Workshop in Advanced Crystallization, FEBS, Nove Hrady

Nove Hrady, had the workshop not been held there, I am sure everyone who attended wouldn’t have noticed this place! 350 Kms away from Prague, 30 Kms away from České Budějovice, Nove Hrady translates into New Castle. The history of this town dates back to the 12th century when a castle was built for protection of trade routes and since then till now Nove Hrady houses a population of 3000. It has all the essentials and to top it all, it has got a research institute!

This is the castle/research labs where we were put up for 7 days. There were lectures everyday morning from 9.00 am to 1.00 pm and then practical demonstrations from 2.30 pm till 6.30 pm and followed by late night beer party discussions which extended till 2.00 am in the morning!

This workshop was the first of its kind I attended. It was really a wonderful experience to be admits so many international audience and scientists. Unlike the Lindau conference, where I a big group of Indians with me, here I was all alone. Hence my interaction with the group was better than weak Van der Waals!

Apart from the scientific discussions, there was a lot of discussion regarding the culture, religion and habits of people from different nationalities. The amazing things that stuck me there is that fact that people can be programmed to hear things differently!
It was early morning and me, Sofia, Valentina, Rosa and Manuela decided to go for a walk. Suddenly, Valentina said, hear the rooster… kekerakeee kee! Her in-the-middle-of- road jiggle like the chicken was unfortunately not caught on the camera, but her representation of the roosters call was different! Me and Sofia were, come on, its cockaraakoo koo. Rosa and Manuela were with Valentia and apparently they hail from Italy. Then we made a survey and found that many people agreed to hearing it as kekerakee kee and not like how we hear it! Some serious audibility programming!

The travel to Nove Hrady for me was with Terese Begfors and Claude. They are both crystallographers and gave awesome presentations and workshops. Terese is a vegetarian and loves cooking Indian! Wow! I was really amazed and shared with her some of my patented recipes! The getting back to Prague was in a train. The group that travelled back was Me, Sofia and Kathrina. Kathrina is a native of Czech and she helped us get the tickets. When I entered the Nove Hrady station, boom, I was transported to my good old childhood days! What a station! Very old, smelled old too. There was burnt diesel in the air, just a single platform, cross the rails and hop into trains, heaped building material and a worn down building. It was just beautiful! There was some construction work going on and hence no trains to České Budějovice from where we were supposed to take a connection fast train to Prague. So, we were shuttled till another station in a bus and then from there in a diesel carriage. The diesel carriage was slow and late and we would have missed the fast train to Prague. Kathrina spoke to the conductor “ there are two international scientists travelling to Prague and they must reach on time. Do something and hold the train there.” The conductor called the controller in Prague and had the fast train held just for the two of us! Man, what a feeling it was!