My first trip overseas to Europe

Went to West Germany during my 2nd year while doing my Mechanical Engineering course in University Malaya and that was the 1st time I ever boarded an aeroplane. Mum bought me the air ticket and with just a few hundred bucks of bank draft in my pocket plus anticipating what Daimler Benz was going to pay me an allowance of  800 Deutsch Mark per month, there I went overseas all the way to Europe. The destination was Frankfurt airport and as the plane circled down the Frankfurt city, the landscape and terrain from above the plane as I  looked through the side window was still a  deep impression I remember till these days.  Lost one of the small luggage while transiting and staying one night  in Karachi boarding the PIA (Pakistan International Airway). With a big heavy bag dragging along, somehow I managed to ask with my simple German and purchased a ticket to board a train to Stuttgart. One of the young guy who spoke good English, helped me with my luggage for a fees, he was probably a student earning extra income from tourists. Upon arrival to Stuttgart, having a heavy bag had tempted me to cross the railway track as a short-cut. And one of the guards stopped me from doing that and it was simply dangerous. Everything in Germany was so advance that I felt like I had gone through a time machine that put me 50 years ahead of time. That was the first time I experienced money machines for tickets and soft drink, first time seeing a Mc Donald and first time boarding a tram, first time seeing blondie girls too!

I took a cab to the hostel and paid  a fare of  DM50. That careless taxi driver left me without my luggage and subsequently the person in charge of hostel helped me to call that taxi back to claim my luggage again and that costed me an extra DM10. The chief of the hostel was a very nice guy, he remarked and commented in German to the driver " Such a greedy driver!"

I put up a night there and was told I should go to another hostel. If I did not remember wrongly, an Indonesian young guy, stayed many years in Germany and spoke good German, drove me there with his Volkswagon Beetle. I still remember his Volkswagon with a transparent cover that could see through the air-cooled engine at the back of the vehicle. He told me he played drum!

Reaching the other hostel was quite an experience for me. This fat and fierce German hostel chief was almost shouting to me, I gathered what he was trying to say in German was, he had been waiting for me the whole previous night through for me to check in and I did not turn up. I could only reply "Ja , Ja...."  for the mistake of going to the wrong hostel which was non of my fault. I showed my letter to the driver and expected him to take me to the right one and the first hostel chief not expecting me to be his guest, was so kind to allow me to stay one night there! What a strong contrast in character and loving kindness between two men of the same nationality!

In the hostel, there was a Pakistani and he wanted to go to the church with me but we somehow did not managed to find one. There were two Thais and they spoke little German. But surprisingly there were quite a number of Indonesians who studied in Germany coming for the training here. One of the guys rode a mini size Suzuki scrambler and there was another who was trying to learn the song by Billy Joel and asked me for a translation in Malay language on the lyrics. Another older guy however spoke Mandarin and we could communicate better. Met a Spanish trainee who drove a big Mercedes 280SE and asked me to write "I Love You" in Chinese to send to his girl friend. There were some Iranians there too. One fine day when I was cooking my packet of American rice, and this Iranian somehow ran out of supply and I volunteered to offer him a portion of my share, but he insisted to put in salt inside the cooking pot as the only right way of cooking rice. I regretted for being generous to an ungladful person who only wanted his own way without paying heed to the taste and feeling of others, even to someone who had offered him help! What kind of person we have in this world?

Supermarket in Germany closed at about 7pm and every time we reached the hostel, those Indonesians and I would rush to the supermarket to purchase our food such as chocolate, milk and pig knuckles or legs etc. for cooking. Chocolate and milk in Malaysia were still expensive then, I remember one of the days I ate one big chocolate bar for my dinner. The Germans usually purchased those parts of  the pigs for their dogs but we bought them for our delicacies! Germans smiled a very sarcastic way as they watched how our Indonesian friends bought those parts in big quantities!

I had lost contact with all those friends I met in the Mercedes Benz Sindelfingen hostel in Stuttgart Germany.