Laszlo's home grown grapes

Contrary to the system at Vancouver’s airport, in Munich one must check in at the airline and get boarding passes and baggage tags before going to customs with a Carnet! So we ended up lining up twice However, no one lost our luggage and we didn’t have any hassles with customs re-entering Canada with the artwork this time. It was a great trip, but good to be home!

Claire sets up the call

Laszlo & Claire, Danube River, Parliament buildings

In the evening we went to an epic opera in a grand old theatre downtown. It wove together the story of a group of Jews being rounded up in Budapest in WWII, the biblical story of Esther and present time elements, with segments of Klezmer music, song and dance.

Music college with Listz façade

The next day we explored more of Budapest on foot and watched a rehearsal of traditional and contemporary Hungarian dance with live musicians. They were excellent and though we couldn’t attend their final performance, we found a DVD of similar work.

Dance rehearsal

On Tuesday the three of us cycled to Laszlo’s other garden plot farther south on Csepel Island. In the evening we went to a wine cellar pub downtown to hear some music. Three people played violin, one accordion, a clarinet, stand up bass, and cimbalon – all playing triple time, perfectly synchronized! The place was packed with young women university students, most of whom sang along with great gusto. It was really fun.

After heaving everything into a train car, we looked around and wondered…where is everyone? A kind elderly gentleman went back to the ticket booth with Claire and found out that in fact there wasn’t a train to Budapest until 1 pm, unless we wanted to go to the bus depot and catch a bus to Győr, then train to Budapest. But that would only save about 10 minutes. So we pulled everything off the train and waited back in the station where there was a WiFi signal.

Bill uses Alan Zisman's netbook at Sopron's train station

I worked on my conference notes while Claire drew cartoon postcards of us, like this one:

cartoon © Claire Kujundzic

I looked up from my typing to see Ferenc Lakatos, the conference organizer, standing in front of me. It was nice to see him – he and his son Richard were there to meet his dad. But then Ferenc asked if we had seat tickets. No, we just had tickets to Budapest. Hmm.

He explained that we could have problems on the train without them and accompanied me back to the ticket booth. I bought two seat tickets for 360 Forints (about $2 Cdn). Not sure why these aren’t sold with the main tickets as one unit, but we were very grateful to Ferenc!

We had a very pleasant trip east on the GYSEV train, which has WiFi. Laszlo met us at the Budapest Keleti (east) station, and took us back to his place in Csepel, on the island in the Danube.

Claire & Laszlo at Budapest Keleti station

He drove the long way so we could see some of the sights, and made a fabulous dish with homemade dumplings for us.

Laszlo's home cooking

Bill Riel of the Canadian Forest Service (Victoria, BC) shared data on the MPB’s incursion into Jack pines in northern Alberta and how this could affect woodland caribou habitat. Anton Kovalev (International Center for Study of Extreme States of Organisms, Krasnoyarsk, Russia) presented his new calculus equations to model tree resistance with more accuracy. He also measured dielectric properties of tree tissues as an indicator of a tree’s physiological state.

Hisashi Kajimura from Nagoya University in Japan, discussed the latex defenses of fig trees in response to the novel threat of ambrosia beetles which have spread through Japan over the last 10 years. Larry Kirkendall showed some gorgeous photos of ambrosia beetles in Chile that are affecting Beeches there; very cool galleries!

Hisashi Kajimura, Nagoya University, Graduate School of Bioagricultural Sciences, Forest Protection Lab, Nagoya, Japan

Jon Sweeney of the Canadian Forest Service (Fredericton, NB) talked about the effects of host tree stress on foraging of Tetropium spp., and Krista Ryall of the Canadian Forest Service (Victoria, BC) presented her findings on a volatile sex pheromone in emerald ash borers that have killed millions of trees in Canada and the US. Apparently it is very hard to detect early infestation, as the trees are asymptomatic for up to 4 years.

Finally, Keith Douce (Center for Invasive Species & Ecosystem Health, University of Georgia) gave a summary of the resources available at bugwood.org, an image bank of invasive species, forestry images, insects and weeds with 1.3M records. Bugwood’s IT systems are fully integrated and can connect to databases; there are more than 145,000 images and 15,000 subjects. The site issues creative commons licenses through its Wiki system for the html, pdf and image files users can access. There’s even a mobile app for iPhone that plugs into an alert system. Very cool.

