Bangalore

Who would have thought that on my second day in India, I’d be sitting in a German beer garden? There are typical German dishes like potato salad and bockwurst, Käsespätzle and apple strudel and Black Forest cake. Not to mention Bavarian Brezeln, called “German Pretzels” here. After a day in 35-degree heat and high humidity that I spent perspiring nonstop, the Franconian beer is a pure delight.

The beer garden belongs to the Urban Mela, a German mini-expo open to everyone, in Mumbai’s Cross Maidan Garden. The sixteen red, gold, and silver pavilions shaped like cut diamonds – designed by a Munich object designer and built by artisans from Delhi and Mumbai – are situated on a green space in the city’s historic quarter where cricket is usually played. The exhibition is the highlight of the Germany and India Year 2011-2012 celebrating 60 years of Indo-German diplomatic relations. Peter Ramsauer, the German minister of transport, even attended the opening in the economic city of Mumbai. The high-tech show by German businesses and scientific institutions will stop in five big Indian cities for ten days each. Bangalore, the city I will soon fly to and my actual workplace, will be the next stop. But, by the time the Urban Mela arrives there, I will already have gone back home to Germany.

The pavilion of BASF features a children’s laboratory. Every day, Indian schoolchildren come and conduct little experiments, for example they make cement pliable again using a “Super Plasticizer.” The children come from regular schools, both private and public, and are not particularly privileged I am assured. I observed quite a contrast to the little chemists right by the entrance to Urban Mela: an Indian boy was sitting at the very busy intersection with a cow that was tied to the fence. His sister threw a few crumbs to one of the many stray dogs.


The Dresden Fraunhofer-Institut has a booth in the joint pavilion of the Federal Ministry for Research. Marita Mehlstäubl, a native of Leipzig, is presenting a heat-reflecting film for buildings or glass window façades. The heat-afflicted Indian public is interested in them; ask where they can get these films. In Germany they can be bought at home improvement centres; they are still looking for a partner from Indian industry.


I meet another native Leipziger in the project team that organized the Urban Mela and is now touring through the nation with it: event manager Jenny Tschauschew. The 31-year old has been on the team for a year. Previously she worked on a similar project in China. She went to school at Lindenauer Markt and also lived for a time in her father’s Bulgarian hometown. After the stress of the last preparatory days, she’s glad that the expo was launched successfully and that the newspapers in Mumbai announced the event extensively. For the German woman, India is “a big, crazy country; every day is adventurous and very interesting.” Back to the beer garden, Jenny tells me this is the first time that a license was granted to serve alcohol on this public space in Mumbai.