DAAD Meeting in Bonn

The last week was very important to the DAAD scholarship holders from the South Asia region – includes India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. We had an Orientation seminar held at Bonn, hosted by the Referat 425 – Südasien. The major division of the DAAD structure that concerns our region is the Programmabteilung Süd with Dr. Helmut Blumbach as the leader. The desk 425 comes under the Gruppe Asien-Pazifik headed by Dr. Klaus Birk. This desk is headed by Ms. Dr. Dorothea Recht and our main contacts are Mr. Benedikt von Romberg, Ms. Susanne Scherzer and our secretary Fr. Anna Wornowski. It was a wonderful meeting and we were around 35 students from the four above mentioned countries. I expected the seminar to be too formal but it was quite the contrary. They made sure to keep it relaxed and fun and especially Mr. Romberg and Ms. Wornowski (who are our main contacts for everything from the stipend to the university admission formalities) were totally cool!

I travelled from Marburg with 3 of my friends (Sajad, Megha and Hossain) and we reached by noon in Bonn. Trams keep running very frequently and there was one every 10 mins to our hotel which was booked by DAAD. We checked-in and I was thrilled to meet my co-stipendiaten from India (who were doing their language course here like me, but in different cities like Frankfurt and Berlin). After lunch, we all headed to a seminar hall, where Ms. Dr. Dorothea Recht introduced us to all her colleagues and made a short presentation about their goals and objectives etc. We were asked to introduce any other person in random and a few tried in German – it was quite fun! Dr. Recht and her colleagues were pretty pleased with most of our German and didn’t seem to mind when someone said “Er heiße..” or “Er komme”!!

Then there was a questions session where some of us had our doubts regarding the scholarship cleared and we still had a lot to discuss, which we were advised to do later the next day.

It was time now for taking photos outside the DAAD office and we were even showed around their office rooms. When I saw the rack with a lot of files and was told that the papers I sent from India about a year ago are somewhere among those, I was pretty thrilled!

We then took a bus ride to a point near the Rhine river and were separated into 2 groups. We had a guide arranged for us and were given a short city tour. Wow, I couldn’t ask for more!

The first buildings we saw were those of the University of Bonn. They used to be what was called “Kurfürtliches Schloss” or the electoral prince’s castle. Then we moved onto quite a high point which gave a beautiful view of the Rhine flowing graciously below and the Kenndy’s bridge nearby.

The Rhein – I was looking at one of the longest and most important rivers in Europe – 1320 kms long and through 6 different countries – the Rhein is simply historic. No wonder it has inspired countless poets and writers to create so many romantic works throughout history. Different portions of the river were controlled by different states that ruled in the past and we saw the Bonn regime’s official Toll collecting point of the past. This river has been economically and militarily very significant through time.

The famous seven hills (Siebengebirge) on the far side of the river stand silent witness to countless confrontations that had taken place on these banks – from the Roman legions stationed on the Gallic side in the 1^st century, Napolean trying to annex the western regions in early 19^th century, the battle for the bridges across the Rhine in WW2 and particularly notable at Remagen where the Allies captured the bridge to enter the mainland and at Arnhem, in Holland where they failed and were massacred.. everything started running before my eyes.

Then we moved into the market area and visited the beautiful Rathaus (Town Hall). I came to know from my friend that in any German city or town one would find the Rathaus on the market place and directly across from the church so that in the past people could visit the church, then come out and do some shopping and then also visit the officials in the Town Hall for any complaints or grievances.

We then checked out an important piece of architecture called the “Sterntor” – it was a gate with no particular purpose today but it was a part of the city wall in previous times (13^th century). Back then, I learnt from our kind guide, it was a privilege to be able to live ‘within’ the city – meaning having the city wall around you for protection.

And I also came to know that this city wall in Bonn was itself built from remnants of a strong fortress called Castra Bonnensis originally built by the Romans!

We walked further and came to Beethoven’s house - as simple as that. It was a simple house very similar to all others around and you would miss it if you didn’t know – but here is the place where the great composer Ludwig van Beethoven was born and lived! I learnt that he later moved to Vienna where he was a successful composer and continued to compose and bring out some of his best master-pieces even after he became completely deaf at some point of time in his life..

Later in the evening we came back to our rooms and freshened up and headed towards a pub with Mr. Romberg. There were some really remarkable ‘local’ beers that were available only in the regions of the Nordrhein- Westfalen.

The next day was very interesting when we had our breakfast and attended a seminar by Ms. Alexia Petersen, who talked about Inter-cultural communication and its relevance for students from different parts of the world, who would be working in a different cultural atmosphere in Europe. It was a very very informative and interactive session. Germans are really direct and straight-forward and also like their partners/ colleagues to be so. Anything, good or bad, big or small is reported as such and directly to the person concerned. Also, here a ‘no’ always means ‘no’ and there’s no discussion beyond that. I remembered once a German guy in my hostel offered me some ice-cream and I would have loved it. I refused the first offer, purely so as to be polite, and he said ‘Alles klar’, smiled and walked away eating it himself. I was left with my mouth watering!

I then went to meet one of my old friends Prem, who had come from Aachen nearby. We went shopping for some shirts and lost track of the time. I had to rush back to the hotel and pick up my luggage and waited for the tram. There was a funny guy at the tram-stop who kept screaming and made a big fuss over a wasp that he claimed, had been following him for a long time and wouldn’t leave him. We made it to the main train station just in time, only to discover that our train was delayed by 20 minutes. This also meant that our chances of catching the connecting train at Frankfurt just got slimmer. When we reached Frankfurt well beyond the time of our intended regional train to Marburg, we assumed we had to take the next train an hour later. We walked lazily and dejected to the platform, and were amazed to find a train still waiting there. A quick check on the display board revealed that it was the one we assumed to have missed, and it had no reason to be standing there for 10 extra minutes. We rushed to it and settled down – a thrilling finish to our Bonn trip.