EGU 2023

And so it’s back to EGU. I still don’t fancy the rather long train journey so it was a flight from Manchester – but why are there no direct weekend trains from York to Manchester any more – to Vienna. The Sunday flights seem to have stopped so I arrived on the Saturday giving a whole day for sight seeing and the opera.

Saturday night’s dinner was at Rado’s – with a good example of Vienesse quisine.

 

Pork ribs at Rado's - squint hard and you can see some vegetables!

Rado's restaurant

On Sunday I opted to visit Schloss Schönbrunn, a classic Habsburg summer residence – all formal gardens, fountains and grottos.

 

Schloss Schönbrunn

Terry Prachett would be proud of the obelisk fountain with the obelisk resting on the backs of four turtles, apparently to signify strength or durability – perhaps that is what inspired Great A’Tuin, though as I recall it was four elephants on its back.

 

The Gloriette was suitably glorious and the palm houses have a pleasing steam punk aesthetic.

 

The evening saw me back at my favourite Vienesse haunt for a performance of Lohengrin. No spoilers but in the first act the hero save the love interest, Elsa, from death and they immediately agree to marry; our hero just has one request, Elsa must promise never to ask him his real name…..

As ever it was a joy to be back - it really is one of my favourite buildings.

The "Iron Curtain" safety curtain art work

Lohengrin is, superficially which is as deep as I get, about a Grail knight saving an innocent so it was hard to see why the production featured the chorus as a bunch of lederhosen clad burghers rather than armour clad knights. It was also rather disconcerting that the main way you could tell that the guy who had been due to kill Elsa had been thwarted was that he spent the rest of the opera in a long white shirt minus lederhosen. Perhaps this had a deeper meaning!

 EGU then began on the Monday – posters are back though not as many as in previous years and the poster sessions happen during the day so, unlike in years past, you can get to the free post talk beer without having to resort to scrumming. I guess it’s more civilised.

 

Where is the beer scrum?

On Tuesday there was a nice ego boost hearing a climate scientist talk about using the palaeothermometer that I developed with Stuart Black and Emma Versteegh about 10 years ago. I also learnt that despite many years of research, biochar researchers still seem pretty uncertain how long any biochar added to soils actually lasts.

There were some good educational games on show on Wednesday – Cranky Uncle was the slickest looking, teaching people about climate denial techniques, not to use but to recognise. Then it was back to the opera – I wasn’t bowled over by Salome the last time I watched it but tonight’s performance was fantastic. Many curtain calls. Brilliant music with a large orchestra, the percussion looked like they could barely fit in their alcove at times, and a really good production with interesting use of one stage cameras projecting onto a back wall for close ups of the opera singers so you could see them acting as well.

 

A busy night for the horns in Salome

More talks on Thursday and Friday together with more Austrian bread – carrot bread seems like a good way of getting more vegetables into your diet, though it doesn’t look great in photos.

 

Carrot bread - better than it looks!

As ever, the scene of exhibitors packing up on the morning of the last day has a tinge of melancholy to it.

 

Time to go home - at least for the exhibitors

The final opera of the trip was Carmen. A sausage with bits of cheese in it was the pre-opera dinner tonight, excellent as always. 

More great Viennese food

Carmen was another good production with relatively modern day smugglers using a fleet of Mercedes for transporting their goods. The soldier running circuits in his underpants at the start was understandable given the army context but the rationale for the naked ballet dancing before the start of Act 3 was less clear – some sort of idyllic rural scene or the freedom of being a smuggler rather than a soldier?

 

This view always reminds me of.....

On Saturday it was a quick trip home – again the joys of the airport train connecting to the metro had me at the airport in less than an hour from central Vienna. There was almost an Austrian style travel experience in the UK. As I only had hand baggage I just walked through the airport and caught a train almost immediately into Manchester. Then of course I had to travel across Manchester due to the lack of trains to York at the weekend and there were further delays due to tunnel inspections. Welcome home! Perhaps I’ll be back next year, I’ll need to look at the opera programme.

Feeling the sTrain

I've often wondered about taking the train to an overseas conference rather than flying but it's always seemed a bit inconvenient / expensive. However this year the International Symposium on Earthworm Ecology is in Rennes, France and not only was there not a direct flight from Manchester, the flight I'd have had to get would have involved a 4 a.m. start whereas the train left York at 0858 and I could be there in a day. No contest.

So it was off to the station, leaving home at c. 0830 right on time (this is a GCSE English technique known as foreshadowing) - a nice stress free cycle ride on a balmy Sunday morning

My initial transport - it left on time!

And so to the station - never a good sign the London train before mine was delayed by more than 30 minutes (it was broken) and mine was already 10 minutes late.

10 minutes late and counting.

The earlier train was cancelled and everyone from that train piled into ours which was now going to make additional stops. I'm not sure that's ever happened to me on a plane! 

