eat anything throughout the entire day, left my room only once for taking a shower and was basically nailed onto my desk for 15 hours. Somehow I made it but when I finally left my room to get something to eat and drink I was shivering for quite some time…

My Internship at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Well, on top of all the mentioned things I’m currently doing an internship at the PIK. When I started back in January I already made an agreement with my boss that I would only work half of the week to be able to do the above mentioned stuff. However, as you probably figured by now that did not work out at all. While I tried hard to make it work, it was just not feasible to come up with the paper I was expected to write for the PIK. To this end I have to say that I’m really really lucky to have a very nice boss that agreed to the “output counts” way of doing it and gave me huge leeway. While I managed to research for the paper and read through a lot of reports and studies (I’m going to write about China’s domestic climate policies) I did not manage to write a single word until now. While my internship would normally end in two days, I’m very happy that I got an extension over a month so I’m now going to spend all my time on China… – well not all, the summit is in May in Vancouver, so I will still be busy with the preparation too, but not as much as in the past.

Conclusion

Well, I think you agree with me when I say that I was way to optimistic in terms of what I can do in three month, really underestimated the work that I would have to do and thus reached my absolute limit. I have not seen friends “just for a beer” in weeks and probably some of you already wondered why they haven’t heard from me for such a long time. I’m very sorry for that and I promise that I will get in touch with you anytime soon

Moreover there are a few people that deserve a big thank you as well as an apology. First of, Alex, Alex and Yvonne, you are just awesome! I could not have wished for a better team to do the project report and I think we did an awesome job. Moreover, the Model G8 Team needs to be congratulated for what we achieved. The biggest credit goes to Flo who saved my ass more than a thousand times and was the best co-worker I’ve ever worked with! Just as much Flo did, everybody else of the team rocked over the last few weeks, especially Jessi, Nick, Dana, Mareike and Inken. Guys, you are just as crazy as I am and I love you for that!

Having said that I have to apologize to the before mentioned people. Having been that stressed, I somehow arrived at a point where I lost my normally diplomatic way of communicating. I know that I may have given you the feeling to be condescending (which I never intended to be) or was very dominant (which I certainly was) when I saw the necessity to get stuff done. I already told you that I am very very sorry about that but I wanted to take this opportunity again to say that I know that my behavior was not always appropriate and that there’s no excuse for that. Still I am thankful and really happy to have you all as friends and am always open to constructive criticism and a kick in the ass when necessary

With that, I look forward to further work together with all of you – hopefully under less stressed circumstances

Have a great week and enjoy!

Philip

I’m real sorry for this redundant excuses of mine for not being able to keep up blogging, but I just and plain simply wasn’t able to or had other things to do… As you know, I came back to Germany on the 16th of December and since then I think I have had only one day, where I did not see anybody in terms of meeting friends or family (though I enjoyed that very much) or worked like nothing good…

New Year…

While I had planned to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Berlin, my plans changed while being in a little village close to Hamburg at Natasha’s place. As I did not had any real plans on what to do in Berlin, her idea to celebrate the new year together with her and a friend of ours, Fride, was gladly take up. Thus instead of hanging around at some anonymus party in Berlin, I spent some great days with the girls. We prepared a fantastic menu for the last dinner in 2009 and got very relaxed into 2010 – perfect

Getting back into my life…

Since I arrived in Berlin the “real life” hit me quite hard. While my internship at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research started off very well (in terms of everybody being nice and pretty laid back), my other activities kept me quite busy… While I’m not going to outline all the stuff going on, I think this weekend is explanatory:

Friday I started the day trying to solve a hell lot of problems connected to the session of the jury, which is going to take place next Friday here in Berlin. As many of you know I’m working for Model G8 Germany being the Head of the Summit Organization. Our deadline for the applications to be part of the delegation2010 was the 31st of December 2009. Until today all the received applications got peer-reviewed and rated by our team, because the independent jury will only get three candidates for each of the nine positions. Thus we had to figure out, which three. Meanwhile on Friday, we neither had a proper jury nor a room to accommodate them. Friday afternoon I attended a workshop organized by 360° – the journal I’m working for – on PR, which was extremely useful. To make it short, after dinner I worked until half past two to transcribe interviews I did in India for my university project.

