Friday, 16th September, 2011.

I was up at 4am this morning to travel to Bonn, arriving in my hotel at about 1pm local time.  Having checked into my room my first task is to find the best possible option for making a 90-minute phone call to the US which is scheduled to take place at 6pm.  I’ve already established a cost of about £800.00 from my hotel room and of about £180.00 from my mobile.  There must be a better way.  The hotel point me to a road which has a number of what they call “call shops” and I make my way to find out more.  Entering the first one I come across I find that the cost is less than 14 Euros – about £13.00.

Is it me or is the manner of the man who answers my questions one of irritation?  I know I’m not looking to pay Rolls Royce prices and still, I’d like a little of what some people call “service”.  I leave with the information I need and walk past Beethoven’s birthplace before a hasty lunch and making my way to the Beethovenhalle where I shall be singing in the evening.  I have special dispensation to leave our rehearsal to make my call and I do this.

In the call shop – a kind of internet cafe – I am directed to booth 6 where I make my call, joining colleagues from around the world.  I am perched precariously on a chair which squeaks noisily every time I adjust my position and still, I am able to participate fully.

When I finish the call my time is tight – my concert starts in little more than half an hour and I have to get back to the Beethovenhalle.  Still, it has made a huge difference to me today to find a low-cost way of making this call.  I take a few moments to thank the man and to tell him how much difference it has made to my day.  He seems surprised and we get talking.  “Sind sie Deutsch?” (Are you German?) he asks.  I say no and our conversation takes a new course.  He asks me where I come from and how I came to learn German and I ask the same of him.  He came from Somalia three years ago and has been grappling with the challenges of this language since that time.  When we say goodbye I find I have, without thinking, extended my hand and we shake hands.

I come away with a different perspective.  The grumpy man of the afternoon has become a human being – someone for whom speaking in German poses challenges and someone, too, who is ready to go beyond the strictly transactional and to connect with another human being.  I wonder how much my own diffidence – both about taking out my rusty German and brushing it off and about about asking the questions of the entirely ignorant as I make my first ever visit to a call shop – were factors in my experience in the afternoon.

Either way, as I look at things from a new perspective, everything changes.