Lab Day Out 2020 Hiking and making the perfect picture

On the 24^th of September, our annual Lab Day Out took place. In this very strange year, in which some colleagues had not seen each other in real-life since the start of the coronavirus outbreak, it was very nice to see each other again! Of course, special precautions were necessary to make this year’s edition coronaproof. For example, everyone received a goody bag with an individual umbrella to prevent people sharing one in case of the (predicted) rain. We were very lucky though, since the weather turned out to be very nice.

It was unfortunately not possible to meet at a central location. Instead, everyone was divided over three different starting points, where each of the groups enjoyed a delicious lunch at one of Nijmegen’s high-quality restaurants. This provided us with the much-needed energy for the subsequent afternoon activity.

After lunch, the different groups hiked for 5-10 km through one of the many beautiful surroundings of Nijmegen (floodplains near the Weurtse Grindgat, Mookerheide or the N70 trail). During the walk, all groups also participated in a photo contest: they had to take their most beautiful pictures for 12 different categories. The winning pictures of each category will be published on the official Physiology calendar, so the stakes were very high.   

The quality of the photos of all the groups was astounding; it was clearly visible that everyone took our department’s motto (‘Next level’) very seriously. This naturally provided the Oracle of Physiology, Maria Ibars Serra, with a very difficult task to select the winning pictures. Two winning pictures worth mentioning are those in the category ‘Physiology’ (a clever way of showing the two most beautiful organs in the human body: the kidney and the heart) and ‘Wildlife’ (a very creative picture of a giraffe). Moreover, the winning picture in the category ‘Physiology’, which was taken by Yannick, Daan, Dick and Barnabas, was chosen as the overall winner and will be published on the cover of the calendar!

All in all, it was a very enjoyable day where we had a lot of fun together. Nevertheless, hopefully the situation with the coronavirus will improve next year, so that it will be possible to meet again with the entire department.