The small, the big and the scary

I tend to boast of being a village girl. And while it is true that I have grown up and lived in a village for the first 16 years of my life, I'm not what you  would call a typical village girl. Grand-parents living in a small town, parents in intellectual professions - mum a biology/chemistry teacher in the village's school (even years after moving away, I would be recognised in the village and addressed as 'Oh, you're the teacher's daughter!' - apparently, she wasn't just one of several teachers but the teacher of the village), dad a mechanical engineer, we never had any animals bar Mucki, my guinea pig, and the odd rabbit here and there nor did we own fields or other kinds of agricultural land. Of course there was a garden attached to our building (which also housed the school library and the chemistry classroom - very convenient for mum) with the usual flowers, berry bushes, cherry and pear trees, a wooden fence that separated it from the street and a brick wall between ours and the neighbouring estate.

Where am I going with this you ask? Well, what prompted it was my awesome friend D.'s Chicken Blog where she describes the root of her fear of chickens. I have a few of these unfounded animal fears as well so she told me to 'Blog about it! Do it, do it!" which is what I'm doing here. (Don't worry, J., I'm keeping the dog prompt in mind for my next post.)

With me, the objects of my fear grew. It all began with spiders. Not cute little colourful ones but those huge (in my little-child eyes) black hairy ones. In an oldish building on the countryside, they seem to be everywhere and where they were, I couldn't be. This house was simply not big and my fear not small enough for us to coexist. So whenever I encountered one of those hairy beasts in the bathroom or worse, my room, my dad had to come and dispose of it asap. I know that spiders can't bite or even 'peck out my eyes' but I was irrationally afraid of them weaving me up in a net real quick :|.

Living in a village involves the encounter with all kinds of farm animals on an if not daily so definitely regular basis. The neighbours' pigs - cute and ready to share their grist with me. The big herd of woolly sheep that marched past our house - fluffy but too scared to let me touch them. Ducks, geese, chickens - they went their way, I went mine. But the really scary creatures for me were cows. Now don't tell me cows are peaceful and wouldn't harm a fly. No, to me, cows are huge, scary, hard-hoofed and uncontrollable. On my way to school which was in the next village for the first three years of my school life, I would irregularly come across them, being herded from one pasture to another (they were, not me - just to be clear). And do you think they would walk in an orderly line? Oh no, they were all over the place, blocking my path and practically running me over. I was being polite (ok, scared out of my mind) and moved out of their way ... wayyy out of their way, down to the school garden which was at the foot of a small hill. But argh, even there, the occasional stray cow would follow, leaving me completely terrified. In my nightmares, I saw a cow climbing up the seven steps to our front door, giving me barely enough time to lock myself into the entrance hall of our house.

And the third fear was one that was instilled into us by our teachers. Our area being quite woody, there has always been the risk of rabies. Rabid foxes were, if you can believe our teachers, lurking everywhere, unusually tame and ready to bite and infect us at the drop of a hat. Since I've always had a vivid imagination, I saw foxes trying to get to me, running after me in the backyard, watching me from the street through the garden fence and threatening to dig their way through to me.

At the age of 16, we left the village and hence all the ferocious cows and sneaky foxes behind. Spiders kept being present but by then I had found a different method of dealing with them: I would go as close as I could and yell at them until they disappeared...

Bangalore, part II

or: I need a week here

So after switching hotels, the next two days passed pretty smoothly. On Sunday, M. got to pick up her salwaars which, I have to admit, had turned out beautifully, we spent a good amount of time by (and a considerably shorter time in) the pool and all in all were spoilt around the clock by the staff of 'our' hotel.

Now to make you understand the next part, I will have to go back a bit, almost one year, to be precise. I had been to India for the first time almost exactly at this time last year. Bangalore, Mysore, Hyderabad, Pondicherry, Bangalore again .. you get the picture. Having spent a few days in India, I worded the following doubt to D. on whatsapp: 'What if I don't want to go back at the end of this trip?'. 'Just wait, maybe you will without any problem', she tried to calm me. Ok, I thought and continued to live my first Indian adventure. 

