Monday, April 10, 2006

reflections from my official trip to Germany....

hmm, been sometime since i blogged....

well, i was in Germany last week and would like to share some reflections on the differences between Germany and England...

there are quite a few differences, but let me go over them in no particular order..

the most obvious one that i notice is the significantly lesser non germanic populace-and i suppose i would chalk it to the lack of "colonies" that they do not seem to have too much by way of cultural diversity! However, I am told that there is a significant Turkish and Eastern european immigrant population in Germany.

Hmm,i wonder what could be the potential implications- i suppose the old english argument that England will continue to benefit from the deep "relationships" they have with countries such as india and china, will no doubt be something germans will want to ruminate about, particularly given the recent upsurge in growth good ole india is witnessing.

i like working with germans because, like the dutch, i find them pretty straight forward- no beating about the bush, no trying to fudge what is essentially "i screwed up" message through twisting the language etc. however, i find it quite interesting when they communicate, because i find that there is a bit of a translation loss when they make a point, somehow, it does not have as much punch coming from a german as it has, coming from someone who has more of a way with english.

i was rather interested to hear about the heated debate on education that is on in germany at the moment-all this interesting stuff about segregation and how if you do not make it to the right schools, you are sorta condemned to a life of failure- hey, where have i heard that before??? aha, good ole tony...well, looks like german state has made a deliberate effort at creating an "intellectual appartheid" in their schooling system...something they will want to have a crack at changing in the near future, i bet!

this brings me to the indian view- the challenge that most indians face whilst spending some temporary time in Germany! Most of german education is in German- so what does an indian, who probably will not be in germany for more than 3 years anyway, do about their kids education? get them to go to a german school, learn everything in a language that will be of limited use to them after 3 years, or pay a truck load of money to ensure that they go to an international school where they will learn in english and hence potentially end up not having too much of a catch up to do once they returned to good ole india?

on the other hand, i suppose learning german does have its benefits- afterall, if you are in the engineering or the manufacturing sector, deutsche is a competitive differentiator, particularly among a billion indians many of who can speak english anyway!

well the jury is out, but i must say i enjoy visiting germany over multiple other countires in western europe that i have been to. Amen!