Saturday me and Marius – the guest I accommodated during the meeting of the members of 360° – got up at seven to be at the venue in time. The first part of the day was dedicated to review what had happened over the last year with 360° and the question, who would candidate for the two open positions in the steering committee besides Marius. I had been asked beforehand to do it but denied due to time-constrains. Still, at the session my name was raised by a lot of people who said a lot of nice stuff about me To make it short, I resisted the temptation and finally, with Tine and Inga, we found two very capable nice girls who are now heading 360° together with Marius After a quite short dinner I got back home in order to work on the interviews again, while my guest went out partying with the other folks…

Sunday morning I finished the last interview before moving over to the breakfast with the crew of 360°, which was followed by an intense but productive round of discussions. I left early in order to power nap for 2 hours and then started again to work on getting all the data of the peer-review process in order. Unfortunately, only half of my team got the deadline right and some didn’t pay attention to my orders on how to do it – resulting in more work. Thus I worked until half past two this morning until I had all things done. A big thank you goes to the ones who helped me during that process and took over the work others should have done!!!

This morning we now finalized the list of candidates for the jury session and already send it off. The jury has now 6 quite qualified members and we’ve a room Moreover I finally got in touch with the office of the chancellor so that I can coordinate my planning with them for the workshop that is supposed to happen in March to prepare the delegates for the real summit in May Afterwards I met with my project group in order to coordinate our presentation which is going to be due in 11 days…

So that’s it. Unfortunately I have not been able to meet a lot friends here in Berlin since I returned and I’m sorry for that, but I hope that if you read this post, you’ll understand why. I hope that I’ll have more time after the jury session on Friday…

I hope you’re doing fine and will get in touch once I find a free minute to do so.

Take care, Strothi

over the last weekend I experienced the most intense shock I’ve had for quite some time… While I was visiting the Amber Fort in Jaipur together with Ana I was taking lots of pictures and as the sun was shining, I had my Lens Hood on the objective which turned out to be essential…

Ana and me went through the Fort and at one point we were going down a small stairway when I suddenly lost my balance and crashed full force down onto the stairs… As Ana was in front of me, I guess I did not see the sand on the stairs due to her shadow, thus stepped right on the sand and boom… I had my D90 in my right hand and thus tried not to land on it… Instead I landed with my full weight on both elbows (ouch!) and next thing I heard was a real ugly sound of breaking plastic… Totally in panic I turned around to see that the Lens Hood had broken into two pieces BUT neither the D90 nor the objective seemed to be damaged

Still being under shock, really hurt, I got up to check upon the D90 and focused on the next visible thing: An exit sign. After I had checked that the D90 took the picture as wanted I felt relieved but saw some Indians standing next to the sign who had thought that I was taking pics of them and therefore started to pose for me… Somehow I managed to make a few pics in order to satisfy them and then walked a bit shaky away…

Gosh, I just don’t want to think about the camera being broken and am unbelievably relieved and happy that I used the Lens Hood. I guess when the cam touched ground it did so first with the Lens Hood which, due to its breaking, took most of the energy and thus saved the objective and body

Next item to shop: A new Lens Hood

Take care, Strothi

BTW: I’m fine, got a little scratch and my left elbow is still not entirely alright, but it’ll be soon!

as promised here some impressions of our trip to Jaipur After I had successfully convinced Ana to finally leave Delhi we had to take a train early on Saturday and catch one back to Delhi right the next day as Ana had to work Friday and Monday whereas I’m really flexible in terms of when and where to work… As the train to Jaipur needs 5,5 hours from Delhi, we opted to start on Saturday at half past four in the middle of the night in order to reach Jaipur in the morning.

Catching that train became a little tricky: I had ordered a cab to be at my place at half past three so that we would have enough time to get to the station, but in contrast to all the times before, it just didn’t show up. So I called the driver, but his number wasn’t working. A few minutes later the driver called me and it became clear, that he had no idea where to go due to a severe lack of being able to communicate in english! My Hindi skills didn’t help us much as well so I told Ana that we should just go to the Market. As he wasn’t there I pulled her further to the only open gate in my area and luckily there he was… But that wasn’t the end of the story. On our way to the station I already had a feeling that I should have checked twice for the right station, but the ticket was in my backpacker in the trunk. Guess what, having 25 minutes left I found out shortly after our arrival at New Delhi Train Station (NDLS) that the train would leave from Old Delhi (DLI). Great… But remembering my adventure with Navarun a few weeks back I was sure to still be able to make it. Some lucky driver got hold of me and charged me about ten times the price of the way but at that moment all I wanted was to get us to the station. Sitting in the car, I was a little shocked to see the remaining time and thus prepared myself to not reach the station in time only to find out later that the clock in the car was ten minutes ahead of time…

