Class Bulletin Board

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

Hello Class of ’73

It is hard to believe that we have been out of school for over 40 years. I assume most of us are looking forward to retirement and sort of a second life.

First of all, thank you Dave for keeping this site alive for all these years and keeping us informed of important events. Secondly, congrats Don for your new choice of occupation. I did not now that Embry-Riddle had a west coast campus. One of my students, she was in my classes for 4 years, got a full ride to play softball for Embry-Riddle in Daytona. It was very exciting for her, as it was her dream school for education and then softball paid her way.

As for Julie and I, we just returned from our second European vacation. We did a Viking River Cruise down central Europe. We visited The Netherlands, Germany, France and Switzerland. A couple that we are close friends with us, joined us on the trip. The cruise line treats you like royalty. We visited many historical sights, with the cathedrals and a trip to Colmar, France being the highlights of the trip. After living in South Florida where everything looks alike, seeing these buildings and towns built hundreds of years ago, it is amazing. Going to The Netherlands where there are still working windmills, what can you say. We sampled many local wines, beers and food. For those that have never taken a cruise, there are only 190 passengers with 50 staff members. The cruise was great and for those that want a relaxing time without the wild parties, highly recommended.

With all the terrorists situations, there was a concern on our part, but we were advised if possible to avoid large crowds and gatherings. There were several times that the military was on duty making regular passes around a given area. We tended to stay away from them in the event some wacko decided that they would make targets.

The local people where ever we went were friendly and seemed to welcome us. Most people spoke English and communications were seldom a problem. A few times when were outside of the commercial areas people tended not have a great grip of the English language.

Retirement looms for me, I figure I will end my career in education in December of 2017. I am just old school and with all the testing, I just do not fit in. This will be my 30th year in a profession I expected to leave after a few years. I had a passion a really enjoyed what I was doing for many years, but the past few has just driven that passion from me. I still believe in giving grades for what you know and what you do. Testing in my opinion is only one part of the teaching/ learning process. Unfortunately, I am in the minority. I do not know what my next journey will be but I am considering a couple of things to keep me occupied and out of Julie’s hair.

This is Julie and myself in Kinderdinjk, The Netherlands. They have 19 operational windmills located there. You can see a couple of them in the background. This happened to be our first stop on our cruise. A very interesting place.