People and cities

Paris is perhaps the most beautiful city on earth. It has so many monuments by the French, who are great lovers of art. As I said before, every building is a postcard of its own, having its own history. The French are also very proud people, and do not like it when you talk to them in English. At times, I also found them plain rude – they will tell you they do not know English even they do! Being proud is good, but the French pride borders on arrogance. It seems they are proud of their history, much like the Indians like talking about Vedas, and ancient glory. It is high time that France woke up to the new world order, where they are not the rulers of the world. They would do well to remember that they had their asses saved by the Americans when Hitler was in town. De Gaulle himself sounds more of an opportunist rather than the great leader he is made out to be.

I may be wrong on this count coz of my lack of reading on French history, but this is the opinion that I have formed till now.

The French are more the painters, the artists, the connoisseurs than engineers, fighters or anything dashing. They have had their moments in the limelight when Napoleon was the emperor. They would do better to wake up to the new world. However, their architecture, museums are definitely worth admiring. Also at one level, I hope that Indians learn to be proud of themselves, their country, and what they can do, (rather than the pride at their history and mythology). India still has not completely shaken off its colonial yoke of her back.

Germans on the other hand are technical people, and like you would expect them to be, their systems work like clockwork. To give an example: all trams in Bremen were accurate to the minute, unlike Paris. Also all of them were functional. In the two days in Paris, our metro stopped a stop before its intended destination, and once we had to run to the TGV station to board our train in time coz of this. Also, all announcements are in French. In a city like Paris, bustling with tourists, you would expect the announcers to be bilingual. Ticket vendors, tourist info centres, lack proper English speakers, people at best can talk broken English. Irritating.

I found the Netherlands much like India. It’s got a huge population density, like India, and traffic signals are taken to be suggestions rather than rules by the public!