Finally we reached the station, got into our wagon and started our journey The train had beds to sleep on as you can find them as well in Germany, though I was a bit too long for them… Still, Ana and me did the best out of it When we were supposed to arrive time-wise in Jaipur, I asked a guy whether the next station would be Jaipur. He replied “yes” but didn’t mention, that it was not the “central station” but the one before. As the hotel had said that the walk from the station to the hotel would be a ten minutes walk we opted for doing that, not knowing that a) we were at the wrong station and thus b) the map couldn’t help us. Finally I got that we had gone off at the wrong one and hailed a rickshaw driver who finally brought us to our hotel…

After this kind of stressy/chaotic journey we were very happy to find the hotel to be a great place! Especially the restaurant on the rooftop was a very nice spot to chill and enjoy great food. So in case you’re going to Jaipur, stay at “Hotel Pearl Palace” or stop by at the restaurant! After we finally got into our nice room, we took some rest and then started off to see the “Pink City”. Everybody had told us about “Old Jaipur” and its beauty so we thought that it was a good idea to walk there and grasp a bit of the atmosphere in town – stupid thought!

Walking over to Old Jaipur turned out to be a quite longer walk than expected plus Old Jaipur was kind of really disappointing. We had an Old Jaipur in our minds with calm little streets and nice architecture. Guess what, while indeed everything was “pink”, there was so much noise, traffic and people on the street that caused us to dislike it. The only plus: Within half an hour we met three very nice locals that gave us good hints on what to do and what not and so we decided to drive out of the city to the “Water Palace”.

Well, now you see my pics which look astonishing, still the Water Palace itself was unreachable thus nothing big to do. Luckily I pulled Ana over to some kind of a temple further up the street and that was really great. Over there, the atmosphere was super relaxing, lots of nice people and nice architecture – YEAH As we spend the entire afternoon over there I was lucky enough to take some night shots with my D90 and in these moments I know why I spend that much money for my camera… We ended the day on the rooftop of our hotel enjoying a great dinner and fell pretty much being dead into the bed…

After a very relaxed morning we decided to go to the “Amber Fort” which is a bit outside of Jaipur. The Fort itself was really great to see and we had a great time over there – with a small exception… In order to avoid the chaos from the day before we got back to our hotel in time and went to the right, the central station The way back went flawless and we arrived home safe and sound My personal success story was, that some guy who travelled with us was quite interested into the stuff I was reading and doing (sorting pics/reading german news) while trying to kill the remaining hours on the way back. As he wasn’t speaking any English we had to communicate in Hindi. And what shall I say, with my limited Hindi skills, my little notebook from class and lots of helpful gestures we talked for about one and a half hours over Jaipur, India, Delhi and Germany!!! Kind of strenuous, but really great! In Jaipur one of the guards had told us some details after he had found out that I’m speaking Hindi as well and I actually managed to understand it quite well!

Alright, now we’re back in Delhi, working… Today I send out a few e-mails in order to do some interviews for my project and already got 2 confirmed – great. What starts to bother me more and more is that I have to start of preparing myself to leave Ana, Delhi and India today in two weeks!!! That’s going to be hard, as I really would like to stay here for some time, but that ain’t possible (even though soooo many tell me to just do so). But once being back in Germany right from the first day I’ve each day up to x-mas planned with work/fun stuff and in January I will start working for the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research while doing all the usual stuff aside from that. Guess once I hit German ground, my “chilling and relaxing-time” I had here in Delhi is going to be over for the following half year. So many things to do, so many things to think about, so many uncertainties… Wait and see. The only thing that is for sure: It’s not going to be boring… (But did it ever get that far anyways…?)

