fun trips

trips and fun activities.

Day trip to Leipzig

A trip to Leipzig was an easy choice. A visit to the BMW plant, a walk through German history and shopping in a beautiful city was all things I did not want to miss. The early morning showers did no dampen our spirits one bit. We jumped onto our bus and just as we were watching the water trickling down the windows of our bus, we reached the BMW plant. A huge imposing structure that makes you search its length and breadth for some BMW signage. Unfortunately, BMW does not believe in putting up any boards with its name. They want the building to speak for itself. That’s probably why we were taken through a presentation and then given a tour on the building itself - its architecture, design features and practical applications. Speaking of a big brand like this, No photography allowed!

Once inside the plant, we were taken through the different pars of the plant. The assembly line with an endless line of robots at work, the body shop- more robots and cranes and finally the paint shop. It was an interesting experience seeing that engineering marvel in German technology. I was amazed to hear that the process there is 90% automated! The most remarkable feature of this plant is that the architect who was picked after a huge contest(!) had designed noiseless conveyer belts to run through the entire plant including the cafeteria. The BMW blue is carried throughout the plant and the people at work very unassumingly at it. I was very content with my visit to the BMW plant. Although the plant workers were on vacation and that the plant was not entirely in production did not disappoint me one bit.

This was followed by a tour through German history. We visited a museum and had an hour long tour on German history. Right from the events that led up to the Berlin wall construction, how life differed on both sides of the wall was depicted through display boards, charts, pictures and remains. The tour touched upon various aspects of life in that time - the sport, the lifestyle, the celebration, the wars, the uprising, the families, etc. The events that led up to the reunification in 1989, and how the wall came down, the media at that time, cartoon strips, slogans et all. The museum was a very nice place to visit in the afternoon. It dealt with all important historical events very well especially for outsiders’ understanding .It was a great experience to take that tour.

Industry visit:Outing to Cross Match Technologies.

An industry visit to a leading bio-metric solutions company Cross Match was organized for a fine morning. A quick tram ride to the outskirts of Jena and a walk along some picturesque woods took us to this company premises. The visit to a company like Cross Match, based in the outskirts of the city Jena was a wonderful experience. Cross match, an American owned company deals with the design and manufacture of face recognition systems; finger printing technology devices, Biometric identity applications. Fingerprint and palm scan devices, facial recognition systems and document readers. They provide services for all processes in this bio-metric devices industry. They develop application software and the hardware as well as provide maintenance services for the products they develop. The products they develop and manufacture are used in criminal, civil and commercial identification. They have a wide range off application from being used in casinos to emigration offices to the remote villages in Malawi for elections. We first got a guided tour of the company, their history and the work that they have been doing. We went on interact a lot and speak about the way they work, the civil issues related to their products usage, the criminal aspects and their ramifications in general.

Home cooking

A ‘super-hit‘ in bollywood terms was the home cooking activity. A home cooked meal was in store for us, which had to be prepared by us, with the ingredients that we hand picked at the supermarket. The fun part began right at the shopping part. Deciding the menu was our host Susi’s call and her being a great cook, the pleasure was all ours to be her guest. We were 4 of us, Jason, Karla susi and me. The scrumptious menu: Delicious zucchini soup , followed by Egg masala with basmati rice and German salad on the side, topped up with custard and strawberry for dessert.

The place was beautiful located so close to the woods; we had a nice tram ride home and then a little walk up the hill. The cooking was great fun, too. Discussions started and ended with food but in between, we ended up speaking about everything under the sun. I was specifically thrilled at susi’s collection of Indian spices. She had everything to make a great Indian meal! The cooking was immensely fun. By the time it was time to eat, we were all famished. It was a great time, my home cooking mates all being Senior Fellows, we talked and talked of our travels, of our experiences in each other's countries, of the past symposiums, the good times, the hard times, the funny stories, et all. It was like old friends met up for dinner after ages and our conversations lasted so long, we never realized when the clock struck 11! The dinner was so filling that we wanted to crash at her place for the night.

Interesting things at the symp: not on the schedule

Spirit handouts

Each morning we had a little yellow paper waiting for us outside our hotel room door. This was a special ‘spirit handout'. This was to bring out our Melton spirit every morning. It had tit-bits of information from fact-files and an interesting activity associated with it. This activity was a task that had to be performed during breakfast at the hotel. Some were as simple as coming barefoot (bare-footing) to breakfast or wearing blue( ‘making blue..’). A few others were rather bizarre like for instance women wearing neckties, guys sporting jewellery (breaking fashion norms) and girls wearing braids and so on. On the last day, we even had a game of testing how much we knew each other. All in all, there was something to read early in the morning and there was always something fun to discuss at the breakfast table apart from sleep deprivation:)

Karaoke nights

This really brought out the best and worst in people. We spent endless hours crooning numbers from the 80 and 90. Singing and dancing, playing the awesome karaoke competition was a great way to unwind after a day of hectic schedules and meetings. Music always brings all of us together and this was when singing well did not matter, it was the bonding that was important. It was the Melton spirit that refuses to go to sleep past dinner kept all of us up and about until the wee hours of daybreak. There were singles, duets and once even a German group rendition of a song. There was always a song for everyone and I am guessing we sang each and every song on the play list.

SF Bowling night

The SF got to do a lot of fun activities during the symp. The bowling night was certainly memorable. We split up into two groups for dinner to have Chinese or Turkish food, to meet up later at a quaint bowling place. This was quite different from the bowling we have back home which is more American. Of course- because this was German bowling! The alley was smaller and the pins were suspended by strings. The bowling ball was way smaller and had no holding grooves to clasp. The place had already boosted our enthusiasm by its look and the Germans just made it more fun for us with their interesting bowing games. There was the 3 digit game, quite interesting. Then the pyramid game- even more competitive and very exciting. The cheers, the talent, the fun came all put together made for a lovely night out in Jena.