The first 24 hours of calm

nospam@example.com () — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:44:51 +0100

I have not heard a single car blare its horn in the last 24 hours and I feel wonderful.
My German colleagues might not agree with me and may even be mildly taken aback, but the first thing that struck me about Frankfurt is how quiet and calm it is.
And while I had expected this in Frankfurt, experiencing it is uncanny as six years in Delhi have accustomed me to a mixture of blaring car horns, blasting music, shouting and barking.
As I left for my new office, Frankfurter Rundschau, in the morning the first thing that hit me was the absolutely chilled wind and the second was the absence of people on the roads. There were just a couple of people ahead of me on the pedestrian walkway - no mad rush, no screeching cars and as I said earlier, no blaring horns.
The other thing I noticed that pleased me was how pedestrian friendly the city is. It is a pleasure to walk around, despite (or is it because of) the cutting cold.
A short walk from my hotel to office, a long, entertaining and informative walk from the office to the city center – thanks to Danijel- and a short walk back to the hotel, I would never have expected myself to walk this much in Delhi. And it is a compliment to the city that I did so with out feeling the least bit tired or troubled, though there were times that I couldn’t feel my face because of the numbing effect of the cold winds. Delhi can certainly learn a thing or two on respecting its pedestrians from Frankfurt and I am sure I will be doing a lot of walking in Frankfurt to make up for what I never did at home.
I did a lot of reading about Frankfurt before my trip. The population, the food, apfelwein, River Main and the skyscrapers, these are the few things that I found on the various websites when my Resident Editor told me about the Goethe Institut exchange programme. But what I was not ready for was the language barrier. While the populace of Frankfurt is fairly cosmopolitan – some websites suggest that 1 in 4 people are not of German origin– very few announcements or signboards are actually in English.
It is a little nerve-racking to live in a city where most people don’t speak a language you understand but I have my gracious friend, Danijel Majic, to help me with that part for now.
I, in the meanwhile, should start working on my German.
How is a “Danke” for beginners?

- Nahaufnahme - Journalistenaustausch

The first 24 hours of calm