After Ferenc’s closing remarks, it was time for us to take down Claire’s artwork & repack it. Larry Kirkendall helped out and when we were done, we went back to Erhardt for supper with him and Torild Wardenær. It was a lovely way to end the week.

Bill & Larry, ready to wrap Claire's exhibit

Supper out; Ferenc Lakatos photo

Les Safranyik (Victoria, BC), Choi Won Il (Seoul) & Claire with other delegates on the park trail

With the rest of the delegates we were taken by bus on September 8 to the Irottkö park area on the Hungarian-Austrian border, northwest of Szombathely. After the previous day of sitting indoors, it was refreshing to walk below the spruce. There were places where we could observe some bark beetle damage in the park, which was interesting. From the top of the Irottkö tower on the border we saw where there used to be a clear cut swath during the cold war era, and it was a perfect site for a group photo.

Sopron IUFRO conference delegates at Irottkö tower

At the base of a dead larch tree, Sarah Smith of the Department of Entomology at Michigan State University found a big, beautiful predatory beetle! I think it’s Carabus intricatus.

A swarm of entomologists examine a dead Larch tree

Sarah Smith holds a very lively Carabus intricatus

Anthony Cognato & Sarah Smith from the Department of Entomology, Michigan State University show Claire their cool shirts at lunch!

After a hearty Hungarian lunch in a restaurant, we visited an amazing nature centre in Sarród called the Kócsagvár or Egret Castle, with thatched roofs and a design influenced by the form of egret feathers. What a gorgeous structure.

Conference organizer Ferenc Lakatos briefs delegates at the Egret Castle nature centre

Inside the nature centre

The Fertő-Hanság National Park connects Austria’s Neusiedler See National Park and Hungary’s Lake Fertő, which is the third largest lake in Central-Europe. Here we walked along a canal on the edge of a fine bird watching area.

Good bird watching here

Shannon Smith (Biology Department, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW, Australia) checks out the canal

Our last stop was at the site of the Pan-European picnicwhich took place in 1989 and led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. A rather emotional place for the Hungarians and other East Europeans.

Display at the site of the Pan-European Picnic

After we got back to Sopron, everyone met for supper at Erhardt restaurant. Wow.

Supper at Erhardt; can you find Bill & Claire? (Ferenc Lakatos photo)

University tour bus

Ferenc, the main conference organizer, gave an overview of the current situation in Hungary. Their forests are dominated by deciduous species like oaks and beech; there are Scolytidae beetles such as S multistriatus, Xyleborus spp, and Platypus cylindrus.

Eckehard Brockerhoff & Ferenc Lakatos welcome delegates

Due to invasions, rising temperatures and decreasing precipitation, conifers have been affected in every forest in Hungary. Norway spruce gone from 27% to 13% since 1974. Beech distribution has been shrinking dramatically, and the composition and distribution of tree species has a big impact on bug diversity.

One of the most interesting things we learned at this conference was how much windstorms and drought can create ideal conditions for a bark beetle outbreak. For example, Hervé Jactel gave a presentation about what happened after Cyclone Klaus hit France in January, 2009 and affected 70% of their forests: there was a masssive outbreak of Ips sexdentatus the next year.

On a coffee break, Les Safranyik explained to us how he and other researchers realized why a large tract of conifers near the Cariboo Mountains in BC had died. A powerful wind storm had rocked the trees, not enough to knock them over, but the movement destroyed the fine roots. The trees were then more vulnerable to beetle attack.

Allan Carroll of UBC gave an interesting and somewhat disturbing presentation on Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) range expansion into northern Alberta. Whereas Lodgepole has been the primary host, it’s now starting to show up in Jack pine hybrids and Jack pines, with a projected mortality of 67% by 2020.

According to Allan, there was three times as much susceptible pine at the start of our most recent outbreak compared to a severe infestation in 1910, mainly because of fire suppression and also some selective harvesting. With the 1-2 degrees increase in mean annual temperatures since 1950, we have had a 75% increase in suitable conditions for MPB. A third of the outbreak is located beyond previous cold limitation line.

Allan predicts that lodgepole pines “with experience” will have more effective defenses than “naive” pines like the jack pines and hybrid species.

We also heard presentations on the engraver beetle in Italy’s Dolomites, spruce bark beetles (SBB), ambrosia beetles in Korea, bark beetles and long horned & borer beetles affecting wood packaging and palettes in container ships, bark beetles in Sitka spruce in Wales, and pheromone traps.

