...and this is how we spent 4 days in Lepzig PART 2

Leipzig…a quiet, little German town where campings are ridiculously expensive and young lads walk around in the middle of the night, day, morning, (or through the whole day for that matter) drinking their brains out on the streets. Yeah, I know, it was some sort of a holiday, but nevertheless, it was interesting to see so many totally wasted people on the streets.

For tight-student budget reasons we stayed in a camping, in tents. In times like these, you get to appreciate the quality of your tent and sleeping bags. After 4 nights in the tent, at 5ºC, you start to feel your true age :)

The venue of the conference was Westin Hotel, 5 minutes walk from the wonderful Leipzig Zoo. I have to admit I was really impressed by the organization and I was also extremely happy the presentations were very interesting and some of them opened my eyes on some issues.

By the way…did you know that one of the easiest ways to draw blood samples from wild animals with minimum handling time is by using a certain SPF bred tick? Of course, you get limited amount of blood, but it’s enough, say, for a TBC on spot ELISA test.

I also learned some very cool tricks about handling and common procedures and surgery in amphibians. For example a simple way to inject a frog i.m. is catching the frog with the hand covered in a latex glove, than simply wrap the glove around the frog…Also some interesting points in using endoscopy on small exotic animals, from amphibians and reptiles to birds.…Or how to easily extract diseased molars in Malayan tapirs…

The examples could go on, but to sum it up the sessions were focused mainly on great apes, tuberculosis, and than free topics divided on amphibians & reptiles, birds, and even more free topics…So the amount of scientific information I got from these two days and a half was amazing.

Also fun was that we received a magic name tag that gave us access to some wonderful things, such as the hotel’s 4 star restaurant, and to the Leipzig Zoo, at any hour. Imagine taking a walk, in perfect silence, almost alone, at nighttime, in what is considered to be one of the best zoos in Europe (if not the best…). You will see no fences; only vegetation, water ditches and nicely hidden, high voltage electric fences keep the animals away from the visitors. I seriously don’t approve zoos, but this one stroke me as being the only one I’ve seen so far with no stereotypical behavior from the animals. Enclosure design and the enrichment variation were simply extraordinary.

Another thing I’m grateful for is having the opportunity to eat twice a day at the hotel…Ovidiu, I’m sure you approve! Considering the limited to inexistent cooking possibilities at the camping, this was a heaven sent. Actually, if I come to think about it, I would’ve eaten there no matter how much food I had with me :) Ahhhh….those were good days…

Anyway, coming back to reality, things couldn’t have gone better! At the end we were all invited to a farewell party at the zoo, were we got to get wild and “jiggy with it”. And everybody got so surprisingly wild and jiggy, that at the end, the lounge staff had to throw out (politely of course) the crazy party vets…

So, after all the lecture sessions were finished, the parties over, the last 4 star meal eaten, last contact exchange made, it was time to pack and go home…In my case in Vienna, in Ovidiu’s case, in Bucharest.

In the mean time we are looking forward for the next year congress in Holland : ) LET THE PARTY START!!

THE END