ECR 2011 delegates flock into the Austria Center Vienna

Vienna has long been a popular tourist destination, as any visitor in search of last minute accommodation will bitterly tell you.

But holidays are not the only reason to come and relish the remnants of the Habsburgs’ golden age, and a trained eye will often be able to spot many visitors carrying congress bags instead of back packs.

For the past 12 years, in the beginning of March, these bags have invariably displayed the logo of our own European Congress of Radiology (ECR), but many other professions, medical or otherwise, also choose to meet in Vienna. So many, in fact, that the city has recently topped a chart of the most popular congress destinations in the world… for the sixth time in a row!

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The WFUMB technical exhibition

This time we didn’t have to travel very far for another episode of our congress coverage, just a couple of stops on the underground and we found ourselves once more at the Austria Center Vienna (ACV), every ESR employee’s second home. But this time there was a difference, 35 degrees outside and the danger of getting sunburn while walking from the underground station to the ACV. So, this is clearly not a story about the ECR, which always takes place in rather more temperate March (and also will take place in March 2012). No, this time nearly the whole ESR staff came to the Austria Center to participate in and help to set up a unique event that has never happened before and will never take place in this form again; the world congress of ultrasound (WFUMB) in conjunction with the EUROSON (congress of the EFSUMB) and the ‘Dreiländertreffen’ (three-country meeting) of Austria, Germany and Switzerland’s ultrasound societies (ÖGUM, DEGUM, SGUM), all held together on 26–29 August, 2011.

One of the big advantages of having our main congress in March is that the ACV is much more comfortable in the cooler times of the year because for some reason it’s easier to heat the building up than to cool it down. On the second day of the congress a big thunderstorm hit Vienna which, besides a lot of rain, brought a welcome drop in temperature. But enough about the weather, after all, our participants came for the congress and its scientific highlights.

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