Have you ever experienced something in your past that seemed so ordinary, so insignificant, that over time it has almost been forgotten, only for it to come back years later, and shake you to your core?
Back in 1998 my wife and I were living in Switzerland. It was a transfer to Nestle’s Head Office in Vevey.
A picture postcard town on the shore of Lake Geneva. It was no wonder it had attracted the rich and famous to this little corner of the lake – from Charlie Chaplin to Freddie Mercury.
Early one Saturday morning we took a one-hour drive to the capital – Bern. Now in possession of a car, we were let loose on our first foreign driving experience. As Australians, we were on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road.
We parked alongside the river near the Bear Pit – literally, a deep, wide pit with two bears in it.
There was nobody around, just us, and an old man shuffling towards the bridge. He smiled and nodded to us as we stopped at the Bear Pit.
We looked down at the bears for five minutes. They looked up at us.
They didn’t look happy. It was February – cold and gloomy – and it looked even worse in the Bear Pit.
Starting to feel as cold as the bears looked, we decided to keep moving. Crossing the bridge, we walked up the sleepy cobblestone street into the old town. Coffee was in order. I could rehearse the German phrase I’d need while we walked.
The map in the back of the guidebook/phrasebook I was using (…it was 1998 don’t forget!) said that there was an ornate fountain up and around the corner. In the old movies, there was always a café near a fountain. We were sure to find one.
Fate didn’t disappoint. One ornate fountain, and one café with one customer at a table behind the window – the old man.
“Guten Morgen. Zwei Kaffee bitte,” I stammered as confidently as I could. It sounded right to me, but I held up two fingers just to be sure. The old woman behind the counter smiled and nodded.
“Where are you from?” said the old man behind us. So much for my ‘…maybe my German is better than I thought’ moment.
I explained we were Australian and had arrived in Switzerland in January.
“Why?” he said.
“I work for Nestle,” I replied. “…in Supply Chain,” I added, doubting he’d know what that meant.
“Ah, supply!” he said, nodding and gesturing to the table next to him.
He explained he hadn’t met many Australians as we sat down at the next table.
His name was Gunther. He was born in Bern and lived in different places over the years, but for the past thirty years had been back in Bern.
Our coffees arrived as he said he had been a supply clerk at the time.
“At what time?” I asked.
“1914. When I knew him,” he answered.
“Wow, 1914!” I said. “Knew who?”
“Albert,” he said.
I looked at him none the wiser.
“Albert?” I replied.
“Albert Einstein,” he added. “Isn’t that why you are visiting Bern? Albert lived on this street before he was famous. Or did you come to see those bears?”
“Really! You knew Albert Einstein?” I said in amazement.
“Ok,” I thought to myself, smiling to my wife over my coffee. “We’ve got a live one here! The mischievous old guy is going to do his bit for the local tourist industry.”
Gunther went on to explain. He knew Einstein when he lived in Berlin. They both visited the same café each morning. Gunter was Swiss, and Einstein had become Swiss. They’d both lived in Bern. It was what they had in common.
Gunther said he did most of the talking. He said Einstein didn’t say much. He just listened, smoked, and drank his coffee.
I could understand that. Gunther loved talking. He didn’t need prompting.
Gunther was 17 or 18 at the time. He was a Supply Clerk in a Swiss Engineering company’s office in Berlin.
He detailed how every morning he would explain his frustrating work problems to Einstein.
As a Supply Clerk, all Gunther wanted to do was move goods from one place to another, but it was never easy. I vividly remember Gunther mentioning four problems. He said he often explained them to Einstein who seemed happy to listen. It sounded comical to me the way he would repeat words three times to stress his point.
1. “I used to tell him. Constraints, constraints, constraints. The big, big, big work order, but not enough machines in the factory meant long delays. There were always capacity problems, train delays, or not enough parts. Big, big, big problems. Slow, slow, slow deliveries! When everything is good, only need a day. But when bad, I need a week.”
Stopping to sip his coffee, he carried on.
2. “When the factory fixed a problem, everything fast, fast, fast again. Slow. Fast. Slow. Fast. Nothing ever constant. It drives me mad!” he said rocking his head from side to side as he explained it.”
He took off his glasses to clean them as he continued.
3. “When snow stopped the trains in winter: big, big, big problem. I had to find another way. The road down to your lake. Boat on lake to Geneve and another rail line.”
