From India to Germany

Doing Masters in Germany was not a planned one but was a dream come true. Since the time I took Mechanical in my Bachelor’s, heard a lot about Germany and its excellence in the field of mechanical engineering. Even today most of the machine tools in India are imported from Germany. The technology in Germany is so advanced that, the small-scale industries in India invest in the machines that were used by the Germans 10 years back. And through this blog I want to highlight few of these simple technologies and practices that would make our life easier.

Let me start with the Bus. Believe me, in Germany if it says 10:21 (I mean time), it means 10:21, not a minute before and not a minute later. Every Bus is given a schedule and they are supposed to reach a particular Bushaltestelle (Bus stop) at that time and for my surprise they follow it precisely. At the maximum, a Bus will be 2 minutes late. So, if you want to catch any Bus all that you need to do is check the schedule online and make sure you are at the Haltestelle 1 minute before. Coming to inside of the Buses. Every Bus is equipped with a screen that shows up the name of the current and the next Haltestelle. And there are number of ‘Stop’ buttons provided in the Bus, which needs to be pressed if you want the Bus to stop at a particular Haltestelle. So, it becomes very important to know your stop and to press the button, which was bit of a problem to me for initial few days. And regarding safety, I must mention this, all Buses do not move until their doors are fully closed and it does not matter how crowded the Bus is. In India, if see any car from Mercedes, we will be like ‘wooow’ and ‘OMG!!!’ and so on but here even Buses are from ‘Mercedes’ and they are so well designed. When I visited Berlin, I was shocked to see the connectivity that was available to go to any place. There were plenty of options like S-Bahn (Stadtschnellbahn – Urban rapid railways), U-Bahn (Unterbahn – Undergrond railways), Straßebahn (Trams) and of-course Buses also. The planning that would have gone into all these would be simply brilliant.

U-bahn in Berlin

Trams in Berlin

Moving to next one let me see what I have… it would be printing of photos. It had never been so easy before. Though now a days we get the film printed in an hour, we can still do better. Like here, there are automated machines that are available in some shops. One might ask what so special about these. And my answer to that would go like this. Firstly the options you have to print the photos from. You can use a pen drive or a CD or a camera’s memory stick or even scan a photo and print it again. You get to choose the size of the photo from normal postcard to an A4 poster size. And one also gets an option to make a calendar or a post card or a collage and many others out of the selected snaps. And I think this is very efficient as it is fast, flexible and effective.

One another important thing, which I want to tell you guys, is about the garbage separation and people’s concern towards having a clean and healthy environment. It surprises me how people follow them so strictly. Here, all ‘Müll’ (garbage) is divided into recyclables (Gelbmüll – yellow garbage), papers, glasses (again divided them based on the color) and others (Greymüll – gray garbage like vegetables, fruits, etc). And plastics are treated like rare element, I mean in terms of usage. If you buy any drinks in a plastic bottle or for that matter in a glass bottle, you will charged a minimal amount called as ‘Pfand’ (deposit amount) which we will get only after putting these bottles in their respective recycle machines. We need to pay even for the plastic covers in the super market. That’s how serious people here are.

Garbage separation

These are some of the things that I really liked here. I really wish that each one of us in India start taking responsibilities and start to incorporate this level of integrity and discipline in their lifestyle then, the day is not all that far where we would be telling ‘Developed India’. ☺