It’s risky to plan a hike on October 30th, but luckily the weather was not too cold…although we still had some light drizzle and not the bright sunshine that we had all the rest of that week. So unfortunately the planned alpine roller coaster trip down from the Schliersbergalm was cancelled as the brakes don’t work on wet tracks. But at least we still could use the trampoline and enjoy the amazing views!

My lab set up a stand and organized tours for the general public for the Open Day of the Max Planck Institutes for Biological Intelligence and Biochemistry, explaining our work by using wooden train tracks as axons and the trains as our mitochondria. They were either transporting little Lego figurines, or the instructions on how to built them locally. A great metaphor and we could even simulate train wrecks to show what happens in disease! Very fun and rewarding!

So proud of Alina winning the Poster prize at the EMBO Meeting on membrane contact sites. Well deserved! I wish I could have been there!

It took two years of planning and then our dream became finally true! With my friend and colleagues, Tatjana Kleele, Julien Courchet and Elisa Motori, I organized and EMBO meeting on “Mitochondria in the nervous system”. Thanks to Tatjana, we held the meeting in Switzerland, in the beautiful town of Engelberg, surrounded by impressive mountains, an old abbey and amazing cheese. Together with the amazing science this was my favorite conference ever. To many happy returns!