Zug |
|
1 May 2024 - Zug
Strangely, I haven't really spent time in Zug before today. Like many Swiss cities it's located on a lakeshore. Across the Zugersee one can see Rigi and Pilatus. The place is also known as crypto valley because of the presense of so many cryptocurrency companies. The Zuger Kantonalbank even has advertisements up for bitcoin accounts. My impression is that there a lot more cars on the road per capita than in Zürich, and alot more slavic speaking women and English speaking men. Walking around with Paula I didn't actually hear than much German. Along the lake we watched tufted ducks battle and Paula met some Japanese deer that were just as curious about her as she was about them. They also make a noise that sounds like a creaking door, which is super weird.
Walking along the streets of nearby Baar I was looking at the names of businesses like I always do when I noticed the offices of the Starr Foundation, which I didn't realize had an office in Switzerland. It's the pilanthropic arm of AIG's founders which I know, of course, because my dad spent his career at AIG until the company was destroyed during the 2008 housing crisis. The offshore holding company that CEO Hank Greenberg ran with a controling interest in AIG was wiped out along with my dad's golden handcuffs there. It's always served as a stark reminder to me not to invest heavily in the company that also writes your paycheck, because you can lose your paycheck and your nest egg at once. In my college years dad also made me write essays for the Starr Foundation because it was a scholarship he knew about. I never got it, but I found plenty of others on my own. My dad also set me up with a nice college fund when I started college to pay expenses. We both agreed though that taking student loans which had zero interest while I was in college and leaving the college fund in the stock market was a smart idea. It was the late 90's and the stock market was hitting new highs every week. Then the dotcom bubble burst and my college fund took a nosedive. I finished paying of my students when I was forty. That was a lesson I learned the hard way. It's funny how a simple sign on the road can stir up such memories.
