Back again

It has been a while since my last post now, due to the conference that I had to attend in Prague, but this just means that there is so much more to blog about now :-) The last days up to our departure was rather busy with meetings, poster finishing and printing and so on, which is why I didn't get to post anything during those days. We set off for Prague last Tuesday, having to catch a train at 7.30 AM in order to get to the airport in time. We arrived in Prague in sunshine and 23 C, and managed to find the right bus, to take us to the metro to get to the center of the city where our hotels were located. Now, even though the bus departed from the airport carrying many tourists, the information given through its loudspeakers were in Czech, which neither of us had any knowledge about. We knew where we had to get of, but because that was at the end station, and both the information about where the bus was heading as well as the name of the next stop was given through the loudspeakers, we misinterpreted the information and got off to early. Standing at the bus stop, we quickly realized that and luckily the next bus would arrive 10 minutes later, so in the meantime we laughed a bit of ourselves while we "synchronized" our mobile phones, so that if we were to get away from each other later on, we could send an SMS or call. We joked about picking up our boss, Moustapha, and his assistant research professor, Basem, who would arrive the next day, and getting them off the bus at the same stop to "synchronize" their mobile phones as well :-) We didn't do that though.

The whole KMEB delegation at a late dinner Friday. From the left is Jorge, me, Basem, Sijranke, Pernille, Moustapha (our boss), and Moustapha's wife, Mette. Amer is behind the camera.

Standing in the center of Prague with all our luggage, our first quest was to get hold of a city map to help us locate our hotels. We were 5 people, two guys and 3 girls, but we had not managed to get the same hotel for our stay, so the guys would be in one apartment hotel, while Pernille, Sijranke and I would be in another apartment hotel. It took us a while to actually get hold of a map, and still we had to ask for the way to our hotel. Because we were approaching 3 o'clock in the afternoon, not having had lunch yet, we decided to drop the luggage in our hotel, go get some lunch and then find the guys' hotel afterwards. After this late lunch, we went shopping for breakfast the next days (breakfast was not included at any of our hotels, but as both of them were apartment hotels that didn't matter much, because we had kitchens to prepare our own breakfast in), and located the guys' hotel, which turned out not be very far away from our hotel. After getting settled in our hotels we went out to look at the beautiful city of Prague by night.

Sijranke, Amer, Jorge, and Pernille standing on the Charles Bridge of Prague

Me, Jorge, Pernille, and Sijranke at Charles Bridge the first night in Prague

The conference officially started on Wednesday 10 May, but having looked at the program, we decided that clinical lectures that were on, did not really have our interest, so we went sightseeing in Prague the whole day instead - I will tell you about this in another post. We registered at the conference in the evening to attend the welcoming ceremony and reception, though, as well as to put up the posters of our scientific work.

Me at my poster

With this I will end the first part of the "conference in Prague"-tale, stay tuned for the parts to follow :-)