There is always a first time for everything that happens to us. There is something special about the first experience. The case was not different with my first day in Germany. I had never travelled to a foreign country before. When I landed in Germany the feeling was mixed. I was missing home, I was worried, but at the same time the thought of meeting new people and learning new things brought some relief.

It was a cold morning on October 1, when I arrived at Frankfurt international airport. I felt dead tired. I completed the formalities at the airport, collected my luggage and started looking for the way to the train station. I had to catch a train to Cologne and then to Bonn. I was worried, but didn’t want to give this impression to the people around.

My day begins when most people have finished theirs. I enter the misty old pub which reeks of stale cigarettes and unwashed cutlery. Before people come to amuse themselves and have a good time and one hears the cheerful clinking of glasses, the place has to be scrubbed clean. So, I roll up my sleeves and pick up the broom.

Football fan Julia Probst has the German football coach Joachim Loew in a tizzy. 30-year-old Probst has a hearing impairment and has taken to lip-reading Loew’s outbursts on the football field and tweeting them to fans on Twitter.

Leaving my homeland always makes me homesick. And when you are 6772 kilometers away, travelling for eight hours in an aircraft,  in a country that doesn’t speak your language. Phew…you see trouble welcoming you.

When I boarded the flight from India to Germany (Bonn, to be precise) in September 2010 a gamut of mixed emotions overcame me. I felt like I was entering alien territory. The silver lining amid the mental chaos was “hey, they too are humans…at least sign language is the same everywhere“. That consoled me a little.