Take care, Strothi

I thought I should share again some “Indian Experiences” with you guys As some might have read on twitter or facebook, Ana and me recently went to a wedding! That has been an awesome experience, as Indian weddings are way different then the European ones. Down here, right now it’s “wedding season” and no kidding, never ever I’ve seen so many weddings taken place as right now around me. I actually stopped counting even the ones in my neighborhood, as there are simply way too many Indians that apparently want to get married…

Alright, so when Ana arrived here a couple of weeks ago, she told me: The one thing I really wanna do in India is going to a wedding! While I’m normally known for my organizational skills, I somehow doubted to be able to get my hands on an invitation easily. Guess what, next day I was given one by a good friend of mine! Strike

So before going to the actual wedding, shopping had to be done, as we wanted to be dressed appropriately! While I don’t like shopping that much, it was ok and – considering to be shopping with a girl – a rather fast process Now I think it’s better let pics speak – many of you might have seen them already. This is what we bought:

Isn’t Ana looking just gorgeous? I love my dress as well and look at my shoes… So we went to the wedding fully dressed up Indian style just to find out that a lot of people either didn’t care at all what they were wearing, wore casual stuff or dressed up very well. On top of that, you could see people dressed up in Western, Indian style and somewhat in between…

The whole thing took place at a very nice venue, the Officers Club here in Delhi. Just imagine, they handed out invitations to 1000-1500 people and they all wanted to eat and drink – for free! The food was really good, entirely vegetarian but encompassed a broad variety of Western and Indian dishes So even before the happy couple was on scene, everybody was busy eating…

My friend gave me a call to get out of the venue to see the “Barat”, a tradition where the groom rides to the venue. Well, riding refers only to the “sitting on the horse”, as many people dance in front of him, thus the whole group moves about 10 meter in 5 minutes… When I was about to take some pics I was spotted by a family member of my friend who pulled Ana and me right in front of the whole parade… Now we had to dance Moreover, before entering the venue there’s a ceremony, where the male members of the grooms family give a bloomy neckless to the members of the brides family and vice versa. Guess what, suddenly someone pulled me right into the middle, gave me one of these necklesses and then I gave it to some guy from the brides family… I’d call that “being fully integrated” Later we found out that they probably thought that I was a friend of the groom who had studied in the US, whereas I did not know him but his cousin

After we “survived” the ceremony to enter, we enjoyed the great food and just chilled a bit. To our disappointment, nobody was up for dancing and the whole thing remained pretty calm. But that helped getting to know my friends family…

After another ceremony, where the bride and groom do the “neckless hand-over” themselves, a “photo-show” started, where everybody wanted to have a pic with the couple. Now you might wonder, why the bride looks so sad on all the pic. Well, I was told that a) she has to look “not too happy” (no idea why that though) and b) the whole wedding ceremony started on Monday, the Barat I’m just telling you about on the following Sunday, so I guess she was a bit tired and fed up with everything as well…

To our surprise, the couple wasn’t married by then: The whole wedding process started at around 1:30 am on Monday lasting for at least another two hours. Interestingly, even before the ceremony started, the majority of the guests were gone! It was basically only Ana, me and the family members who were still there to see, so we decided to trust into the couple (that they would actually really get married ) and left the wedding

All in all it was a fantastic experience, just the lack of dancing was a little disappointing. Oh by the way, I love my dress and look forward to the next costume party outside of India…

Take care, Strothi

as many of you asked me “So, how’s your project going?” I figured I should write a little bit about the project itself, what I’m doing here, what I will do and what problems have occurred so far…

Well, basically what I’m doing here is nothing else than working on a paper. The difference this time is only that I’m not basing all my research on the literature I find but rather try to widen the scope through interviews with stakeholders. My topic is e-waste and thus I read so far lots of documents that deal with e-waste in general or in India in specific. The question I try – together with my project group – to answer is, whether the Basel Ban (an amendment to the Basel Convention on Transboundary Shipments of Hazardous Wastes) provides an sustainable and effective mean to the problem of e-waste shipments into developing countries. To this end, it is crucial for us to have a database on which we can draw conclusions. From what I’ve found so far, the biggest problem is that simply no reliable data is existing that could be used. Thus what I now gonna do instead of dealing with national data (that doesn’t exist) is trying to assess the situation here in Delhi and down in the south, in Bangalore and Mumbai. This is important, as there is no formal sector present in Delhi but a huge informal sector treating the e-waste. In Bangalore and Mumbai some projects are running to transform the sector into a formal one, thus I hope to do a comparison between the two.

