Germany

I said good-bye to India a couple days ago...arrived in Germany to finish the trip. We'll be here a week. Markus is from a city called Gelsenkirchen, it's in the NW part of Germany.

I noticed that Slumdog Millionaire did really well at the Oscars...I thought that movie was really well done. After seeing some of those places, I think it's a fair and accurate representation of India. There was a picture in the German newspaper of a group of Indian people, living in the slums gathered around a single TV watching the Academy Awards. I thought it was pretty ironic that this scene now happens for real. In the movie, the people gather around the TV and cheer for their local hero to win the gameshow. Now, in real life, the people cheered for their own story to win an Oscar, and it won many. If you've seen the movie, you know that his whole life is a foreshadowing to the questions he's asked on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. It's interesting that the movie now takes on a life of its own, the story of someone rising out of poverty...and now the scenes in the movie have come to life with the people of India watching for real, wanting their story to be heard. I think it must have really touched the Indian people. There was a lot of excitement about it when we were there. Irony like that doesn't happen too often...beautiful when it does.