Bjørn Økland of Norway discussed the possibility of new pests entering Eurasian forests, such as the bronze birch borer, MPB (if it got into Scots pine in northern Europe, 42% of trees could be vulnerable), SBB, pinewood nematode and emerald ash borer.

Ours was the last presentation of the day – a mix of photos from the Cariboo-Chilcotin and Claire’s paintings – and it was very well received

Introducing our screen presentation; Ferenc Lakatos photo

Coralie Bertheau (Vienna) & Peter Biedermann (Bern) look at Claire's trees during a coffee break.

Just before supper, everyone was invited to what was supposedly a special organizing meeting, but actually a ruse to present Les (Laszlo) Safranyik The George Varley Award for Achievement in Forest Insect Ecology. Les, a Soproni-UBC graduate, is recently retired from the Canadian Forest Service and features prominently in Andrew Nikiforuk’s “Empire of the Beetle” along with Allan Carroll, who gave the tribute. All the delegates were there and gave Les a standing ovation.

Jean-Clauge Grégoire (Belgium), Allan Carroll (UBC), Les Safranyik (Victoria, BC), Eckehard Brockerhoff (NZ); Ferenc Lakatos photo

We needed some extra mat board, so we took a stroll around Sopron and found an art supply store near the university. The owner was very friendly and has traveled around Europe and Latin America painting large murals. He introduced us to another artist who was visiting the shop in between teaching classes. It can’t be easy making a living from a small store in a small city like Sopron.

We went to a grocery store and the staff tried to explain how to buy fresh vegetables: certain peppers require a sticker before weighing; other, apples and cucumbers were wonderful, and it turns out that the region is known for a heritage grape & wine called Kékfrancos, i.e. blue Frankish. There was nice Hungarian cheese, too, and bakeries every block or two. We felt ready for the conference!

Sopron neighbourhood

Downtown Sopron

Registration began before supper time and was followed by a social event on the hotel’s top floor patio. It was a beautiful evening to meet some of the 74 delegates from 25 countries, such as Larry Kirkendall from Bergen (formerly US) and his friend Torild Wardenær who is a Norwegian poet and playwright, and Frederick Schlyter from Sweden. Frederick is the thesis supervisor for a PhD student from Victoria, BC, who happened to visit our gallery in August after a Bowron lakes trip

For a summary of the interesting relationship between UBC in Vancouver and the University of Western Hungary in Sopron dating back to the Hungarian revolution in 1956, see http://tinyurl.com/3txm62t and http://tinyurl.com/3f8jr7c

Bill & Janosz hang trees from above the conference level

We also strung wires above a series of columns so we could hang trees from the very tops. The preliminary conference on bark beetle genetics started, and we met some of the delegates who were attending for the whole week, such as Milosz from Prague. The hotel staff were all very helpful and curious and we finished around supper. Claire’s art looked beautiful in this space. Time to go down the street for some goulash, dumplings and Soproni!

part of installation, as seen from dining room below conference level

Camp entrance, Dachau

When we asked what had changed over those 15 years, he said that at first mainly survivors and their families were coming; now the visitors are mainly international and students. We were so inspired by his integrity, honesty and courage; the tour left us feeling a lot of hope about the world.

After, we stopped at the main train station Hauptbahnhof to get our tickets to Sopron, then stopped at Mairenplatz. The ornate Rathaus city hall building is gorgeous and there were thousands of people in the plaza and pedestrian areas. We spent a long time downtown and in the market area and managed to resist most of the temptations apart from Italian ice cream before returning to the hostel.

bikes parked downtown Munich

On Sunday we caught a train to Vienna and after stashing all our gear, discovered that some seats are reserved But people were friendly and helpful; we ended up sitting with some Hungarians and Brazilians. At Vienna we caught a smaller train to Sopron, an hour away; altogether the trip from Munich took about 6 hours.

Sopron is a beautiful city whose history pre-dates the Romans. The hotel where the conference was taking place was a 15 minute walk away from the train station.

Pannonia Hotel, Sopron: site of IUFRO Conference

Ater checking in, we unrolled all the art in a large gymnasium, and went for a bite. They gave us a beautiful room with a small patio and allowed us to pay at the conference rate. But contrary to what our Lonely Planet Hungarian phrasebook said, Euros were not yet accepted everywhere and we needed to change some into Forints. The rate has been around 268 Fts/Euro. This means most prices are in the hundreds and thousands. No wonder most store clerks point to the final price; tourists like us struggle to count to 5 in Hungarian!

view of Sopron from our room at the Pannonia.