So far so good but a few days before my scheduled departure, I started to panic. I noticed that I really didn't want to leave, at least not without the option of coming back to stay. Feverishly, I looked around for job opportunities (Call centre employee? Not really. Shop assistant? I hardly think so. Maid? Hell no!), when an idea suddenly struck me: the Goethe-Institut or as they call it in India: Max-Mueller-Bhavan. I looked up the website and ta-da! they were indeed looking for me (ok, they worded it differently, something about guest lecturers with experience for four to eight months, but you have to agree that this basically describes me)! Immediately I called them. The nice lady at the other end told me to e-mail the head of department, spelling out her address, which I did right away. Just for your orientation: It was Thursday morning by then and my flight back was going to leave on Sunday morning at 3 am. 
I added my phone number to the e-mail and headed out. In the middle of souvenir shopping, a call reached me and a female voice introduced herself as I.T. She started grilling me about my intentions, work experience, methods, time remaining in India and a lot more. At some point during the interview, she apologised for asking so many questions. 'You can ask all you want if you're going to employ me', I replied with a smile. She laughed and then noticed that there probably wasn't enough time to set up a test lesson. Reluctantly, I had to agree but we decided that I would send in my résumé, CV and references from current and previous employers as soon as I had returned to Germany.

So upon returning, I bugged my employers to write me references, found one from a previous school, received one new one and the promise to give an excellent oral review of my performances to anyone who would ask for it. Once I had gathered all that, I e-mailed it to I.T. and her colleagues and waited. And waited. And then waited some more. My colleague C. had, as I found out, done an internship at the same institute a few years prior and had stayed in touch with I.T. all this time. He offered to approach her on my behalf - turns out that she wasn't in charge of guest lecturers anymore but told us who was the one now. 
I e-mailed the new person in charge. Nothing. A couple months later, I followed it up with another letter, again, to no avail. By then - around November 2013 - I thought that maybe MMB and I were not meant to be and started looking elsewhere, applied here and there but nothing really came of it. And then, out of the blue, N.K., the new person responsible sent me an e-mail, asking if I was still interested in the post. Yes, I replied directly, very much so. Besides, I would be in India in April, how about meeting in person then. Perfect, came her answer, thanking me for my quick response, and could I please let her know my exact dates of availability maybe by mid/end March so we could set up an appointment. Most definitely I would do that and so another e-mail found its way to her from Mumbai, informing that the week from 2nd to 7th April would be the one. Excellent, she replied, and how about meeting on the 2nd itself, at 3 pm? Hell yes! 

Jump back to the present, 2nd April. I dressed carefully in a business casual attire (white long-sleeved blouse, black jeans, black sensible heels and a pink-black-white scarf), hopped on (ok, into) an auto (oh did I tell you about our new auto game? It's called: 'Put on the meter?' and in case of a negative reply, we move on to the next one) and made the driver drop me right to the place. N.K. turned out to be very nice and this meeting nothing I needed to worry about as it was pretty informal. She showed me the library, the classrooms (super modern, motivating with state of the art equipment), the cafe with German style marble cake and introduced me to a few of my potential new colleagues. Then came the time to talk business: On the following day, I was supposed to visit one of her classes (and did I prefer 5 pm or 7.15 - 5, please) and in the same group, I would conduct my test class the day after, complete with meticulously elaborate lesson plan to be handed in before. 

The visited class was a breeze, I took loads of notes, asked a number of questions afterwards and noticed that N.K.'s style of teaching doesn't differ all that much from mine, phew.

On Thursday, the day of the actual class, I was a nervous wreck. I could barely eat anything for breakfast (Breakfast! In India!), just had some tea and stole a bowl full of fruit for later. M. considerately absented herself until shortly before the time I was going to leave so that I could work on my lesson plan in peace, call a few people to have them assure me that everything was going to be fine and we'd celebrate afterwards, and hoping against hope to chat with you for a moment to calm my frayed nerves. Anyway, I left, copied the aforementioned plan neatly during the auto drive (!) and arrived a little while later, pretending that all was normal. Sitting in the teachers' room, printing out something I needed for a game, I glanced at N.K.'s computer screen where I could see my contract-to-be. If the director of the institute (who was going to be present but would have to leave earlier, not to return before Monday) was convinced of my suitability immediately, I would get my contract, signed by her, the very next day, otherwise N.K. would have to convince her upon her return.

