Sunday, October 28, 2012

Diary from Deutschland

It was a lazy Saturday afternoon. I and a couple of my colleagues from Net-Square walked in the nice warm sun on the banks of the river Main. We couldn't quite believe that we were in the heart of one of the major Financial centres in the world - Frankfurt. Just as we were taking in the beauty of the place, my phone rang. It was my nephew Jay. He stays close to Stuttgart and he was calling me to find out what was the right time for him to come down later that day to spend the rest of the weekend with us. 

We at Net-Square have this annual pilgrimage to Germany. This time around we decided to rent an apartment as we were going to be 4 of us getting in and out of Frankfurt from time to time, visiting different customers in other parts of Germany. And hiring an apartment was the right thing to do as that way we could come and go anytime of the day without bothering about check-in and check-out times. And surprisingly we got a great deal in the middle of the city - 5 mins walk from the central station for half of what we would have paid had we stayed in a hotel. But what was more surprising was that we paid less than what one would pay for an apartment in Mumbai 25 kms from the Center of the town! And that too in one of the busiest seasons in Frankfurt - the Expo month! When you come across such incidents, one wonders about the economics of the place called "Mumbai"! How long can it continue to defy Maths!

Getting back to Jay, what he told me next was really revealing. He said he wanted to confirm the time as he had to book a seat. For a minute I thought he meant a baby seat, but than quickly realized that can't be the case Jay was not married (he is a very good eligible bachelor). So I asked him again, "what do you need to book?" He said "I will be coming by car, sharing a lift and I need to book my seat". For a moment I didn't know if I heard that right. And he knew he had hit me with something I wasn't expecting so he smartly said "I will explain this to you when I meet you. See you at 8". Later that day, he introduced me to a great innovation called "carpooling on the go". Through the downturn in the economy (thought I can't say I saw any of that in Germany), Germans and other Europeans have come up with a innovative way to pay less, but stay mobile. People who travel from one place to another by car put up the empty seats in their car for sale. Yes, you read that right - getting paid to hitch hike somebody. And there is a web-site where drivers and passengers come together and book seats. And all this means that you travel at a fraction of a cost. What would have cost Jay 30 Euro to make the trip from Stuttgart to Frankfurt cost him less than 10. But what he told me later was even more amazing. Not only do people do this with spare seats in the car. They do this with spare seats on the train - yes, Train! and Bus! and Planes! 

German railways has many promotional fares. Many of them enable 5 people to get a special highly discounted rate for traveling together if they are doing so within a particular region. So if there are 2 or 3 people traveling together, they put up the rest of the seats up for sale. I had never heard of anything like this in my life. What an innovation! Jay again used it the next day while traveling from Heidelberg to Stuttgart. The site that Jay used is -> http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/. 

If this was not enough, I was introduced to another novel concept a couple of days later called car2go. Well, it was not completely novel, but it is definitely pushing the envelope. When I was in US, I had used car sharing service like zipcar.com. It allowed individuals to hire car by the hour. Extremely useful if all one needed was a car for a few hours a week for either shopping or an odd errand. But this was hiring per hour. Through car2go, Daimler has taken this to another level with a hire per minute. Check it our here -> https://www.car2go.com.

If this was not enough to make sit up and respect the Greenness in all things German (and in a way European), I had other surprised waiting for me. One of them was the Green building - Commerzbank Tower. I was fortunate enough to have been given a guided tour of this amazing building by our customers. It is the tallest tower in Frankfurt and in Germany and the 2nd tallest building in Europe. But that is not the reason for its claim to fame. It is the fact that it is regarded as one of the best examples of a Green Building. There is some great technology in the building that uses natural ventilation and environmentally-friendly airconditioning to ensure it does not hog a lot of energy to provide heating and cooling requirements of its occupants. But I did not see Green Energy concepts only in the Commerzbank Tower. I saw it all over the country side. Through my trip I must have seen hundreds of windmills. In fact I learnt later that in the 1st half of 2012, 25% of electricity produced in Germany is from Renewable Energy like wind power, solar power and Bio-Gas.

I had been to Germany many times in the past, but what I saw this time truly amazed me. Everyone knows about the german precision, but what I saw this time convinced me that Germany stands tall among nations who can teach other nations how to live a Green Life. 

Whether it is the beautifully designed urban transport system or the locks on its rivers, which has allowed them to become one of the main pathways for economic activity or the work ethos, which provide the right work-life balance, somehow I came away more in awe of the German way of life. 

Dankeschön Deutschland