Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished Guests, dear Friends,
It is an honour to be with all of you here today and an even greater honour to have the privilege to greet you at the very beginning of our this year’s Congress. I suppose I am not the only one here who takes coming to Vienna and to Hotel Imperial in the last weekend of January as a constant of my life, as a fixed point in my life program. In the turbulent world of today, we are losing one constant after another, but this one stays – much to my delight – unchanged.
Many thanks for inviting me to address this distinguished audience. I always highly value this opportunity. Coming to Vienna and participating in the Monday morning session of the Vienna Congress has been for some of us already for years the best way how to spend the last January Monday morning. Instead of skiing in the mountains or doing something similarly productive. I have been privileged to be part of this group. There are always many daunting topics waiting to be addressed. I, therefore, look forward to our today’s talks. And to having a chance to meet many good old friends. It is great to speak to an audience again, after two years of speaking to TV cameras only.
We are attending the almost incredible, already 20th opening ceremony of the Vienna Congress com.Sult. At the beginning I was a little uncertain. I was afraid that we are misusing the well-known, more than two hundred years old name of the Wiener Kongress, but I do believe now that we can afford it. Twenty congresses make history.
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Many thanks for the invitation. It is great to be in Vienna at the end of January again, as if nothing happened between January 2020 and January 2021. The Vienna Congress Com.Sult has become a part of our lives and of our calendar, at least for some of us. Many thanks to David Ungar-Klein for succeeding to push this year’s Vienna Congress through, in spite of all the adversity, hurdles and obstacles connected with the corona epidemic. In the last couple of months, all of us have been receiving letters with cancelations of all scheduled conferences and seminars. The fact that we are here today is – given the circumstances – almost unbelievable. Once again, many thanks to all who made it possible.