My week

Last week was jam-packed with travel and science talk. I think a preview of the summer to come. On Wednesday we had the first-ever MPI-CBG Postdoc Retreat. 25 postdocs from the institute traveled to a little resort near the Czech border to get to know each other, each other's science, and maybe have a little fun.
It was cool. We all gave short talks with short discussions. Maybe the format was too short, but the idea was mostly to get an idea of what problems people were working on. The "resort" was situated in the Osterzgebirge, a region of hills/mountains South of Dresden. The Erzgebirge are famous for the woodwork handicraft from the region, most notably the Christmas-time decorations (The candle-powered merry-go-round dealy-o's and the little smoking incense men) We ate in a room filled with this stuff. It would have been a really cozy lodge in the winter.
Four of us needed to be in Heidelberg at 9am the next day for a conference. So we rented a car to drive back to Dresden after the first day and catch a 6am flight to Frankfurt and taxi to Heidelberg. Well, we left around 1 in the morning and cruised into Dresden around 2 I think. In our tiredness we decided the best idea would be to sleep in the car at a gas station near the airport so we could just wake up there at 4:30 to catch our flight. Needless to say I couldn't sleep. But we did make it into the conference just as the 1st lecture started at 9:30. And proceeded to stay up for lectures until 6pm, and then to dinner, and out again to the bars for drinks. And then up at 8 the next morning to do it again.
And then more full days of talks for TWO MORE days at a different conference in Heidelberg.

But it was cool. The first conference, for "Mito-check" was great and inspiring as usual. And Heidelberg is a cool town. Kinda the stereotypical fun German town. beautiful. With typical architecture and houses complete with a river through the middle and a giant castle overlooking the valley of it all.