Last week I had the opportunity to attend the first conference since coming to Germany. It was a neuroscience meeting held in Göttingen, and since the Sunday immediately after the meeting was free, I decided to catch up with an Australian friend who has just moved there for work. Like many German cities, the centre of Göttingen is where the Old Town is situated. The Old Town was full of buildings aged in the hundreds, including many houses of which the beams were no longer straight. Those houses were still standing, but it's another thing whether they were really safe. Historically, Göttingen has been a meeting point for some of the best minds and most influential people in Germany and around the world. Many of the houses were in fact former residences of those famous people, and were identified with plaques on the wall bearing their names and years of residence. Göttingen is also famous for the statue of the Gänseliesel (the girl with the geese). My friend told me that, as part of