Euro Trip

I havent written in a while, and the reason is because I have been travelling. Ofcourse its just an excuse the truth is, I am just lazy.

After much deliberation and thought, on the 6^th of September I went touring Europe finally. I saw Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Geneva, Milan, Venice and Vienna and I think from all places I have been to so far, I like Vienna the most.

Then a month ago I went back to Lahore, Pakistan for a month and consequently found something that gives more meaning to the phrase “there is no place like home” and only two days ago I got back to Berlin. Why I am writing all these details. Because I want to make it sound like I was occupied and didn’t have any time to blog. I hope this alibi would work. A brief intro to the places I visited.

Amsterdam is a nice city and I feel it is the epitome of everything western European. Its quiet lenient on things like prostitution and cannabis which makes sense because I feel in the modern world, there is no justification for these things to be banned.  

I went to Brussels because I had to see Kaiser “the Kallu” Sheikh. I had hoped that Kallu would be the only interesting thing in the town but I was pleasantly proven wrong when I discovered that Brussels too has the traditional European square called the Grand place and it really was worth a visit.

In Paris I was hosted by an Isreali Parisian middle aged man who didn’t eat non Kosher food but because of him I had exclusive access to places like the Louvre and other points of interests in Paris. Paris is a big city and that means one has to walk a lot. The Champs Elyse’s is to me just a road (not even a cobblestone street) that has shops for the worlds largest brands and since they are all one road its considered novel. I failed to see utterly what all the fuss was about.

I went to Geneva because it houses the European centre for nuclear research; the CERN. It was exactly how I had expected it to be, a marvel of scientific advancement. I truly had a great time there. I stayed in Geneva with a Chinese person who was pursuing his PhD on global warming. That is when he told me that the city Venice may not be there in another 20 years and it needs to be visited now. And that’s exactly what and why I did.

Next I went to Milan and was hosted by an Italian. I stayed in Seregno which is a bit north of Milan. I was in Milan only for a day that I decided that Venice must be visited for reasons already stated. I had a failed attempt to hitchhike to Venice which had me stranded in the middle of an Autostrate in Italy. How things could have worked out better I don’t know.

When I reached Venice I was completely exhausted from touring all these cities and went straight ahead and found myself a nice place to sleep. The next day I went around the small island and found it be absolutely different from all the other places I had ever seen. For one thing the police in Venice ride water scooters to maintain law and order. That almost never happens anywhere else.

And my last stop was Vienna. What I think about Vienna is that if I was asked to choose one city that I would like to live in that would be Vienna. It is an extremely beautiful city with its old town reeking of medieval charm and beauty. A walk in Vienna is like a walk across time and history. I would like to go back to Vienna someday to discover more. I hope I am able to do that soon.

And then I returned to Berlin. With its bustling city life I consider Berlin to be a must visit place on a tour to Europe.

Big things come in small packages

So it would turn out my trusted old (not so old actually) laptop wouldn’t charge. I try to connect the charger but the battery doesn’t charge.  It takes me herculean strength and Aristotelian acumen to find that sweet spot at which the pin of the charger would just fit into the power socket of the laptop and the laptop would charge.

But I know something is amiss, because it continues to take longer and longer to find that sweet spot and to add salt and misery to my wounds and suffering respectively, I sometimes have to hold the pin into the power inlet of the charger for an indefinite period of time. I know I can’t continue living like this. I have to drastically change the course that my life is taking. But not yet, it’s way too soon. Only when it’s already been two days that I can’t charge my laptop will I have the motivation to actually do something about it. But fate had something altogether different in mind for me. For what transpired was this.

After much deliberation was I finally lucky enough to find that sweet spot only for my laptop to tell me that “the charger that you are using is not built for this machine, please consider changing it”. Even though that’s the exact same charger I have been using for several years, when the lappy tells you something, you better listen to it.

So now when I connect the charger to my laptop it says “plugged, but not charging”. This means I have to continuously have my laptop on charge, the strength to do which only gods can muster. So a mere mortal like me does what mere mortals like me do best these days. We Google things.

And then I googled, and it told me that several other people are experiencing the exact same problem. Many had opined that the “plugged but not charging” sign is a diabolical greeting from the devil himself and a friendly reminder of the epic battle between good and evil.  These were clearly some very smart people. I look for more solutions and try my luck with another website. To my utter surprise and wonder, I find the “top answer” and I reproduce it here without the written consent of the original author.

“take out the charger pin bring it close to your mouth and blow into it multiple times, and then do the same to the point on the laptop where the laptop fits”.

For obvious reasons I thought I was being made a fool of. And surely as complex a problem could not be solved with that easy a solution. But it is with pleasure that I tell you that I was wrong. I blew into the charger and there it lay, fixed. And with tender love in my heart, I thanked the person who had written the post and wished him/her long life.

Operation Protective Edge

I had planned other themes that I wanted to speak about, but I guess everything else can wait.

