Welcome

on the road again... sing it Willie (nelson)... ahhhh the romance of airports... Can it be that I am once again at SFO in the wee hours getting ready to hop over another pond?  say it isn't so Totto!  I've done more than my fair share of traveling around this little blue ball or ours.  The big difference now (compared to my biz days of 100k+miles/year) is the friends and connections I make and the value I give and take with each trip.  The days of being a tourist are long long gone for me.  I like putting doing things, helping people and most of all 'turning on lights' - in people hearts + brains, and likewise my own.

So this trip is to SchnitzelLand near Kitbuhl, Austria.  The castle (Festung) in the picture here has some very cool history with the Bavarians, and I'll be lecturing at the very top 'SaalRaum' in about 10 days at a Energy Conference.  

In the meantime, I'll be part of a team of professors advising students on a VERY cool project:  Turning an abandoned military base (please say it's not a USA abandoned one?) into a satellite campus for the TU Munich. 

So this international adventure is a bit more studios and predictable than the last BaliBabee Debacle. I'm kinda wondering if the reverse will happen here:  turning a 3-4 week trip into a 4-6 month gig…  (reverse of Bali)…. not.

But, this teachin gig has some real traction under it.  This is the Austrian Applied Sciences University where I’ve been teaching for exactly 20 years now… is a proven recipe, and I have many friends and collegues there.  I'm sure in the next few days, I'll be walking down the Inn river and recognize several people... including the ex-mayor, Herr Mayer.

A teaching shift

For the past 19 years, I've lectured (in English, discussions in German) in front of a classroom of 4-year + masters engineering students as part of the FM (facility management) program which I helped the Directors put together in 1992 starting with 40 students (they now have over 3,000 students). 

So this year,  instead of teaching in front of 40+ students I’ll be working within a teaching/advisement group helping 20+ student teams design an eco-campus/village.  My best understanding, based on what I’ve been told up to this point, is that the TU of Munich (technical university) is putting together a satellite campus on the border with Austria and there’s some sort of a competition (?) about who can come up with the best urban master plan.

Next blog contains the initial work scope.