Day 4 – Mon 28 Sep: Dusseldorf

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 have because he does like a chat!  Jane and Sylvain went to the Council dinner, so Eric and I decided upon Chinese for dinner, and as we were having our pre-dinner drinks in the hotel lobby, Zheng-yu arrived and we told him of our dinner arrangements.  He told us he was to collect Liping from the tram stop and may join us.  Se, we delayed our departure for the restaurant and just as we were about to order, ZY and Liping arrived.  The funny thing was that neither ZY nor Liping could understand the lady taking our order.  Both were speaking Chinese, but totally different dialects!!  After must gesticulating, our orders were placed, complete with beer.  We chose German beer over the traditional Chinese beer (Tsingtao), and all had very nice meals.  It was then time for sleep, so it was a short walk back to the hotel, and into bed. 

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