2015 - FIP Dusseldorf

Breakfast was at the hotel again at 7am, a leisurely one this morning as our first meeting started at 10am.  We left the hotel at 9am, in a taxi, and were at the CCD a short time later.  We congregated outside the room allocated to us and soon discovered it had been double-booked.  So, we took a wander around and found a huge room and just used that for the MEPS Board Meeting.  That took 1.5 hours and then it was time for lunch – sandwiches and a bottle of water, oh and a green banana! My only other function for the day was the MEPS Meet and Greet, but that did not start until 6:30pm.  Knowing this, I took my laptop to the CCD and set up in the wifi area and did some stuff: emails, words for photobooks, etc.  I also read my book.  This passed the time nicely until it was time to catch the bus to the Meet and Greet. Our German hosts had put on a bus for us, and it left from the CCD at 6pm to take us into the Altstadt to the brewery Uerige.  Uer...

Breakfast was at 7am today, and were in the taxi heading for the CCD at 8:30am.  Arne had a presentation to give and his session started at 10am, but wanted to be early to do some other stuff.  The taxi may have cost a little more than the public transport option, but only took 15 mins!!  So, after the cost benefit analysis had been completed, we decided taxi was the most efficient means of transport.  Of course, there were those that did not need to be at the CCD so early, so they took the tram, etc. So, for the majority of us, our first item of business for the day was to attend Arne’s presentation on “Military pharmacy: challenging areas of work at home and in mission”.  He was by far the best presenter due to his military training, but also gave the most interesting presentation.  Most people had started falling asleep before he started, but they soon woke up. It was then into the FIP First-Timers reception for myself, Jane, ZY and Sylvain.  It...

We all met for brekky at 7:30 am in the hotel, again!  At 9am we took the tram (#710) and the UG (#78) to the Congress Centre Dusseldorf (CCD) just to undertake a recce so that when we really need to be there, we know exactly what type of transport and the number of that transport, we need to be on.  It took us about an hour to get to the CCD (could have taken 45 min if there were no delays) and we “checked-in” and received our bag, tag and other accoutrements.  After meeting up with numerous other “old” congress participants, it was back to the hotel to catch up on the beauty sleep (aka jet-lag), and then some work on my presentation – just to make sure it was all in order and within time constraints. I had been working on the Vaccine Stability data for some time and two years ago, Eric had sent me the Belgian information – in French!   So, we agreed on a time to meet so he could translate the information for me.   This took quite a bit longer than it should ...

We started with brekky in the hotel (at $30, it is a bit expensive, but being as resourceful as we are, this included lunch!)  We bought a daily transport ticket from reception and caught the tram into the Altstadt to be tourists for the day. We decided on the Hop-on Hop-off bus as a starter which would give us a good overview of the city. It took 90 mins and we saw a great deal. Exactly what we took photos of, we are a tad unsure, but they look good! On the second trip around, we got off at the Tower, had lunch in the park, and then Sylvain and I went up to the restaurant level (168m), had a wander, took some photos and headed back down to meet up with Jane. Before the HoHo tour, we had stumbled across some market stalls, one of which sold crepes! So, we walked back to that along the river. It was a really lovely day and the walk was good. We all had a crepe. It was far too early to head back to the hotel so we found a coffee shop, had our coffee and a long chat. We then de...