Under the Lime Tree
 
Am in Rommerskirchen, Germany.
The last few days has been an all together new experience. Professionally, I am thrilled to bits - am doing real get-your-hands-dirty Consultancy. As opposed to sitting in office, pouring over emails and working out abstract business solutions.
 
I am consulting for a Company called Hydro Aluminum; their plant is fifty kilometers outside of Dusseldorf, which sometimes feels like the beyond of nowhere.
 
The best thing about the Consulting is that I am framing solutions in discussion with the actual business process owners - the logistics coordinators, the material managers and the plant maintenance guys. It doesn’t get more real. It’s the heart of business consulting and I am thrilled!
 
I am staying in this village called Rommerskirchen, five kilometers down from the plant. If their ever was an idyllic village, this is one. A population of under 800, no English news papers, no bank, one restaurant, and one non-German inhabitant - me.
 
I am at the Hotel Zur Linde (literally ‘The Lemon Tree’). It’s just off the main road, an old house lined with lime trees, a large patio and a wonderful little stone fountain in front. It has a restaurant on the ground floor, which when the sun is out, opens out into the patio. The house-specialty is Croatian fare. The first floor has three rooms, curiously marked 1, 2 and 4. Yes it is a hotel with just three rooms.
Currently I am its only occupant, so well I have a whole hotel to myself!
 
Last night I put my lap top by the window, and played Dido. Walked down to the patio and sat on a wooden bench under a lime tree, the music faintly floated through the open window and filled the night. It was ethereal.
 
It started drizzling. Typically, European rain - a light awry spray which wafts through the air and kisses the earth. The night was dark and desolate; Dido hung above me from the open window. I closed my eyes and let the whole experience enter all my senses. I could almost see a detachment of Nazi soldiers in their ferret hard-hats, stealthily troop past me from around the corner. Just like the movies.
 
I thought of my life, thought of the day that had ended, tried to peer into the looking glass, but I still could see nothing. I could have lived my whole life like that, the confused drizzle, the cool of the night, a wooden bench under a lime tree and a woman singing songs for me.
 
Phew…
 
This has been the highlight of my trip so far, the black Mercedes which came to fetch me from the Dusseldorf Airport comes in second, a distant second though. 

Labels: Travel