I am writing this today on the 21 st of July 2014, the day that followed the largest number of casualties (to date) as a consequence of Operation Protective Edge which was launched by Israel two weeks ago against Gaza. The immediate cause cited for the offence was the murder of 3 Israelis teenagers. As of right now, more than 425 Palestinians and 18 Israelis have been killed in the the operation launched by Israel. To say that the conflict appears to be one sided can be seen by the number of casualties on both sides. and with Iron Dome, the protector of the realms, the damage to Israel has been extremely limited. It should be maintained here that I do not expect Israel to wait for casualties and then take offence, but the type of offence as of right now, has been mercilessly and magnificently disproportionate.

Another thing that I have come across is the "qualitative military edge" which is an aid program of the government of the US for Israel. This seeks to maintain the level of the Israeli military to a point that is required to ward off danger from one specific country or a coalition of countries in the middle east "while sustaining minimal damage and casualties". I note it here to establish the level of sophistication that the Israeli army has and then to compare it with the military ability of a group of refugees with an extremely limited military capacity (the best "Qasam" rocket fired by the Hamas has a range of 16 km) and territory which is a mere 360 square kilometres. It is outrageously appalling to me.


Recently there were pro-Palestinian protests in London, Paris and some other cities. The way that Arutz Sheva, an Isralis news agency, reported it was by calling those protests "Anti-Semitic". I cant think of anything that could be further from the truth. The protests were ONLY meant to pressurize Israel into abandoning the ground offensive and should not under any circumstance be called anti Semitic. Interestingly though, I have been following the websites of Arutz Sheva, BBC, CNN and Al-Jazeera and I have learnt that opinions are largely dependent on what website(or news source) a person may happen to follow.

Lastly, speaking of Anti Semitism, there are some points I would like to make. First and foremost I really respect the Jews because they have been instrumental in humanity's advance in many a fields including but not limited to science, astronomy, medicine, music and the arts. They have also gone through at least one of the worst human tragedies that humanity has as of date concocted for which humans all over feel sorry about. However as such, I had honestly hoped that as a group of people, they would have the utmost respect and concern for human life and suffering, but it brings me to tears to find out that it is not the case.

p.s I understand this post might get me into trouble, but I have to say this. 

Re-vo-lu-tion

This Saturday I got a text from a friend of mine and he wanted me to join him for a protest. I asked him what sort of a protest it is to which he just replied with only the word“Refugees”. Perplexed, I decided I haven’t seen him for a while, and protest and refugees seems like the perfect excuse. Some hours later we met at Hermanplatz which was the starting point of the rally. Finally I got to ask him what this protest was all about and he told me that there is a school in Kreuzberg (a locality in Berlin) which has been occupied by refugees and the government wants to throw them out of Berlin and here we are protesting against that.

What I understood was that there is a bunch of people who think that the right of movement should not be restricted or confined to a specific group of people. That people should be allowed to live wherever they want to live. Slogans like “kein mench ist illegal, bleibe Recht ueberall” and “Nationalismus raus aus dem kopfen” and “Say no to deportation” perfumed the air.

So what started as a decently apolitical day had turned into a marvellously beautiful rally for people’s rights to live wherever they please. What surprised me the most was that that there are people in Germany or more specifically in Berlin who actually think that everyone should be allowed to live wherever they want to. That they don’t believe that only because one is white, or born in Germany, he or she deserves to be treated any differently than people who are born in a second or third world country.

And when I contrast it with how people think back home I find myself treading an unusually porous surface. Why would these people want this eludes me altogether. But I do know that back home, people even have reservations when it comes to treating people from parts of Pakistan let alone from outside Pakistan. Intriguing.

On Rain

There are several reasons as to why ever since I was a young boy, I have loved it when it rains. Why that might be the case probably has to do with the fact that I grew up in Pakistan and the weather there could more than use a bit of rain here and there. Back as a kid who was ready to go to school, I remember it was a pleasant reprieve when it would rain and mum would tell us that the roads are blocked and hence we cant go to school anymore. I remember how happy would I feel then, I remember how the sound of rain outside just conditioned my memory to think of a day off from school. And not just an ordinary day off, a day where I could play video games all day long without having to stop for food (mum would just come and feed me with her hands. Thanks mum for that). I remember the sound of rain in the morning always meant that. I still have those mental associations to some extent. A lot in life has changed since then, but rain still brings that sudden, abrupt, intense feeling of elation that comes when you get up early for school and learn there isn’t going to be one today. Best thing since sliced bread.

When it would rain in the evening, people would call to each other proclaiming their love for fried food delicacies, and chief among them would be “pakoras”. I have to confess that I didn’t really like pakoras in the beginning, but later they grew on me, just like all other good food does.  

As of right now, when I hear the sound of thunder, or when I hear rain drops or when I smell rain falling on the ground to make that sweet aroma, or when the sun hides behind the clouds, my heart just skips a beat and it makes me happy for some inexplicable reason. And I absolutely love the feeling.

