We were leaving Valencia, via Paris, bound for the reconstructive congress in Chicago. This time there was almost no time for relaxed tourism in such a city… The beginning could not have been worse… we lost our bags, almost two days with our clothes on…
It mattered, of course it mattered, we were going to be with the best of the world panorama in reconstructive and the only Spanish representation in the congress was dressed like to buy bread. We ended up taking it as a joke, the truth is that among so many mixed nationalities we were the exotic spot…the important thing was to be there.
The sessions started at 6.30 a.m., the first break was at 10.15 a.m., almost four hours later and it was only 5 minutes! I was very surprised that it is perfectly normal to be listening to a lecture while drinking coffee, coke, antioxidant drinks…you can even eat, something unthinkable in a congress in Spain or in Europe. I do not know if it is criticizable or not, but mixing things like listening to a lecture and meanwhile having a chocolate croissant or a roast beef, at least seems different…
Every day we finished at 6 p.m., almost 12 hours of science!…I bless the 5-20 minute breaks that allowed me to retake the Spanish language with my Spanish colleague, to settle and structure so much important information, to meet and exchange opinions and solutions to difficult cases with the top-ten in my specialty: Fu-Chan Wei from Taipei, Dr. Chang from Standford, Dr. Bentz from Wisconsin, Dr. Jackson from Michigan, Dr. Blondeel from Ghent, Belgium. Chang from Stanford, Dr. Bentz from Wisconsin, Dr. Jackson from Michigan, Dr. Blondeel from Ghent, Belgium… and to be able to drink those 2 liters of watered coffee necessary to ingest the minimum dose of caffeine (equivalent to a cortadito from here) in order to endure such a scientific marathon.
At the end of each daily session we had some time to go sightseeing around the city and have dinner in some trendy place and…. We would rest soon because in a few hours we would start other presentations that would require 200% of our capacities!
Next congress…Roma!!!!
