The Mr. Knupp Experience

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On December 31st, 1996, Mr. Alfons Knupp, the landlord of my employer's main appartment building and a Swiss citizen at large, retired. On June 22nd, 1997, I noticed that something was wrong.

I had been trying to impress a young Ph.D. student who had come to work at the lab where I was employed. He was living in the aforementioned appartment building, but only had faced the new landlord who had been put into place after Mr. Knupp's retirement. Taking a deep breath to get up to speed I had set out tell him a story about living in Switzerland, in particular about living in an appartment building run by a true Swiss landlord. My chest had been trembling, my eyes had been rolling, and my finger was up and warning the student "young man, listen to what I have to tell you."

But then--nothing. I couldn't remember a single cohesive story. I couldn't even come close to a single clear thought about my experiences with Mr. Knupp, his wife, the appartment building, and the 23 ways of properly disposing garbage. This was when I noticed that something was wrong. Dead wrong. Obviously, I was loosing all my stories. It had been 13 month since I had moved out, and I was starting to forget these memorable events which tied together a whole generation of colleagues who had gone through the Mr. Knupp school of dwelling in a Swiss appartment building.

This was when I decided to send out a cry for help to all those who shared my experiences and who had to tell their own stories about Mr. Knupp.

To be finished... See also Brad's story.

Copyright (©) 2007 Dirk Riehle. Some rights reserved. (Creative Commons License BY-NC-SA.) Original Web Location: http://www.riehle.org