Satisfied they were clean, he put his glasses back on, thought a moment, and shook his head.
4. “…and then the war came! At last, everything is working good. Factory is working good! No problems! But then the war in France! Big, big, big problems again. Nothing is ever constant.”
The memory of that cold, early February morning coffee with Gunther has remained vivid in my mind for some reason. Maybe it was his crazy story, maybe it was going somewhere completely new for the first time. Maybe it was just that our first foreign driving experience heightened my senses.
That coffee with Gunther 26 years ago came back to me this week. I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. There was something odd about it, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
I’ve suddenly found myself with some extra time lately (that’s another story), so I gave myself a writing exercise. A challenge.
From a position of utter ignorance, can I write an article explaining Einstein’s Theory of Relativity so a similarly ignorant reader might begin to understand it?
I’m not going to explain his theory here. But if you’re interested, follow this link to the article. You be the judge.
In 1905, Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity. It replaced Newton’s law of universal gravitation. While it was groundbreaking work, Einstein wasn’t happy with it. He knew it didn’t explain how things happened in the real world. He was working on the limitations of his ‘special’ theory when he was having his daily coffee with Gunther.
Einstein’s big breakthrough in his 1915 General Theory of Relativity was to explain how large bodies change their speed with time. He worked out that gravity warps space-time around massive objects. The stronger the gravity, the more space-time warps (…again, see the article where I hope I’ve explained it).
As I read article after article, and watched YouTube clips to try and understand his theories, the recollection of old Gunther talking about his old work problems grew stronger. I put it down to the mischievous (?) link between himself and Einstein he gave us three decades ago.
But then I remembered an old Einstein quote: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Reading that quote and recalling each of Gunther’s four problems, I started to form a crazy idea in my head. By substituting some words, Gunter’s problems seemed to fit what Einstein’s General Theory (GT) revealed.
Let me try to explain.
1. Einstein GT showed how gravity works as a constraint on objects within a gravitational field.
That was the same as what Gunther had said with his “…I used to tell him. Constraints, constraints, constraints. The big, big, big work order, but not enough machines in the factory meant long delays…”
The big work orders were the gravity that the machines couldn’t cope with, so supply slowed down.
2. Einstein’s GT explained the effects of acceleration and deceleration. In his principle of equivalence, acceleration is indistinguishable from gravity.
This aligned with Gunther’s “…when the factory fixed a problem, everything fast, fast, fast again. Slow. Fast. Slow. Fast. Nothing ever constant. It drives me mad!”
The problem in the factory (being a big source of gravity) is a constraint that slows down output. Removing the problem/constraint/reducing gravity speeds things up again.
3. Einstein’s GT covered the adaptation to constraints. This means that objects in a gravitational field change their motion in response to the force they encounter.
This lined up with “When snow stopped the trains in winter: big, big, big problem. I had to find another way. The road down to your lake. Boat on lake to Geneve and another rail line.”
The snow meant that Gunther had to change the way he moved the factory’s output (his adaptation) when faced with the snow blocking the rail line (his constraint).
4. And finally (might there be more?) Einstein’s GT had a concept called ‘equivalence in perception’.
It means that someone can’t tell the difference between the effects of gravity or acceleration.
Imagine you’re inside a car, and it starts moving forward. As the car accelerates, you feel pushed back into your seat. Now, imagine you’re inside the same car, but this time it’s parked facing up a steep hill. It’s stationary, but you still feel pushed back into your seat, just like when it was accelerating. Both the feeling of gravity and acceleration are the same.
Again, this is the same as when Gunther mentioned the war, “…and then the war! At last, everything is working good. Factory is working good! No problems! But then the war in France! Big, big, big problems again. Nothing is ever constant.”
Whether it was a problem in the factory or a problem of the war in France, both felt the same to him. It made moving his goods difficult.
Maybe these links are a natural coincidence, maybe not.
Maybe Gunther was just a mischievous old man, or maybe he was being honest and knew Einstein. After all, he didn’t try to dupe us into buying an authentic Einstein artifact, like Einstein’s old pen or pipe.
If they did know each other, maybe this is what Einstein meant when he said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Maybe the way we sat back and listened to Gunther’s rambling was what Einstein did too?
This led me to another thing Einstein once said: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about the solution.”
Maybe that time with Gunther each morning was part of Einstein’s 55 minutes?
Maybe, just maybe a big part…relatively speaking.
What do you think?
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