Luckily I had plenty of time - I was due in to Kings Cross at 1052 and my Eurostar to Paris didn't leave until 1230. I kept on chanting this as my train rolled into Kings Cross at 1130

It didn't take long to get over to St Pancras and by 1145 I was waiting to be allowed to start queuing!

At 1200 we were allowed to start queuing. The queue was rather long.

Somewhere in the distance the queue turns the corner to the check in, we've already made it from the other entrance to here.

Getting closer - just the multiple snakes to go.

To be fair to Eurostar the queue moved like the clappers and I was in departures by 1220 - not that my 1230 train was boarding yet....

First stamp in the new passport.

But we're not going anywhere yet

There was a horrible sense of deja vu - the earlier train still hadn't left and was now over 30 minutes late....

However, it did board and we were soon away as well - only 10 minutes late (again!).

And we're off - next stop Paris.

Out with the train journey reading - what else are long train journeys for?

The train was barely late arriving in Paris and I had an hour and a half for a simple metro journey on Line 4 to get from Gare du Nord to Monparnasse.

Whoops - the metro is closed

Luckily Frank Ashwood had tweeted just before I arrived in Paris that Line 4 was closed - though why the University travel agents, who took over 3 weeks to provide my train tickets couldn't have warned me that on Sunday's Line 4 has been closed for some time is beyond me - very unimpressive. Anyway I was pleased that I'd opted for the longer change over time and got to Monparnasse (via Lines 2 and 6 I think) with 15 minutes to spare.

Just waiting for a platform number.

Soon I was on the train (which left on time) and other than the very loud 3 year old opposite all was well.

Journeys end

And so here I was. I left York at about 0915 and arrived in Rennes for 1909 at about 0.01 rather than 1.29 metric tonnes of C. I'm not good on those sorts of units. According to Google 1.29 metric tonnes of C is equivalent to about the C footprint of a medium sized pig - so I guess I can eat lots of sausages whilst in France with a clear conscience! Perhaps I'll use the homeward journey saving for some steak.

I'd probably do it again, the late running trains were stressy but the St Pancras queue was very efficient and it was generally a fairly relaxed journey. It was avoiding the 4 a.m. start that sold it though.

There must be a reason for the horse and shadow sculpture outside Rennes train station but I'm not sure what message they are trying to give visitors. However finishing with a shadow gives an element of another key English GCSE point scorer.

Opera shocker

 Yesterday EGU seemed more comfortable with the technology or perhaps there were simply fewer remote / recorded talks. Some interesting stuff on microplastic movement on soil surfaces due to rainfall - in simulations most of the microplastic was washed away in less than 5 minutes, also an interesting talk on how biodegradable microplastics add a C source to soils and boost microbial activity.  Final highlight for me was a talk on meta-analyses. A survey of c. 31 meta-analyses on soil carbon concluded that only one had been done properly!

There was another opera tonight - The Puritans. As ever it was all about thwarted love, this time set during the English civil war. But what a shocker (SPOILER ALERT).  Standard stuff in Act one, with the hero and heroine (previously promised in marriage to someone else) falling in love but being on opposite sides of the war. The hero saves a prisoner but has to flee (the jilted lover lets them escape) and the heroine thinks shes been jilted and goes mad. Act 2 was generally arias and mad stuff. But then in Act 3 there's a final battle after which the star crossed lovers are reunited, the heroine regains her sanity and the hero (on the losing side) is pardoned by parliament so they can get married rather than have the hero being executed. Cue much rejoicing but then, in the final minute of the opera, the jilted ex-lover who was inevitably on the other side to the hero in the war stabs him to death and the heroine goes mad. Then the curtain drops. No happy ending after all.

A night at the opera

So day 1 ended. I think it's fair to say that EGU is struggling with the technology - in some ways a surprise given that we've had two years to sort out things like this but the switching between in person talks, remote talks and videos was not entirely smooth today. Hopefully things will improve. Science-wise for me highlights were a bit thin on the ground but there was an interesting talk about a crop growth model that might benefit from an earthworm component and a good presentation about how earthworms impact on plant defence against different insect herbivores.

In better news, as someone who isn't naturally inclined to eat salad and who likes fried potatoes, eggs and sausage, EGU poses a real threat of scurvy! So I was surprised and delighted to find the rolls I bought for lunch contained some carrots - the orange lumps might not look the most appetising but it's good to have a cheeky vegetable to supplement the tomatoes and peppers I ate at breakfast!

Carrot bread

Perhaps the main event was a return to the Vienna State opera. It's a lovely building that makes me happy when ever I walk in. 

My usual pre-opera dinner - Wurstz box and beer!

Tonight's opera was Boris Gudonov by Mussorgsky. Spoiler alert - it's a sad tale of succession to the Tzardom via murder followed by guilt, possibly madness and death. All good stuff and surely an important message for us all! The building is just as much of a highlight as the actual opera of course.

