Porto, Portugal and Biofilms7

A pretty big crew showed up!

For kicking off Europe, I’m starting in Porto, Portugal at a conference called Biofilms 7. Biofilms 7 is a semi-annual meeting for research that is associated with biofilms in any way, shape, or form. A biofilm is basically a collection of cells, bacteria for example, that stick together in a community to form a film- think about the stuff that gets stuck on the surface of your pool that makes it feel slimy. Scientists attending the conference range in profession, from biofilms within the human body, to biofouling (clogging and deterioration) of pipes and drains, to productive biofilms for bioremediation (cleaning up contaminated sites with microorganisms) and renewable energy (microbial fuel cells and methane production). At the conference, I get the opportunity to meet professors and graduate students from all over the world. Perhaps one of the best features of the conference is that they have espresso machines to make sure everyone gets their own custom espresso throughout the conference.

​Maybe I should have mentioned this in a previous post; however, most scientific conferences follow a common format: oral presentations (lectures) are usually given by invited speakers and a select group of individuals that have the most appealing abstracts (short descriptions of their research which are submitted to a panel for review a few months prior to the conference), poster sessions in which the people that submitted abstracts that are not oral presentations put their data on a large poster so that people can look at it and ask questions, exhibitor presentations (if the conference is sponsored) which are presented in an exhibitor hall that is usually adjacent to the posters, coffee breaks for cross talk, and usually at least one congress/ banquet dinner with individual plates. The poster session at Biofilms 7 is in a narrow corridor with close to 100 posters presented simultaneously. This makes for an intimate, crowded, and cramped afternoon. However, the close proximity of the poster session makes an excellent space for crosstalk and discussions. The speaker presentations occur within one room at the end of the hallway. I have listed some speaker presentations worth highlighting at the end of this post.

​The congress dinner for the conference was held at a venue called Taylor’s. Taylor’s is a well-known producer or Port wine- a sweet wine that is only made in the Douro Valley of Portugal. 

Free espresso for all!

Posters got a little cramped.

Tastes as good as it looks

The presenter hall was packed

Behold: 6000 gallons of port!

​Port wine is a very sweet dessert wine that is usually around 20% alcohol. Port wine is produced by stopping fermentation during the aging process by adding distilled 70% alcohol. This results in a sweet wine since the sugar is not fully fermented and an alcoholic wine because of the added alcohol. Port wine is deceptively smooth- you’ve been warned!  Taylor’s is one of several venues to purchase port wine in Porto. I sat with a live crew during the dinner: Daniel (UK)- the master of the selfie, Spela (Slovenia) – the master of the slopes, Amanda (United States) – the master of debate, and Joey (Canada) – just give me a beer! Our crew ended up hanging out for a good portion of the conference- we went port bar hopping, rode a boat on the Douro, and walked by the Douro.

The crew at the congress dinner at Taylor's

Daniel- master of the selfie

After the conference, most of my time is spent hanging out with people I meet in the hostel- the Porto Spot hostel- “one of the best rated hostels in the world.” The first thing I do after checking in is carry all of my gear up three flights of stairs to my three bunk bedroom. The atmosphere at the hostel is very relaxed and accommodating.

Inside Sao Bento Station

​The Portuguese, as with most any Europeans, watch football (soccer) religiously. While I’m staying in the hostel, Portugal is playing two games. I notice, the night before one of the games, the chalkboard in the kitchen at the hostel says that Portugal is playing Poland and that free beers will be administered for every goal that Portugal scores- I’m in! Portugal ends up scoring once (free beer!) and Poland ends up scoring once. This means penalty shots- after some friendly discussion with the hostel employees about what the ‘shot’ in penalty ‘shot’ means, given the context of a free beer per goal, they ultimately decide that there is no way they are going to be able to accommodate giving all the hostel guests watching the game (see: all the hostel guests) a beer or shot every time Portugal scores a penalty shot. A consensus is reached and, after Portugal ultimately proves victorious: “You get a beer, and you get a beer, and you get a beer- everybody gets a beer!”

Tensions run high

While at the hostel, of course, I meet a diverse international crowd- but these two Danish women in particular, Mette and Sofie, are quite a bit of fun, a Canadian guy named Zev with a subtle lisp, and an English woman named Rebecca. The two Danes are ‘twin’ sisters- born twenty minutes apart.

Sofia is a sassy, sarcastic, brackish thug- smokes like a chimney- sometimes two at once; simultaneous menthol and non-menthol. She’s a five foot tall, 90 pound, white, blonde haired, blue-eyed Danish firecracker from Denmark who introduces herself as ‘from the streets of Ghana with rich African ancestry’; a cigarette burning in one hand; a deadpan look on her face. 

Mette, is a much more reserved, roughly equal in stature, and smokes zero cigarettes simultaneously. She’s the ‘Big Sister’ having been born 20 minutes prior to Sofie. The two have the same Caucasian features, but look differently, talk differently, and act differently; however, they are anything but ‘false twins.’ Mette is an attempted master of drunken gymnastics- with a broken foot and a concussion to vouch for it.

Zev and I get along well. Both of us are masters of the ‘sass-back’ so naturally we can return as much as the ‘sass twins’ throw our way.
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Rebecca is a children’s nurse from Manchester. She works in a ward that deals with some pretty serious illnesses at some pretty young ages. She also has a whore cat that is sleeping around while she’s away on vacation. She had documented photographic proof of her cat laying on her flat mate, laying on her couch back in the UK! She really wasn’t a crazy cat woman as the last sentence may imply, and quite charming to talk with really.

