Trip to Amsterdam - 19 hours in a life of a scientist

On Wednesday three of our group joined a face-to-face meeting of CVgenes@target in Amsterdam. CVgenes@target is a consortium funded by the EU within FP7. Together with colleagues from Utrecht, Basel, Munich, Leicester and Oxford we aim to identify new targets for treatment of cardiovascular diseases. 

Not the first time this year, once again we started our day at around 4:00 a.m. in Lübeck; take-off was at 7:05 a.m. from Hamburg Airport. But as the days get longer it's getting better. Instead of leaving Hamburg at night, we vitnessed a wonderful sunrise during our flight. 

Sunrise at around 7:30 a.m. Flight from Hamburg to Amsterdam.

The meeting took place at Exchange Avenue, a conference center at the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. It was a really pleasant location for such a meeting.

First coffee at 9:05 a.m.

The meeting itself was very inspiring and fruitful. In the morning session, we presented data and ideas and in the afternoon we had some very successful break-out sessions. For the latter, we formed three groups to get new ideas and to develope strategies for the next months. The brain-storming was really successful, we made a lot of decisions and developed a promising analysis-plans for our next projects. The atmosphere was very open and friendly and we had a lot of fun working together.

Lively discusions about future projects.

 The meeting ended at 4:00 p.m. with a photo shooting of the group.

Members of CVgenes@target at Schiphol Airport.

The flight back home for the Lübeck team wasn't before 8:15 p.m., so we had a lot of time to spend at the Airport. 

First we had some dinner together with team members from Munich. Afterwards some of us found a great spot to take a nap. We needed that after more than 14 hours.

A nap at the Airport.

However, we were not the only ones (pretending) to work at the Airport. But maybe the only ones without such nice tatoos. 

Finally, at around 7:30 p.m. our plane was ready for boarding. A long and very busy day at Schiphol Airport was over!

Plane ready for boarding.

Good bye Amsterdam! We missed sunset, but had a lovely view of Amsterdam at night.

Amsterdam at 8:20 p.m.

At 11:00 p.m. we were back home, in Lübeck. After 19 hours a long and busy day was over and we did not do more than crawling back to bed, the place we left too early this morning. 

Summing up, as we do in talks and papers:

It was a great trip, we had a lot of fun and it is always nice to meet people you know only from conference calls in person. 

We are already looking forward to the next CVgenes@target face-to-face meeting. This time we will visit London-Heathrow. Definitely also a very nice airport...

JE, IB, CW