I arrived in Bonn, Germany on 2nd May 2014. After a whole evening of sleeping, on Saturday, 3rd may, my husband took all of us out for shopping. He had the bare minimum essentials in kitchen, so replenishing my kitchen was the first step to survival in Bonn:). Anyways we were at the Hauptbahnhof (central station) bus stand waiting for our bus. I saw a woman walking down the street, probably drunk I guessed by her gait, singing all to herself. She stopped a few steps away from me and started talking to me in German all the while fumbling in her pocket for something. I just smiled; because smile can temporarily hide your inability to understand and speak that language. Then Eureka! she took out her headphones from her pocket and made some gestures while laughing, which I understood that she was happy to have found them. Then she directed a question to me in German and pointed to her forehead at the place where Indians/Hindus usually wear the Bindi. I said that I did not understand German. She asked me if I understood English and when I nodded my head she asked me pointing to the bindi, if I was Indian. I said yes. She further asked that was I married since I had the Bindi. I said yes to that. And then came the googly question her third and final, if I was happy to be married. I was surprised by the question but anyways I said, "Yes I am very much happy!". She just shrugged, raised both her hands in the air and said OK and moved on, singing to herself.
Later I was telling my husband about this incident since he had moved away to find out about our bus route just then and was not aware of this. I told him, in India nobody ever asks a woman or a man for that matter, if she/he was happy in her/his marriage. It is so much granted that they will be and even if they are not, they are not walking away from it just for that reason alone. A small cultural shock on my first day of arrival:)
