Morning Dave,
Thanks again for your continuing and tireless efforts to keep us from the class of ’73 up to date and connected. Was just thinking, as I read your weekly news from Saturday (and, yes, I always do read it!) about two or three things of perhaps newsy value:
1 ) Incredibly enough, Switzerland is celebrating its 725th Birthday today – it’s our national holiday here and a great ending to an extended weekend. Also in August, we are celebrating our 17th year living here. Not long compared to 725, but already almost 30% of Muecki’s and my life (!).
2 ) I’m still with Gartner, and moved (organizationally) in January to Strategic Accounts , based out of our EMEA HQ in London and am responsible for IBM, HPE and Microsoft across all of DACH (Germany, Switzerland and Austria). Still have a Swiss contract, work mostly out of home office or am travelling to clients across the area or in London for team meetings. Never a dull moment, but I don’t miss the daily commute to our Swiss office, which is on the other side of Zurich (only 40km, mostly autobahn), but was every day a 1.5-3.0 hour commute, depending on the status of the traffic jams. Even though I still need to drive to clients around Zurich or take the train to Geneva to clients there, the new set up is saving me 7.5-15 hours a week(!) sitting in the car.
3 ) Speaking of travelling, I was actually motivated by Arnie Moore’s post to write this response to you today : ) I know many of our classmates travel from time to time on European trips, and I’d be happy to help out on tips, etc., from a “sort-of” insider (last time I lived a whole year in the USA was 1992). That is, especially for Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, the northern half of Italy, London and surroundings, we know our way around pretty well. Whether it’s for summer holidays, snow skiing, wine and culture tours, car stuff (esp. Germany, Italy !) I could certainly be a resource. Plus, perhaps some may be up for a visit to our wonderful neck of the woods on the lake in Uetikon am See, 15km up Lake Zurich from downtown Zurich (14 min with the train to Zurich main station). Our village (approx 6500 population) is built on the very steep slopes of the hills facing south toward the lake, and we have 5 local vineyards that produce over 12 varieties of grapes and many different kinds of mostly white, but some red wines too. The surface of the lake is about 400m (ca. 1310 ft.) above sea level, and we live on the big hill (street is called “Aelpli” ) ) above town at about 600m (ca. 1970 ft.) with a great view of the lake and the Alps to the east of us. As we are only about 1km from our village center, you can imagine how steeply the hill rises up to where our house is. The hill continues on into a great hiking area directly above us up to a peak of 850m (ca. 2790 ft.). So we’re not really in the high mountains, but the nearest ski area is only 30 minutes to the east of us.
4 ) Thus, please let folks from the class of ’73 know that they can contact me if they’re coming over or planning to come over to good old Europe-this goes for you too, Dave. BTW, although the news that comes over to the US lately regarding Europe probably mostly focuses on terrorism and danger, it really is quite safe here-especially in Switzerland. But people over here are certainly much less used to amok shootings, etc. than in the US-although this is something we in the (still) free world should certainly not get calloused or “used” to.
The attached pics are from around our 21st anniversary, which we celebrated up on the German island of Sylt, where we spent 3.5 weeks of vacation in June-July. The pic with the dogs is with our black lab Finn and one of his best friends, Paula. They were both taken on the longest day of the year at around 11.30 PM!
All the best, and enjoy the rest of summer!
Dan
