Reflections of a traveling veterinarian
It slowly dawned on me that I was standing in front of the worst car I had every rented, when I realised that there were no seatbelts on the rear seats. …..and this came on top of electric windows which only worked if the door was been held wide open ( not easy while driving …
Continue reading “Touring Armenia in a Lada and nearly falling off my (high) horse…..”
It was 3 am in the morning and although I felt completely spend following a whole week of late nights out with both Russian and other international friends at the FECAVA EuroCongress, usually followed by early morning runs through the city, I had to catch a flight…. Together with my Estonian friend and colleague, Tiina Toomet, who …
It was in April 2011 when I attended my first Russian Small Animal Veterinary Congress in Moscow. We were staying in Hotel Gamma or Delta on the outskirts of the city, a cluster of not very inviting Soviet style high rise buildings next to a Disney style Russian utopia village and in walking distance to …
Two months ago I wrote an e- mail to Sergey Sereda, the President of the Russian Small Animal Veterinary Association under the subject: An “unusual request” ….. “Dear Sergey” it read, “ for a somewhat unusual performance at the Banquet in St.Petersburg I will need: – a DJ who can play a couple of songs …
A couple of years ago, FECAVA started a student travel scholarship program. The program enables 10 students with not more than 2 students studying in the same country, to attend our annual EuroCongress. The idea is to enable our forthcoming colleagues to benefit from the experience of attending an international veterinary conference. The students are …
When opening the FECAVA EuroCongress in St.Petersburg, I was inwardly smiling to myself and was thinking: “Well, you should have seen me last week in my builder’s overall, cleaning the pipework of our old house in Oxford and hauling rubbish to the local tip…..” It just showed that the enjoyment of life is often created …
Calling in a favour from my friend Alexander Tchakov, I took the opportunity to visit a couple of veterinary clinics in St.Petersburg ahead of the FECAVA EuroCongress which opening the next day. Right after breakfast I was collected by Sasha, one of the clinics’ administrators and we were heading first for the impressive Kalininskaya Clinic …
Continue reading “The veterinary profession at work in St.Petersburg”
Ok, why not try to combine two things I like ?…… Shortly after my arrival in St.Petersburg, I gave the obligatory stroll along Nevsky Prospect a defined endpoint, which I had planned to visit for a long time – a cat cafe! The idea is not new and although it is a controversial concept, it …
This morning I am again sitting in a plane with a coffee in my hand crossing the North Sea heading for Russia via Stockholm. Behind me (and at times the whole family) are four weeks of a very different life with at times fourteen hour working days, filled with plastering, plumbing, rewiring, painting, flooring and …
Continue reading “The difference of four weeks or “Patient 58”…”
As the Oxfordian bricks and mortar patient is steadily improving (at least until I drilled holes in a couple of heating pipes underneath the floor boards….), I decided to remind myself of my “real” profession and to pay the local (exclusively) cat clinic a visit. This was something I had planned for many years, but …
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