Part of the central stairs

Boxes slowly filling up

Outside balcony

Ceiling details

More ceiling details

The main chandelier

and then some time passed.......

 and so two years later I can report that:

1. the beetle bank samples failed to show any exciting trends. The soils from the banks had a higher carbon content but were less dense so that the total C was the same as the lower C concentration, higher density arable soil.

2. the C sequestration stuff is coming along nicely - more shortly

3. I have finally finished analysing the earthworm-plant-bacteria samples - again, more shortly.

But as we emerge from Covid the exciting news is that in person conferences are back and I am currently in Vienna for EGU2022 after, depending on how you count it two or three years away. Possibly the biggest inconvenience of Covid has been ringing up Austrian Airlines to change my ticket every year, it plays havoc with my blood pressure but at last I've been able to use my plane ticket. Today I spent some time wandering around the town, reaquainting myself with some of my favourite bits of Viennese architecture before the conference proper starts tomorrow.

Karlskirche in all its ridiculous glory

Karlskirche poking out above the trees

The opera house - performances booked Monday and Tuesday

A wonderful plant pot - reminds me of the Disc World

The Secession building - home of the rather weird Beethoven frieze

A new fave - the Hundertwasserhaus

and again

Not a building but I just love the way these road signs remind you that you are truly in central Europe

The noble art of juggling

Either due to a lack of hand eye co-ordination or dedication to practice I've never been able to juggle bean bags, clubs, flaming fire brands, bowling balls or any other object you could care to imagine. However, as an academic juggling is a crucial skill.

This may look like a bunch of typical academics demonstrating their finely honed skills but is actually a picture of the fire juggling group FullCircle

After the successful sampling trip of early January I am now (typing this I noticed the Freudian slip of writing "not" rather than "now"!) the proud owner of 200+ soil samples that need processing. January's beetle bank samples are now pretty much dry - they now need to be weighed, sieved and weighed again. This will allow me to calculate the soil density. They then need to be treated with acid to remove the carbonate and then I can measure their inorganic carbon content. I reckon I can get the weighing an sieving done in a day. The acid treatment will take longer. So the aim here is to get them ready for acidification by the end of Feb.

The Faustian deal of field work - you can enjoy yourself collecting samples but then you have to process them. Of course you should never try and dry soil in plastic bags as you get condensation which slows the process down but if you are time limited and can just leave the samples for weeks, this works fine and saves the time of transferring the soil to drying trays. Depending on the measurements you want to make, slow drying is fine.

Also lurking in the wings are 80 samples that need processing from a carbon sequestration project, 72 samples from a project looking at earthworm - plant communication, teaching, supporting project students and many other competing demands for my attention.....

Andrea Harper in our Biology dept. kindly spent some of her time showing me how to use RNA extraction kits so I'm all primed for the next step of the earthworm - plant communication work. Probably 8 days of work there, the trickiest thing will be grinding up my plant samples which are currently stored at -80C without them defrosting, the rest is down to good pipetting.

I managed to measure the pH of the carbon sequestration samples last week and this week phosphorus measurements are pencilled in. I've also had a good conversation with Harvey Wood at the Clean Rivers Trust about the work and am meeting him in a few weeks time to talk further.

Last week was also occupied by an earthworm workshop in Dusseldorf. This was a great opportunity to talk earthworms and revisit ideas and considerations from Alice Johnston's Syngenta funded PhD of a few years ago now that Richard Sibly and myself were involved in, along with Tania Alvarez and Pernille Thorbek (now at BASF). The workshop was all about producing a computer model, acceptable by regulators and industry, that could predict how earthworms respond to applications of agrochemicals in the field. This could save industry a lot of time and money and have all sorts of spin offs in terms of understanding and predicting earthworm ecology.

The conference was set in an area of old docklands which is being developed in a way that seems far more sympathetic than London's Docklands area. There are old buildings preserved and even incorporated into the new builds.

The Innside hotel at Dusseldorf, set in the old docklands area.

I was in a working group on earthworm movement. It was great to catch up with Alice and Kevin Butt again and good to meet Yvan Capowiez and Martin Holmstrup for the first time, Martin in particular as we are co-authors on one of Alice's earthworm model papers!

Discussing earthworm movement controls with (clockwise from left) Alice Johnston, Yvan Capowiez, Vanessa Roeben, Martin Holmstrup and Kevin Butt. 

Not just earthworms - visiting a local brewery one evening to help with discussions!

The meeting was funded by a European Food Safety organisation and showed how Europe has really helped with science and science-informed policy. Of course, it has been a mad three years in the UK and Friday, the day after getting back from Dusseldorf, was, according to many the day that Brexit happened. It's not over by a long shot with lots of negotiations to come but it did make me wonder on the way home whether that was my last hassle free trip to Europe in the near future. Hopefully not.

EU passport control at Dusseldorf airport - no queues, no hassle. Fingers crossed this continues to be the case.