Aside from that being here I learn a lot about India, its people and cultures, which is to me as important as to get the project done! To this end, speaking the language of the country you’re in is essential and that’s why I started learning Hindi right after I arrived. It’s not an easy language to learn, but I get better and better every week and I’m really happy that I’ve reached the point that I can argue in Hindi with the Rickshaw drivers and moreover, approaching them in Hindi makes bargaining way easier as they figure that I’m not a “dumb tourist” I’ve Hindi twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday for 2 hours. Last time our teacher (a nice Russian women, teaching us Hindi in English… ) started to write down everything only in Devangari, the written language for Hindi. Ouch, I’d say I can half the alphabet by now (the whole got 42 letters) and I guess I really have to learn the rest of it fast in order to keep up with the pace we’re having… Now, being only 3-4 in class, it really matters whether you learned the things from the class before or not – other than that you’re lost! So I’ll have to start learning for real at home and not just do it the “It’ll work out somehow without actually learning”-way

Alright, tomorrow I gonna get a totally different perspective on Delhi as Ana and me decided to go for the “Walk into the street life of Delhi”, which is organized by the Salaam Balak Trust, a local NGO some friends work for. Thus I’ll get an insight into Old Delhi from the perspective of a street-kid. I guess that’s going to be very interesting and I’ll tell you about it afterwards

Take care,

Strothi

it’s been really a long time since I wrote about my life over here despite so many interesting things happening around me. So I’m going to get things back on track over the coming days Basically what kept me from writing was Ana, who arrived in Delhi  Tuesday two weeks ago. A friend of mine asked me whether I could take a little bit care of her during the first couple of days being here and thus I offered her to stay at my place until she would find a nice accommodation. So before she arrived, I asked her whether she would want to go to Agra together with me to see the Taj Mahal. I booked the tickets and guess what, Tuesday she arrived, Wednesday we went off to Agra

The train was scheduled to start at 6:15 in the morning and thus we had to get up around 4. I didn’t sleep at all, as I normally don’t go to bed before 2 and thus couldn’t sleep despite lying in bed for quite some time… The train to Agra was really good, it had enough space, provided us with good food and arrived in time! Arrived at the station we chose to take a driver for the entire day that (750Rs = 10€). He was really nice and carried us not only around, but gave us helpful hints for the Taj and taught us a little history lesson

First we went to the Taj Mahal and what shall I say, it’s impressive. Not so much from the inside, but more from the outside, combined with the intense atmosphere in the morning – great. It’s hard to describe and thus I advice you to check out the pics we took.

Next we went to see how the marbel is actually treated to look as it does at the Taj and afterwards we learned about handmade carpets (did you know that the color of a handmade carpet changes depending on from where you look at it?). After this little “commercial” trip we went on to see the Red Fort. It’s pretty big and impressive and definitely worth visiting. Together, Ana and me shot 540 pics… I uploaded the best 50 to SmugMug, so you should check them out!

After a very nice lunch, we asked our driver what we could do next. It was 4pm and as the opening times of everything are “From Sunrise to Sunset” and it gets dark at 5pm, there was nothing else to look at (at least not in Agra itself, as the town is not only really polluted, but as well pretty ugly…). Anyway, he drove us to a little temple which was nice to check out but didn’t help killing the 4 remaining hours we had until our train would leave.

So what to do? Well, let me put it like this: The next half hour ended up to be a verbal stress test for me… What had happened? The driver proposed to bring us to a jewelry store to check out some nice stones and as we had no other real option we agreed. Being in the shop, the first ten minutes were great, seeing the stones and stuff. But then he showed us his “art” and Ana showed some interest for a really nice neckless. So at one point, the guy asked her: “So, how long have you been together.” And without a second to think about she replied “5 years!”. Guess what, now all the attention was on me as being 5 years together, it was clear for the guys that I would have to buy it for her… To make a 20 minute argumentative fight short, I had a real hard time to maintain my politeness but get out of the store without buying anything… While I had to struggle with the two guys in the shop giving each their best to convince me, Ana had fun playing the “Pleeeaaaaaase, it’s really nice!”-card on me…

Finally we arrived back at the station more than an hour in advance just to sit down, have a coffee and relax. The train back to Delhi was on time but arrived with a delay of 45 minutes (which is good for Indian standards… ).

