Karleton

It seems every two days we swing a notch closer to our generation: Scott was ’77, Kim ’87, and now Karl Vollmers ’96. Hanging out with Karl felt like hanging out with a Carl, at least the type I’m used to. Thirty-something feels our age now.

Karl’s life in Zurich is unusual. Or it’s unusual that it’s there. Born and raised on a Minnesotan farm, he did undergrad at Carleton in physics, continued this line of study at the University of Minnesota before being induced by his boss-professor to come to Zurich to work at the Institute for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, where he does some baffling but relevant mechanical engineering type stuff.

What’s odd is that he and his wife married in Minnesota six months before they moved to Zurich. She’s currently in the South African plains, surrounded by lions. Literally, you can hear them roaring in the background if you are Karl and on Karl’s cellphone. She just got a job back in Minnesota, and, as it turns out, Karl will be back in Minnesota shortly as well.

Unfortunately, we don’t have much to report on Zurich itself. It was way too expensive to go outside. More importantly, Charles really had to catch up on work.

Based on absolutely nothing but price tags, we wouldn’t recommend seeing Zurich unless you are rolling around in fifty dollar bills as you read this. Every time you enter a restaurant or get a coffee or buy a magazine, you feel like you just landed on Park Place with four houses. Example: we got two hot chocolates for $12 (18 CHF), without tip.

As for the argument for Zurich, Karl went over the main points with us, walking us to a couple cathedrals, up some hills for views over the whole town, then down to the older districts, and introduced us to some real schmucks (Swiss for jewelry store). Despite the Alps being more in the background than we had expected, Zurich can stand with the best of Europe in terms of beauty, age and class. (Unfortunately, we left the camera in the room!). Did you know that there are 1100 fountains in Zurich, most drinkable? That’s more than any city in Europe, by a lot we’d guess.

Also, we’re not just saying this, we had the pleasure of being astounded, amazed, astonished, surprised, shocked, dumfounded, dazed and just all in all flabbergasted and rendered speechless by the fact that we stayed with our third consecutive extremely nice Carleton alum. Karl not only toured the city for us and bought us beers and let us drink his Belvedere vodka, but he let us use his coffeemaker and laundry facilities, bought us tram tickets, made us homemade pizza for dinner and walked us to the train station early in the morning to help us buy tickets out of there.

We now have exactly eight hours to reflect on his generosity on this train ride to Venice. Boy, time flies when you’re having fun!