Germany -- Days 4-7, ATBC in Marburg

Carlos and I spent 27 - 30 July in Marburg attending the 2009 ATBC (Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation) conference. Since most of our days were spent at the conference attending talks, presenting, and viewing posters, I thought I would point out some of the highlights of our time in Marburg rather than going into detail about each day separately.

The streets of Marburg were often steep and packed with staircases leading up various hills, but I loved the cuteness and charm of this small city. The houses lining the streets of the downtown area and the main square looked like I expect a well preserved, old-fashioned German town would look like.

Marburg was very walkable with many things to see and do, but we spent the majority of our time at the Audimax convention center. Every day, Carlos and I walked through the city’s Old Botanical Garden to attend the conference. The garden contained many nice temperate tree specimens and even a duck pond. I really liked seeing all the bright flowers in bloom and the Bombus and butterflies pollinating everything -- it reminded me of Washington!

As for conference stuff, Carlos presented his talk on the first day and I presented my poster on the second day. My poster was on display for the duration of the conference, but I had to stand in front of it for an hour and a half on my designated presentation day to field questions from other researchers and basically talk about my experiments. My hard work paid off and I actually won an award announced on the final night of the conference (first place Merian Poster Award)! It was really exciting to know that people are interested in my research and seem to like what I am doing!

While not at the conference, Carlos and I ventured out into town and visited some fun places -- like a gummy store where I found lots of cool and interesting flavors of gummies (e.g. vanilla, pear, green leaf...). I also had my first radler in Marburg during dinner one night. A radler consists of a light ale beer mixed with lemonade (half and half). It sounds really weird, but is actually quite refreshing -- that’s why you should drink it while on bicycle trips (this is the official drink of cyclists according to radler lore). The radler became my drink of choice for almost all of my meals out and about in Germany!

Overall, the conference was exciting and productive, it was fantastic to see all of my friends from La Selva again, and Marburg was really cute and fun to visit. Next we set out for the romantic Rhine!