Two representatives of the institute (I.T. being one of them) sat down at the back of the classroom, next to N.K. They were holding copies of my plan, following the class strictly but not without interest. And - wonder oh wonder - I even made them laugh here and there! The students were every teacher's dream: extremely motivated, curious, hard-working and game for anything I suggested, the games including ;-). When the other two had left and N.K. signalled me to end the class, the students left with 'Danke! Auf Wiedersehen! Bis morgen!' (Thanks! Good bye! See you tomorrow!), having fully accepted me. And yes, my performance had been taken very positively by everyone, the only point of criticism was that I had been a bit fast at times. Anyway, my contract (for four months at first but with the option of extension, yay!) was signed and would be ready to collect on the next afternoon. 

Very relieved, my breathing back to normal, I walked out after the post-class conversation, squealing inside. Looking at my phone, I saw a number of missed calls and a few 'How did it go??'-texts. 'I'm coming back now and will tell you everything', I replied to one. 'Will tell you when you come over' to another, and 'I got the contract!! Boy, I was so nervous, I almost called you at 4 am your time' ('You could have', D. replied. Muah.).

End of story: My contract begins in August, with the new term. Apartment in walking distance and friends living in the same area. Woohoo!! Bangalore! India! Yes!!!

Bangalore, part I

or: A complaints choir

As I had already mentioned, Bangalore was going to be the last and a rather big portion of our trip, ten days, from this Saturday to Tuesday the week after. And we had big plans for this time (more later), starting with a two-day trip to Mysore from Sunday to Monday because outside of festival season, the palace is only lit on Sunday evenings at 7 pm (keep that in mind, it might be important unless you're travelling with me .. but I'm getting ahead of myself again).

I left Hyderabad with the feeling that I had some unfinished business there, nothing I could really put my finger on but something .. something that seemed to not want to let me go. Anyway, we arrived at Bangalore Airport and took a Meru cab like the pros that we by then had become. It really is as easy as that. Plus you don't have to negotiate the fare. 

So we reached the hotel safely (not the one where we had stayed during the first two days of the trip, the website had shown it as unavailable for the second period of time) and as promising as it had looked and sounded on said website, as uninviting ('Oh look, construction right outside! :|') was it in reality. Never mind, it won't be all that loud and maybe it is super from the inside. Maybe. Possibly. Turns out it really was not. Dust in corners and on window sills, worn out carpets, broken shower head - you name it. We might have tolerated all that if, yes, if the service would have made up for it. 

The truth however was different. When we entered the lobby, one receptionist looked annoyed at best, probably because we disturbed him in a task that was considerably more important than checking in mere guests. The other receptionist hesitantly started dealing with us. Hesitantly not because she was shy in any way but because she had to weigh the pros and cons at first. The pros, such as having the opportunity of being sniffy, unfriendly and even outright rude to us must have outweighed the cons. Who, for example, would have thought that handing out a second key card to two individuals who are visibly not joined by the hip was such an exhausting task nor that the card we politely asked for was so precious that before handing it over, one has to make sure we understood that the loss of it would be punished with a fine. (The irony: in the end, M. forgot that she still carried hers and accidentally stole it when we left.)

A rather indifferent bellboy carried our mountain of luggage upstairs (well, not actually carried, he pushed the cart into an elevator and then out again at our floor) and we moved into the room. Granted, it was huge. And it looked out over the race track which would have been even nicer if the window had opened. Well, never mind, there was a roof terrace, so we could easily live with a window that didn't open, that had been the case in most hotels anyway. 

