Europe Series 1 - German Engineering

Roughly 1 year ago (10/23/2005) to be exact, I set my foot for the first time on German Soil. The next 10 months were almost magical where I travelled extensively to Europe and also within Europe. Those 10 months will always be considered as one of the most enjoyable moments in my life. All the Germans I worked with were fabulous people. During this time I developed a great sense of respect and admiration for German Engineering. Sure many would claim it is over engineering and I agree. I saw a lot of machines in Germany which werent really needed and didnt serve the people it was designed for in the most effective manner. But what impressed me the most was not just the quality of the work, but passion most men (Not being sexist here, I worked mostly with men...so I dont really know about the women) had for Engineering. Starting from the maintenance guy at the plant, I worked out of. Once we were talking about this idea for a project which had a little bit of engineering involved and I saw this guy who generally has great inertia get all excited about this. Couple of hours later he came to my office with a bunch of AutoCAD plots with potential engineering solutions. All this was on a Saturday and anybody who has been to Europen atleast once knows how hard it is to get Europeans to work in the weekends.

I am an engineer and I am passionate about my work, so nothing wins my admiration more than seeing people being really passionate and proud about their engineering. Thus I changed my mind from a Lexus 330RX, owning which, I had dreamt of for 5 years preceding my trips to Germany, and got a Germany manufactured BMW 330i.

There are many such small stories that happened during my trips to Europe that are deeply embedded in my thoughts and memories of the place. I am going to attempt to write and share some of those in the upcoming months.


I am attaching the very first picture I took in Europe and Germany. It isnt a great picture. My colleague took it and its a picture of the Autobahn A1, while we were driving from Wuppertal to Koln. The car in the picture is the rental car from National I had for almost 2 months, a diesel Opel Vectra.

(Picture taken on 10/29/2005, 11.14 am Local Time)