​There was also the ‘Italian’ from California who seemed to care little for anything, including his ‘Italian heritage’ until the soccer game was on, the German that initiated a game of spin-the-bottle-truth-or-dare (no, really). And on my last night, there was a whole lot of Germans and Dutchmen- the Dutchmen were traveling together because they met playing D’n’D (no, really).

So many cigarettes!

Why the dutch don't drive Smartcars

Nick (German) and Wouter (Dutch) with Sofie (Danish).

The Porto Spot Crew over Porto

​To start off our Friday night, we decided to visit a hotel with 18 floors. On the 17th floor of this hotel is a ‘rooftop’ restaurant with a very scenic view of Porto. Here, we ordered a pitcher of sangria for 19 euro and watched the sunset. 19 euro for 1 liter of sangria is quite a bit of money for the region, but with a bunch of Europeans and westerners, splitting 19 euro among four people for a rooftop sunset in Porto is very inexpensive. During our time at this hotel, Wales shook the world by defeating the Belgians in the Eurocup (well, they shook Europe at least).

Panorama of Porto, Portugal

For entertainment, we decided to play some card games that, of course, involved drinking. The first game we played was called ‘horse races’ or something like that. Anyway, the rules aren’t really important- essentially, the person that wins gets to tell whoever loses how many drinks they need to consume. This game lasted one round before we moved on to Shit-head for a few rounds. Then, the Danes decided to teach Zev and me a little game I’m going to call “Roll a six and count to 100.” In this game, everyone gets a sheet of paper and, for the entire table; there is one di and one pencil. In the middle of the table is a glass which contains an alcoholic beverage of your choice. The game’s simplicity is really the key here, you see, to play this game each person needs to roll the di. Once a six is rolled, the person who rolled it needs to drink the cup on the table, refill the cup, pick up the pencil, and start writing down numbers sequentially from 1-100. Once someone else rolls a six, they take the shot in the middle, refill the glass, and then take the pencil and start writing down 1-100 on their sheet of paper. The first person to reach 100 (after stringent verification techniques from the table, ie: telling the person who won to go fuck themselves because they’re a cheater no matter what) wins. Sounds simple, sounds a little sophomoric; this game had me laughing so hard I almost threw up. I’ve never seen so much beer and wine and glass and soggy paper and laughter in my life. 

Mette and Zev make sangria

Club Crawl (2AM)

During my last night in Porto, the Danes, Zev and I decided that we should make sangria and go a festival with fireworks. For the sangria Mette ‘invented’ the concept of introducing nectarines- she was very proud of this accomplishment. While shopping for supplies, a Dutchman named Wouter (which is exactly the way you’d expect a Dutchman to name their child Walter) decides, gee, whiskey here is so cheap, why not buy some of that as well. I see Wouter in the act of executing this purchasing choice and gently ask, “are you going to get a mixer?” He gives me a subtle look of confusion and raises the bottle that is in his other hand- a bottle of gin. He informs me that the ‘mixer’ for his whiskey is gin. Also, that his dinner is a bag of potato chips.
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Anyway, the sangria is bomb, but everyone decides to go on a pub crawl instead of the fireworks festival. I think about it for a little while and ultimately decide to join the group for the pub crawl. The pub crawl turned out to be ‘club crawl’ which, for those of you who know me understand, is probably one of my least favorite things in the world. By the time we begin clubbing, I’m already drunk from going through about six glasses of sangria with the rest of the crew. I make it to one club and decide to leave around 2AM. My fond farewell to Zev and the Danes is a hug in the street outside a noisy club with a bouncer telling us to vacate because we’re in the way of street traffic. Oh-Porto! How anti-climactic! …should have done the fireworks.

​Before I conclude with highlighted presentations, I want to share a few adventures I took during my stay in Porto. During the boat ride on the Douro, I noticed several abandoned buildings along the sides of the mountain. I also noticed that those buildings appeared to be accessible from paths on the road. The next day, I decided to run over to those locations to scout them out in a little bout of urban exploration. The videos below document my journey through the abandoned mountainside of Porto.

Above, students play beautiful music in the street.

Some presentations worth highlighting:

Eberhard Morgenroth (Switzerland) spoke about next generation wastewater treatment processes. Abstract Page 50. (Based on a conversation I had with Dr. Morgenroth, I was invited to present in Switzerland in October.)

Gillian Lewis (New Zealand) spoke about shifts in microbial communities in northern New Zealand that are related to seasonal changes during the year. Abstract page 10.

Thomas Wood (United States) spoke about reversing methanogenesis to capture methane using archaea. Abstract page 29.

Edo Bar-Zeev (Israel) spoke about reducing biofouling in systems that use pressure retarded osmosis to generate power from salt gradients in order to enhance efficiency. Abstract page 27.

Markus Stockl (Germany) generated a flow cell to get electroactive biofilms to grow on a transparent surface material called indium tin oxide (the same thing that the screen on your phone is made of). Abstract page 62.

Alain Bergel (France) talked about the current state of electroactive biofilms. Abstract page 26.
Caroline Rivalland (French Guinea) talked about the role of minority microbes in electroactive biofilms. Abstract page 28.
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Haluk Beyenal  (United States) took on the hefty task of talking about electron transfer mechanisms in electroactive biofilms. Abstract page 35.

Cristian Picioreanu (Netherlands) mathematically modeled nitrogen cycling in granular sludge reactors. Abstract page 45. 

My abstract is on page 153.