After a 20h bus ride from Floripa, we arrived in Montevideo. From day one we felt like being at home due to the open and incredibly helpful mindset of the Uruguayos. Patricia Lagos invited us to give a talk at the Universidad Republica de Uruguay in the Facultad de Medicina. Until now, this was by far the funniest and most interactive presentation on the NeuroTour. To be able to continue with the experiments we even had to whistle in order to get the audience out of their scientific discussions about the alpha-waves of their boss.
But it got even better: We finished the presentation with the words 'And we would like to move on now in a VW Kombi, so maybe anyone knows someone who wants to sell his/her bus' followed by a huge laughter. And while I was discussing with Felipe Sierra about the Neuroscience Week in Montevideo, a student gave Geo the contact of his friend who wants to sell a Kombi. With the priceless help of our hosts and their entire family we are now close to continue the NeuroTour to Patagonia in our own vehicle! I hope we could give something back with our 'Action Potentials Served for Dessert'. There, we were performing the experiments with our new friends and also checked how the BYB blink detector could be used as part of a music band :-)
After Sao Paulo, we spend some days at the beautiful beaches in Florianópolis. Of course we didn't just get tanned lazily in the sun but also visited the University of Santa Catarina. Again, thanks to Olavo Amaral we got in contact with Cilene Lino de Oliveira from the Departamento de Ciências Fisiológicas. A long science session (additional fotos here) was followed by lunch with very interesting insights to the brasilian science situation and how it will be essential for the future to focus on low-budget experimental devices to improve teaching while maintaining or lowering the costs. However, due to their inventive and cheerful nature, I'm sure that they will find a way to cope with their problems. Luckily, Cilene was doing her PhD in the same lab as her friend Patricia Lagos, professor at the Universidad de la República de Uruguay.
