... that's the title of a
classic Frank Sinatra song, which appropriately describes my most recent night out. On Good Friday (yesterday) I received a call from an old friend of mine, Anne, to hang out the same night with herself and our common friends, Cornelia (Conny) and Nicole. It was some sort of a tiny class reunion, since the four of us all graduated in 1996. Nicole did not actually attend Albertus Magnus Gymnasium, but Leibniz Gymnasium, the other secondary school in St. Ingbert from which a graduation grants access to all university studies. However, it is typical that schools in the same town collaborate in the two final years, so as to provide all students their preferred selection of classes. Therefore, Nicole was in my French class, and we took the final written exam called Abitur together at AMG. The Abitur is anyways centralized in our home state, meaning all students in the entire Saarland who selected a specific class at the advanced level (of which each student must pick three) will take the exact same final at the exact same time.
It was a very nice opportunity to reunite with the three, whom I haven't seen in many years. Anne was the one I had seen last - at the wedding of Dominik and Simone, in August 2004. So we had a lot of catching up to do, since Anne (the
valedictorian of Albertus Magnus Gymnasium's class of 1996, and now an employee of the local government) and Nicole (a pharmacist) have children, Conny (an MD) recently finished her specialization as a surgeon), and I spent much time on doing scientific research in Berlin and Chicago.
After a tasty dinner Nicole had to leave us, but I seized the day and got the picture that ornates this post. From left to right: Anne, Conny, Nicole. The former two and I went on to a bar to have one more drink, with some more chit-chat being done, until we called it a night.
Afterwards I was forced to admit that there is indeed life outside the science community ...