To conclude: Agra sucks, but the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort are really worth seeing. It’s been a long and intense day but overall great

Okay, that’s for now. More stories soon to come

Stay tuned, Strothi

it’s been a week since I told you about my awesome Diwali so it’s time for a little update on “living in India” Actually last week nothing really special happened. I tried to work in the library, had language class and enjoyed my time. The only reportable thing was my try to book tickets to Agra.

Since I’m healthy again and actually close to hit the “bergfest”, thus half of the time being here, I thought I should finally start making travel plans and get out of Delhi. So I opted to go to Agra for a day and see the Taj Mahal. I actually wanted to book the ticket online, but after I had spend quite some time on finding the right trains, I wasn’t able to book: Neither one of my two visa cards would be accepted, as they are not “verified by visa”. This new system introduced by Visa some time ago has not been implemented by german banks so far and thus booking online was no option anymore. BUT my friend Navarun came up with the great idea to use the “Travel Agent” of the institute I’m working with. To make a long story short, 2 hours later I finally got my ticket and thus I’ll travel to Agra on Wednesday. Great, but even better: I won’t travel alone! A good friend of an old friend of mine is coming tomorrow to Delhi to do some research for her thesis and even though I haven’t met her in person yet, we decided (via e-mail) to travel to Agra together. Moreover, me being the nice guy, she’ll be staying at my place for a couple of days while searching for an apartment, thus I guess I gonna have a great week

Alright, from future back to last weekend. Actually it was great. While I had no real plans except of working a bit on various things and check out a festival at Teri University, Navarun called me early in the morning on saturday to tell me that he was going to the University as well and asked, if he could stay at my place afterwards. Thus, my “finally let’s do some work” plans vanished Vrishali, Navarun and me met and drove to the campus where we arrived right in time to get good seats for a panel on “youth and sustainability” that encompassed not only an Indian Minster, the Swiss Ambassador and other distinguished persons, but as well Dr. Pachauri, Chancellor of Teri University and Chair of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)! As some of the panelists said, this guy is a “rockstar” to journalists who are interested in climate change, but to everybody else dealing with the issue probably as well With the exception of the Ambassador’s speech, all the others were refreshingly interesting and thus I enjoyed my time. Moreover, I managed to pose two questions to Dr. Pachauri -> me being very very happy

Another thing that really made my day: Ripping me off failed As you know, I stayed the first couple of days on campus. Last week I got the invoice for that and believe it or not, they tried to charge me four times the initially communicated amount of money! So I wrote them an e-mail asking about the difference but became no answer. Now, being on campus again, I ran into the responsible person and was told that there “has been a confusion” and that I would only have to pay the initially stated amount of money! Yeah, that’s actually 100€ less

Now, aside from the panel there was lots going on on campus. The festival (Aahvaan – the awakening call) was meant to celebrate the 10-year existence of the University as well as to raise awareness for environmental issues. As it was a festival open to other Universities as well, a lot of people were there Moreover, a lot of competitions were going on. Be it theater, music or other arts, everything was there Even though I did not understand much of the theater played by the different student groups, I understood the main ideas behind their plays and as many of the students were really good actors, it was fun to watch.

At one point, Navarun came to me and told me that he had to accompany a relative of his supervisor (to which he’s rather close) to the railway station and proposed that I should join, so I would know on Wednesday where to go. I agreed and (as nearly always), we started with a delay of nearly an hour. I wasn’t sorry about that, as that gave me the chance to talk to the girls I know from living on campus. Most of them were happy to see me and thus I talked a lot about my place here in Green Park, my work and my impressions of Delhi so far When Navarun, the said relative, me and the supervisor’s driver finally left, we had one and a half hour to reach the train. Guess what, we arrived at half past six at New Delhi Train Station only to find out, that the train – scheduled to leave at ten past seven – was leaving from Old Delhi Station. Now you might not have an idea what distances mean time-wise here in Delhi, but let me say this: Reaching Old Delhi in the given time was close to being impossible. Just check out the pics I’ve uploaded and linked below on the traffic. We were basically stuck, but the driver was really freaky awesome. He stayed cool the entire time, drove fantastic and somehow managed to drop us at Old Delhi at seven past seven – three minuted to actually get her on board. So we ran – well, I crossed the street in good old Paris-Style (thus just stepping right in front of the cars causing them to hit the brakes really hard ) but Navarun and the girl weren’t that conviced over my style of crossing the street so they stayed behind. Shortly afterwards they managed to get to me and we ran into the station, got one of the guys that carry your luggage, and told him to show us the way and run! Believe it or not, we reached the platform on ten past seven, put the women into the train and shortly afterwards the train left! Wow, that was some kind of an adventure

