emotional heidelberg

the nominal purpose of my 5 day trip to heidelberg was to attend the 3rd international meeting on fungal cell walls. mmmmm.

luckily i had a few other side projects to keep me entertained. hiren now calls the hberg home, and reto and i did my best to keep up with his evening pub tour schedule. mum, dad, and shell were also up for the weekend, and we all had fun exploring the historic town and surrounds. i think we did pretty much all the standard tourist activities on offer - old town tour, castle tour, fireworks ooo-aaa-ing, pub tour. the local tourist guides made sure we remembered the key point in heidelberg history - that the french bastards kept burning the place down whenever they had the chance. bastard french.

it was most entertaining meeting some of hiren's embl friends. they were doing their best to keep the pace in the heidelberg soap well up. table-top dancing, ellicit photos, best-buddies falling out in the middle of pool games and storming out of pubs. it was really quite a bit much for our delicate swiss sensibilities.

and amongst all that reto and i managed to make it to (almost) all of the sessions of the meeting. actually, fungal cell walls are really interesting things. really, i promise!