The "Do I know U?" game and the beauty of freestyle swimming

There is an exercise that is mostly used as an Ice Breaker, where two strangers sit in front of each other, describe each other preceisely and then fantasise about the life of the other person. Within the last week this exercise has started to take up more and more workshop time and crept into leisure time, we find doing it in the tram and missing the station (which - to be honest - is mostly due to my extremely bad travel guiding in Mannheim). We have spent a week of getting to know each other, which happend while wokshopping, walking, changing hotels, dragging extremely big suitcases with saris all over the place, watching plays, and, just now, swimming. Language does play a huge role - in the workshop and in the rest of our time. Shrunga and Pallavi say "Danke" and "Leitungswasser" and we listen to the actors speak in Kannada, Russian, Spanish, Swiss German, French, Kannadised English, Russian sign language and creative Bharat Natyamised Pantomime - as of today I know what jogging looks like in Bharat Natyam. Our German brains have worked hard on rythmical patterns called Konokol and we did konokol-rap some weird stuff funky today. Which brings us to the word "Scheisse" which the Germans do not agree on how bad the word actually is - while eating "Mannheimer Dreck" (a chocolate biscuit that wants to visually resemble a heap of scheisse!) in the evening, we heard the word on stage in the Schnawwl play "Risiko" at least five times. In the audience simoultaneous whispered translations af the whole play for our Indian friends, pissed of audience members changing seats. And then we do audio plays for each other in Kannada and German and later have a discussion on the phrase "I love you" and how overused it is, we tend to all agree on that. Language is not a problem anymore, its is music, a difference of beauty I feel after we read part of our play today, simultaneously in Kannada, German and English. I am  systematic

ally relieved. We can talk and talk and we do - but Arundhati says "I know you when I eat what you eat" and so she comes fresh from the plane directly into Sandra's small kitchen where she spends the next five hours cooking for 50 people with brave Gayathri and the volunteers Lisa and Magdalena who heroically dissect the first chickens of thier lives. We all - who cooked-wonder how we will ever get that garlicgingeronion ( yes I am randomly connecting several nouns into one word, as Germans like to do) smell of our skin, which becomes an issue two days later, after partying in Casino and we all smell like ashtrays, which is not such a big problem if you are German and have no hair but if you have long Indian hair to get rid of that smell is a task. But just now we smell like new born babies because we ditched Verdi for the swimming pool where Pallavi and Shrunga learned the breast stroke and freestyle breathing in just two hours. Pure water talent in action. With wrinkeld skin and burning eyes we are all sure we will sleep like logs tonight, while the washing machine works hard on our ashtrayed gingered garlicy sweaty clothes.

A footnote on food - almost all of us people love to eat and we have to mention that excellent Black Forest Cake we all had in the Castle restaurant of beautiful Heidelberg. We know each other quite a bit better today. Tomorrow we leave for Stuttgart, more plays, more workshops and a swmimming pool?

PS: I apologize for being the officially worst travel guide through Mannheim ever!

PPS: I proudly announce the official " Do I know U?" table footall championships. The leading team Kumar / Stepf  is waiting for challengers.