The mood at the meeting between Indian and German industries in Munich was sombre on Thursday, as both sides exhorted each other not to abandon reform in the face of populist compulsions. Outside the hotel room and across the ancient Bavarian city’s skyline, the angular steel-and-glass lines of Bauhaus confronted the baroque architecture of the House of Wittelsbach. Munich lies at the heart of Europe and the cosmopolitanism shows. The city opera is presently led by none other than Zubin Mehta. Anita Bose Pfaff, Subhas Chandra Bose’s daughter, continues to live here along with the memories of stories her mother told her. But it is at the Hofbrauhaus, probably the world’s most famous pub, that German dedication to the pursuit of pleasure is most evident.This, for the uninitiated, is the public house that Hitler took over in 1923 when he attempted a putsch to take power and called Munich the ‘‘capital’’ of his ‘‘movement.’’ It’s a slice of history Bavarians would rather not contemplate, although to their credit they have never shied away from it. But never mind, toss all the extras out when you climb the stairs and prepare for one of the most enjoyable evenings of your life. Fatty girls in white knickers and folksy dresses, male dancers with much derring-do and simply gallons of beer in mugs that begin with one litre. This is Munich going-back-to-its-roots and considering the number of Germans there they haven’t moved too far either. There’s one word to describe the evening. Fun.• PRIME Minister Vajpayee continued to feel at home speaking Hindi in the heartland of Bavaria, but clearly his Hindi typists accompanying him were already missing the sounds and sights of the motherland. The word ‘‘Bavaria’’ in the Hindi script of the dinner speech that Vajpayee gave in honour of Minister-President (chief minister) of Bavaria Edmund Stoiber had become Baavariya. A Freudian slip? Only Sigmund was Austrian — like another of his contemporaries Adolf — although both spoke German. Never mind, it was never a diplomatic contretemps the PM’s aides couldn’t handle.Now the word ‘‘Bairisch’’ meaning ‘‘Bavarian’’ has the history of first appearing at least a couple of hundred years before the word ‘‘Deutsche’’ German, a clear reference to the independent-minded people of the state. After World War II, Bavaria accepted a Constitution written out at the instruction of the US military government. Article 1, paragraph 1 read, ‘‘Bavaria is a Free State,’’ a reference to the refusal of the foreign word ‘‘Republic.’’ Meanwhile, modern-day Munich is said to be slowly wresting the title of the being the world’s largest publishing centre from New York. Bavaria is a news hungry joint, publishing 150 papers and magazines and a quarter of all the books in Germany. And now, the internet and IT are the new buzzwords here.• FROM the baroque churches of the Wittelsbach kings (notably, the ‘‘fairy-tale king’’ Ludwig II, who constructed his mad hatter castles south of Munich) to the onion domes of the Romanov empire in St Petersburg, it is hardly three hours on a direct Air India One flight. But if Munich is in the heart of Europe, St Petersburg clings to the tip of the marshes that once washed the Gulf of Finland. That’s before Peter the Great constructed his glorious capital and decided to wrench disease and superstititon-ridden Mother Russia, kicking and screaming, to look through this ‘‘window to Europe.’’ Clearly, Peter was one of the world’s first reformers, a message the 43 heads of state and government assembled here may or may not remember when consumed by the spirit of the tercentenary celebrations. St Petersburg reverted to its pre-revolution name after the decimation of the Soviet Union and just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but until 1991 it had been called Leningrad. A statue of the great revolutionary still stands in front of the Finlandsky Station.