Afterwards the driver dropped me and Navarun at my place and we had a great time watching “Thank you for smoking”, one of my favorite comedies On sunday Vrishali joined us and we – well basically Vrishali and Navarun – cooked a really good indian lunch By the time we were nearly done cooking, Bala, my flatmate, finally arrived home. He was scheduled to be back in Delhi at 3:30 in the morning, but his train got stuck for NINE hours! When he finally came, he was really dead but happy to enjoy the great lunch with us. Vrishali, Navarun and me relaxed afterwards by watching “The Constant Gardener”. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a must! It has the same quality as Hotel Rwanda, maybe a bit less action, but certainly as impressive. It’s about big drug companies testing drugs in africa and the tragedy behind it.

Alright, that’s been my weekend I hope you had a great time as well. Tomorrow I’m going to get Ana at the airport, Wednesday we’ll go to Agra, Thursday I’ve language class and Friday we’ll meet up with some Indian friends – sounds like a great week to me

Oh, here are some of the pics from the weekend. Check out SmugMug to see all of them

Take care, Strothi

as promised, I just uploaded a few of my pics from yesterday. You can check them all out over at SmugMug. Here are just a couple of them. The gallery show the pics taken first at Navarun’s place, afterwards my neighborhood and finally the huge fireworks I enjoyed

Besides, here’s a little video of the fireworks that I enjoyed yesterday

today I enjoyed my first Diwali – the festival of lights – in India and as I had a totally awesome day I thought I share some of my impressions with you guys. My fantastic weekend started actually yesterday evening when I went to a party organized by some german friends of mine. Actually getting home afterwards was kinda real tricky, as the different areas are closed down here after 22 o’clock and only one gate is usually open. Bad luck: The highway leading to the main gate was closed as well so I ended up jumping over one of the huge 3m tall closed gates in order to get back home…

Anyway, so I did not sleep much and got up around 11 o’clock in order to meet up with Navarun and Vrishali at the Indian Habitat Center. After we met we bought some sweets and went to Navarun’s place. Navarun and his roommate Raman prepared a really good lunch and we enjoyed our time. Later in the day we got up on the rooftop and set some firecrackers on fire – as it is tradition here around Diwali. Actually setting up firecrackers and fireworks started like two weeks ago, but the main day to celebrate is today.

So after having had the “all indian firecracker experience” Navarun told us that it would be better to get home now – rather early – in order to be able to get a rickshaw without getting overcharged later. So I went home and came right in time to watch the conference of the german soccer league and saw my team winning – great

As the explosions around me really got intense I decided to grab my camera and do a little fotowalk around my neighborhood. I really enjoyed it and took lots of pics. Shortly before I was about to enter into my street again I was taking some pics when an Indian couple passed by and the guy said: “Hey, come with us, then you can shoot pics of real great fireworks!” I was a little surprised but thought “Why not” and joined them. Turned out, he was living right across the street and guess what – his whole family and friends – about 30-40 people – were celebrating Diwali on the street. Not only was I now standing in the middle of a huge Indian family, but my new friend insisted on showing me his – very nicely – decorated house! I thus was able to shoot pics of a “traditional decorated Indian house” for Diwali and was treated like an important guest… I felt a little strange, but everybody was really really nice. I got chay (sort of tea), lots of sweets and finally they even shared a bit of their dinner with me (as I denied having dinner with them later, so I was given some parts to try anyway…). I actually stood with the family on the street for more than an hour, talked to the family members, enjoyed great fireworks and took lots of pictures! Unbelievable Can you imagine, being invited by a total stranger to celebrate the most important festival in your culture with him? Guess what, that happened to me just by walking through my neighborhood! Awesome!  Once again a totally Indian heartwarming experience! This is why I love India, everybody – or most people I met thus far – are just really really nice and friendly

Alright, now I gonna sleep very well provided with awesome memories of my first Diwali in India I’ll upload the pics tomorrow!

Happy Diwali,

Strothi