Sunday was the open day at St Albans Secondary College. This was the reason I came to Australia this time.
I kept saying that a week in Melbourne in winter is no holiday. But since I have never been to any school reunions since I left school, I came with hopes of catching up with former colleagues from my St Albans High School days. Well, the one person I met was the one person I still have contact with, in fact, it was Maria Dobes who told me about the reunion. But we already went to kindergarten together and our Mums were good friends. In fact, Maria just confirmed it again, that it was my Mum that told her Mum to apply for the job as Physical Education teacher at St.Albans High where she ended up teaching until retirement, about 30 years.
It was interesting to see how the school had developed, grown and changed. Apparently now it is a high performance school of prestige. In my matriculation year we had the lowest pass rate in the whole of Victoria and probably the lowest pass rate ever for St-Albans High. I remember my German teacher died in the middle of the year without replacement. There was no compensation in the exam. Funny, now 45 years later, Austria is just introducing centralized matriculation exams. I flunked German by a couple of marks, yet now living in Austria, many people take me for a German native.