Hurrah for the EAVPT after all...

A 5am start and the delights of the Stansted Express train to the airport. (Aside: I'm ashamed to think that this is the first experience many overseas visitors have of British public transport - but on the other hand perhaps it's just as well not to go loading them with unrealistic expectations for the rest of their trip.)

Then RyanAir to Turin and an unfinished hotel in the middle of nowhere - The Art Hotel Olympic. (Mind you, it'll be delightful when it's completed and the staff were charming.) And the discovery that there was no available public transport to the outlying suburb of Grugliasco and the veterinary faculty of Turin University.

And the cab driver we ended up with knew how to get to Grugliasco, but wasn't entirely sure quite how to find the veterinary faculty...

But eventually we pitched up at the registration desk to be interrogated by Professor Giovanni Re. I say interrogated but, to be fair, it was done with considerable Italian charm. And once I whipped a few copies of Animal Pharm out of the backpack, light seemed to dawn, all was well and we were positively welcomed.

Having said that, what with delays etc, we arrived at a particularly inauspicious time, just as things were winding down for the day so that the EAVPT could spend the latter part of the afternoon conducting its own internal affairs.

So, no interviewees available and not much in the way of technical sessions either!

However, the charming Professor had been kind enough to ask us along to the 'cheese and wine' event. Now, where you come from it may be different, but where I come from, you're lucky to score more than two chunks of cheddar and a glass of indifferent Riesling at one of those.

But they do it rather differently in Turin. A cheese and wine evening runs to several courses...
Highlights were an interesting Piedmontese take on steak tartare with parmesan and some enjoyable local red wines, the Barbera d'Alba in particular.

But the evening was notable mainly for the company of Professor Outi Vainio from the University of Helsinki who raised the idea of an open access publishing model for veterinary pharmacology and toxicology.

Open access scientific publishing is something that another Informa business unit has been looking into. So, I'll be picking their brains over the next two or three weeks about Professor Vainio's idea.

Your input, as always, is most welcome.