Attending 9th Belgian Symposium on Tissue Engineering 2nd and 3rd of December 2022

The night before we decided to meet the next morning at the central station. Brussels central train station at 6:45. It was a dark cold morning and the station was not busy when I arrived around 6:30. Saw Parinaz by the ticket vending machine from far, she was very busy touching the screen, seems like she is doing the typing needed for her thesis on the ticket machine. Went close and check to see if all is well and she explained she also arrived early and trying to find out options on the machine. We searched around for a chair to sit in and wait for others. No place to sit in the station. Maybe to repel wanderers and homeless people to shelter in the station. There was a piano and one of the cleaners of the station was busy making unpleasing sounds. Parinaz went around and it seems she is remembering something from her childhood. She managed to play an Iranian song on the Piano. Others gradually arrived and we get the train for Antwerp. A port city in the north of Belgium famous for diamonds. It was an hour’s ride before departing in a foggy and cold station and 10 minutes’ walk in dark to find the venue, a historic hall at the university of Antwerp. A two-day program for Belgian and internationals doing research in the field of tissue engineering. Hafez and Julia had the first two oral presentations. Both of them did well, very proud of both, Hafez ended his talk by remembering the women’s movement in Iran.