Letters from Berlin - 2

Week 2 in Berlin was kicked off with heavy rain all weekend, but that's OK. It reminds us of home! We spent the weekend continuing on our tourist exploration and visited sites such as Check Point Charlie and the DDR museum.

The entire week and no doubt the weeks to come have also held a buzzing atmosphere wherever we go due to Germany's success in the World Cup!

The week in the lab has been exciting; all our training has been completed allowing us to carry out experiments on our own, although our great lab team are still around to help us if we have any queries.

With the research projects full underway we have weekly goals set to try and get the most out of our 4 weeks here, this includes Nick and I splitting off onto 2 separate projects -  Nick studying further the Polyoma Viruses in badgers and I investigating the presence of herpesviruses in multiple organs of Mastomys (a rodent reservoir for the dangerous Lassa virus).

Once our week's research has been completed (and we're confident it will be), we will discuss with our supervisors Bernhard and Michael the best course of action for the next week depending on our results.

Lucy & Nick