We all moved for three days to Groesbeek for our yearly lab retreat, this year organised by three new PhD students, Eunice, Daan and Sieze. They did a wonderful job: many people introduced a problem in the morning, from technical (how to model complex communities) to more evolutionary (why do lactic acid bacteria make flavours?), which led to group discussions, model making and literature search – which was slightly compromised by shitty wifi, but G4 worked wonderfully too. In the evening or morning the results were presented, and we can conclude that many issues are not solved yet (some were!), but alliances have been formed in the group to solve them back in Amsterdam. And we learned a lot!

Here is Frank discussing with Johan and Daan, … and beer. Meanwhile, other were preparing food – no thinking without enough energy.

here Esther, Bas and Eunice organise the dinner: we had chilli one day, spinach lasagna the other day. Always fun to cook for 20 in a kitchen without sharp knives…

and of course, getting to know each other in different ways. “Cow trade” is a wonderful card game that requires bluff, wit and a bit of luck. Paul fooled all of us by playing ignorance of the game, and buying in too high, but in the end he took us to the cleaners.

Finally, Jurgen organised a pub quiz, with impossible questions about long forgotten music, but since he was making most of the pictures, we have no picture. Sorry Jurgen, but thanks for a wonderful evening, and everybody else for a great retreat!