Brno, Czech Republic and the Mendel Museum

On the first day of instruction, the students, Mark, Maggie and I took a bus ride from the Simmering neighborhood in Vienna where we are staying to Brno, Czech Republic where Michaela Jarkovska (Director of Tours and Outreach), Daniella Vranova (Museum Manager)  and Dr. Roman Hobza (researcher and lecturer working out of the Center for Plant Structural and Functional Genomics) waited for us at the Mendel Museum.

The students observe where Mendel's greenhouse once stood

Mark introduces Michaela (L) and Daniella (R)

Roman

The Museum is usually closed on Mondays, but Michaela and Daniella arranged for it to open for Mark and his students.  Mark and Roman both gave lectures to the class inside the Museum's lecture room - the students were sitting on seats in the shapes of chromosomes:

Mendel Museum has been affiliated with Masaryk University since 2007, although it was founded in 2002.  The Museum is located within the precincts of the Augustinian Abbey in Old Brno, where the abbot and scientist Gregor Johann Mendel had worked.  Mendel's persistent quantitative and analytical approach to the heredity of peas and other plants was truly innovative for his time and his methodology and approach to the study of heredity are the reasons he is called the father of genetics.

Among Mendel's other pursuits besides serving as the abbot of the monastery and the father of genetics, Mendel also served on the board of a local Brno bank and managed a brewery called "Starobrno" where we all ate lunch after the lectures:

Our lunch menu was only Czech food: blue cheese and green onions with grilled toast to start, the main dish was a grilled chicken with homemade basil salt with a warm salad of grilled vegetables, sun-dried tomatoes and chickpeas served with traditional Czech breads, and for dessert we had potato dumplings (think - gnocchi) with plum sauce and grated ginger.  Everything tasted good, although I might have chosen a different type of dumpling to serve with the plum sauce - Mark really liked it.