One thing that I demanded each hotel should have (in addition to M.'s wish for a restaurant, a bar and a pool) was unlimited free wi-fi. Not an unreasonable demand, given the fact that we were a few thousand kilometres away from home and yes, did want to keep in touch with the world outside. All the bigger was our shock when we learned that the wi-fi was indeed free here but limited to an hour per day. 'Absolutely unacceptable' was both M.'s and my reaction to these news and that's what we told the manager (btw. the only person who tried to make our stay more pleasant or actually to try and make us stay in the first place) as well. 'The booking website clearly stated that the free wi-fi was unlimited, otherwise we would never have booked this hotel.' The manager had that fixed too, we would get unlimited access, a fruit basket and a well equipped mini bar instead of the empty fridge we found upon arrival if only we stayed. 

The pool, we had been told at the reception, was in a different building so we would have to get out, walk around the entire hotel and into that other building. No, the manager told us (I forgot his name but remember that the first thing which struck me when he opened his mouth to talk to us was his castrato's voice - men with squeaky voices are such a turn off!), there was another way to get there, down unlit dusty stairs and over an equally unlit "bridge" that connected the two buildings. The pool itself was beautiful but somehow, that didn't quite make up for everything else. 

Neither did the roof terrace which was partly dusty and partly drowned in puddles (and no, it had not just rained). The music that was coming from the bar TV was so loud we could barely hear each other let alone the person on the phone that we had to talk to about leaving the hotel and getting a refund on the money M. had already paid. The waiter on the terrace was more interested in the latest cricket results than in what we might want to order. (Ok, I don't really blame him but he could have hidden it better...)

'Let's go pick up my clothes, that'll put me in a better mood', M. suggested. Off we went to the general area of Commercial street, using the big white and green mosque as a landmark on our way to "Star Plaza". We found the place but none of the young salesmen we had dealt with when we first ordered the salwars. The only person we recognised was Simran (they called her so often to do this and that in the time that I spent waiting there two weeks before that I remembered her name), the young girl friday of the store. She took us a few stairs up (I had no idea that the building was so high) into the busy tailoring area. And if I say busy, I mean busy: One cubicle after the other, filled with two to three efficiently working tailors, cutting, sewing or measuring some piece of clothing or other. When she brought us to 'our' tailor, it turned out that M.'s clothes were not ready yet, they simply must have forgotten that today was the day she was coming to collect them. After a disappointment short of yelling at the guy on M.'s part and embarrassment on his that showed by laughing uneasily, they agreed to give it another day and she would pick up the beauties the next morning.

Anyway, after returning, we decided to stay for one night and make up our minds tomorrow at breakfast. Very well, the manager said, hoping against hope that we wouldn't pursue our attempt to leave his hotel. Dinner that night was alright as was the next day's breakfast, nothing to really complain there save a slight inattentiveness on the part of a waiter. Nevertheless our decision was made: After having found out that our original hotel was indeed available and M.'s friend having called there to get us a better price, we were ready to move out. The hotel's designated driver refused to take us to the other hotel, claiming that it was too short a distance to make it worth his while (he didn't use these exact words but the general tone made it clear). So while M. made other arrangements for our transport, the manager requested me to fill in a feedback form, describing our experience at his hotel. 'Are you sure you want me to do that?, I asked him. 'In the mood I currently am, the result will be less than favourable for your hotel.' Yes, yes, he insisted, and that it was exactly what he needed to show to his superiors. Alright, I thought and sat down, not before noting down the name of the particularly unhelpful receptionist, not that she really cared. A few minutes later, M. returned, beaming and excitedly telling me that we'd take an auto. I seriously wondered what was going to happen to our luggage when the driver artistically stowed it all (and us) away in his vehicle. Those things do hold a lot!

Long story short (I know, I know, that ship has sailed about half an hour ago), we finally reached 'our' hotel and were immediately consoled by the overwhelming friendliness and helpfulness of the staff there. Phew.

Oh and before I forget: When we talked to S. on the phone the previous day and told him that we would postpone Mysore to a more auspicious time, he informed us that a close friend of his manages the palace and would show us rooms that are unavailable to the general public, including the roof, we would be allowed to take photos inside (!) and, cherry on the cake, he would switch on the palace lights on any day we wished. And yes, that was an unlimited offer. So if you want to experience all that, you better be careful to stay in my good books ;-).

Next chapter: Why I needed to stay in Bangalore for an entire week.