It was a long day and the two nights were short. I left Eindhoven on Monday evening at 21:00 with the Britannia Express and arrived at 7:20 in Munich. That evening I returned from Munich at 23:10 with the Austria Express. On Wednesday morning at 9:00 I was back in Eindhoven: I had been away for 36 hours. The first night I did not sleep too well, for it was a bit warm in my cabin. The second night I slept better but shorter: I had to change trains in Köln at 6:45.
When I arrived in Munich I was met on the platform by Bauer, Broy, and Partsch. After breakfast in a near-by hotel we walked --it was a beautiful day!-- to the building of the Technische Universität Munich, where we conducted our business until 16:45. F.L. Bauer had invited me for dinner at his home in Grafrath, from Munich's main station 33 minutes by "S-Bahn". With the train of 21:50 I returned to Munich. The hospitality of Bauer and his wife was greatly appreciated; when the four --nice!-- little children had gone to bed, the three of us had a pleasant dinner.
Our business was the selection of the participants for this summer's NATO Summer School in Marktoberdorf. We had to select 95 from 150 applicants. The constraints were more complicated than I had expected. Different funding sources forced us to distinguish between NATO countries, communist countries, and the rest. (And, among the NATO countries, Greece, Portugal, and
Turkey occupied a somewhat exceptional position.) Orthogonal to that subdivision we had to distinguish between academic and industrial applicants. My greatest fear had been that the letters of recommendation, coming from so different cultures as they did, would be incomparable, but that fear turned out to seem unjustified. Some letters were unclear at first sight, but after a few rereadings a reasonably clear picture used to emerge pretty convincingly. The only remaining trouble was that 150 applicants was just a lot to go through; hence it was a day of hard work.
On my way to Munich I was the only occupant of the sleeper; on the way back all berths of the car were occupied. Both times the attendant was Dutch.
When I came home I felt slightly groggy, and I slept for two hours in my own bed.
| Plataanstraat 5 5671 AL NUENEN The Netherlands |
20 May 1981 prof.dr. Edsger W. Dijkstra Burroughs Research Fellow |
Last revised on Mon, 30 Jun 2003.