So this is the sort of respect and love I had for rain in my heart when I came to Germany. However here, people don’t really like it when it rains. I have heard people postponing their travel plans only because it rained. I have seen people check the weather before they plan a vacation just so they can avoid the days when it does rain. Unsurprisingly, when people complain about the rain in my presence I find it difficult to relate to that thought. However, I understand. I understand that here it rains quite often and much more than it did back home and therefore its absolutely mundane and people here have no such associations with it.   

I am startled nonetheless; when people from the sub continent tell me how good weather to them now means that the sun is shining bright outside, I find it strange. For how can a person consider good weather to be rain all his/her/its life and then suddenly change that definition after having lived in a climatically cold county for some months.

Maybe its just the innate human desire to have things the way they have always been. And that rain actually really isn’t all that comforting but for now I love it, and I love it that I love it. 

Adam & Eve

One hundred years before Adam and Eve walked the planet; there was a time and place on earth when women ruled the world and men only made club sandwiches for them. This was a pink era in the history of our earth. The following is a story that transpired then.

There was a man who was very much in love with a woman. And the woman was very much in love with this man. This woman was beautiful, her use of words crisp, her ways subtle, she was the perfect predecessor to the 21^st century teenage girl. There was however one subtle difference between their loves in it that the man loved several other women as well, but the woman loved only this one man. This prehistoric man was a smart guy, in fact for the purpose of convenience, lets just say he was a rocket engineer. Legend has it he also understood with considerable ease the complex nature of the space time continuum and was soon beginning work on quantum fluctuations. But even this man could not understand one thing. This thing being as to why this particular woman loved only him. Try all he could, and by god try he did, he could not understand as to why this was the case.

Ten years less than hundred years ago before Adam and Eve walked the planet; the women had a strange idea. They suggested to the men that maybe we could have a monogamous relationship all our lives, and proceeded on to claim that she thought that it would be pretty darn cool. The man did not know the meaning of the word monogamy but did not like the sound of it. Since the Womandom was named as it was, the only thing the men could do was to add more spice into the sandwiches, and our elders tell us that that is exactly what they did. So it came to pass that a new institution was established which sought to restrict people’s right to love as many people as they desired and hence in this way, bars were put into place on how much people could love and whom. This was of course the precursor of other more severe things to come. 

Later, the first man and woman walked the planet and called themselves Adam and Eve. And the first thing Adam did was that he made the world a patriarchy so that crazy things like these will not happen again. and children! Now we know why since that time, we have had patriarchal societies in most parts of the world.

The rest is just future. 

Shopping at Lidl

In Germany there are places which are as German as German gets and one of those places is the discount retailer called Lidl. Since a Lidl outlet is right next to where I live, I shop there often. But before I begin I must warn you dear reader. You read at your discretion since this tale is not for the faint of heart.

So even before you enter the shop you sense an air of urgency about that place. When you are inside there are sales women whom I have never seen walk, they only run. Sometimes they drive that little in-store shopping cart for carriage purposes. This makes them even faster. I am sure they love it. On hindsight I think that’s what those women do. Lidl has no sales people. They dont understand what they are used for. 

I remember the first time that I was here. In Pakistan grocery items like bread, jam, butter etc are labeled both in English and Urdu. So if one does not read and understand Urdu one can read English. When I came to Germany this is exactly the impression that I had. I was thinking hey I cant understand German but I am sure I can get around with the rudimentary English language prowess that I posses. But as luck would have it, the first shop that I went to was Lidl. And not only do they never speak English in Lidl (I have never heard English inside a Lidl store, I am fairly certain its not allowed), not only do the items never have anything written in English but also the saleswomen, who travel at Marc 3, inside the store, will be absolutely apathetical towards your presence in her vicinity.  It is therefore with this desire in your mind that you shop at Lidl that one day maybe one day she will stop by you, look at you with those beautiful blue eyes and proceed to shouting something in German at you. Something like “Du hunde sheise! was brauchst du hier jeder mal, wann ich hier bin?”But so far I must admit that has not transpired.

There is one thing that I think people who wish to travel to Germany or want to live here should know. I want to mention this because this breed of person does not get as much attention in the media as the person deserves. I am of course talking about the lady at the counter at Lidl. Like everyone else in the world I have heard stories about you-know-who (in the German context) but I am fairly certain the counter lady is meaner. I will gladly let Superman torch me with his laser eyes than be stared at by the counter lady at Lidl. This typically happens when all my stuff has been through her, I have paid the bills and now apparently all the matter in the universe is waiting for me to put my things in my bag. It is then that she just glares at me. And I wish that if she would just take out a chainsaw(used in the massacring industry), and chop my hand off instead, that would be so much nicer of her and I would thank her.  I swear to all things I hold dear and sacred, that on such times I honestly want to run back to Pakistan.