This year we were finally back in the Oktoberfest tents with the lab. Oktoberfest is one of the biggest and important cultural festivals of Munich. The whole city welcomes a lot of international crowds during these three weeks of the festival. Since this year, it was the first time for many of us attending the festival, it was indeed very special and fun.

Instead of going for lunch in a restaurant we decided to have a picnic in front of our institute in the sun to enjoy the nice summer weather. We all decided to prepare something special from our home country. There was an amazing collection of German, Russian, Chinese dumplings, Indian pakodas(fritters) and various desserts.

Deutsches Museum is one of the world’s largest museums for science and technology. We had the great opportunity to visit the museum with the whole lab. It was so much fun to recall basic scientific principles of physics and chemistry using cool tools available in the museum. We had a nice Indian lunch afterwards with the group.

It was the first graduation party this year. Laura was the heart of our lab, and we miss her dearly.Six months after starting her new job at Curevac, she returned to lab for defending her thesis. It was fun to have her back and celebrate her major milestone at her defense party. We wish her all the best for her future.

After a nice Bavarian lunch at Augustiner Keller, we went for Eisstockschießen. It is a winter sport famous in Alpine areas also known as curling. Traditionally it was played in frozen lakes with wooden stocks (sticks), however nowadays several beer gardens have artificial curling pitches during the winter months. Although, we were competing against each other to score the highest points, it was a fun team building activity, which we will for sure repeat in the next winter season.

This year, Christmas marketsopened again after two long years of covid. Christkindlmärkte also known as Weihnachtsmärkteoriginated in Germany, are street markets celebrating Christmas during the four weeks of Advent (and sometimes even longer). We decided to go to the mittelalterlichenWeihnachtsmarkt, where we enjoyed the cozy ambience of European medieval times with Feuerzangenbowle and Glühwein.

Oktoberfest is the biggest folks’ festival of Munich. This year it finally took place after two long covid years, when it was cancelled. Due to the recent increase in number of cases in Munich wedecided to celebrate the occasion of Oktoberfest with a traditional lunch in a Bavarian restaurant instead of going to the actual Oktoberfest tents.

Our lab is part of theMarie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network called Secretion Autophagy and role in neurodegenerative diseases (SAND). Third annual meeting of the network took place in the beautiful Scottish city of Edinburgh. Early-stage researchers of the network took part in training events and presented their progress during the meeting.

SyNergy celebrated its 10th anniversary this year with scientific lectures, magic show, ice-cream truck, and a delicious barbecue accompanied by traditional Bavarian music. All SyNergy labs presented their team in form of a creative poster for the science fair. Our lab won the poster prize for representing ourselves as an autophagosome.

For our first outdoor activity this year we decided to make a day trip to the Osterseen. We had a very nice walk around the lake which gave us plenty of time to interact with each other outside the lab. Luckily, we found nice sunny spot next to the lake where we enjoyed a picnic with lots of nice homemade food after our walk. Our day trip concluded with some ice cream and coffee at a local restaurant.