It's a free world...

Firstly, I must say, it has been quite a while now; I know I’ve been a bit silent these days and I really must say: Thank you. For all your thoughts, comments and the sheer nag that’s keeping me going.

Coming to terms with my current update, I’ve now relocated from the warm, sunny sands of Chennai to Raunheim, a quiet village near Frankfurt in Germany. After the initial ‘wow, this place looks awesome’ thing died down; reality strikes as the beautiful but intimidating place this is.

One of the first things I’ve noticed is that nothing; absolutely nothing here is free. Those of us who’ve lived in Chennai or the Middle East will swear by the huge amount of freebies you get with your goodies. Okay skip that; who needs freebies anyway, but at least you get used to getting at least a bit more than you bargain for. Who doesn’t like the little cute helicopter you get with your pasta?

But that’s a different story all together. I walk into a supermarket here to buy stuff and that’s when I realized you not only pay for your stuff, but also for each of the plastic carry-bags you take. Of course, probably that’s why a lot of the folks here carry their own bags to the stores. And oh yes, bottles are extra too.

In line with this doctrine, restaurants here don’t serve water either, leaving you to decide if you really want to drink water at all. (Of course on the up side, you do get to choose between Regular, Sparkling or Classic water, whatever the hell they all are, so there’s no lack of choice here)
And with bottled water being priced only 20cents below a regular coke, no winners for guessing what most of us drink here.

But then, I guess that’s what the choice is really about. After all, it’s a free country isn’t it?