by Günther Deuschl
June 2015 is coming closer and the stage for the first congress will open on Saturday, the 20th. We expect more than 6000 participants from all over Europe and the world to come to the CityCube in Berlin, the brand new Berlin congress center, the venue of the congress. We have already now a record number of pre-registrations and more than 2000 submitted abstracts. We will have 9 symposia, 25 teaching courses and 240 invited lectures. The content will cover all fields of Neurology. Current hotspots like stroke with the major development of thrombectomy as a newly established treatment, the many new treatments for multiple sclerosis, the better understanding of neurodegenerative diseases and the new developments of autoantibody related encephalopathies will be equally important as the broader overviews on recent developments in the main fields of our discipline. All Neurology is the topic here and all different diseases are interesting and important. Education is the other important topic and the Society is working hard to develop new formats of education. Berlin will be the first attempt to more focus the courses on the specific need of our young generation of neurologists. New teaching tools will be used to increase the attractiveness of these courses.
No EAN congress without meeting old and new friends. The CityCube has many locations to have a chat and a cup of coffee with them. For those who want to see the city they will be excited by the place. Berlin is certainly one of the best places in the world to celebrate the unification of the two Societies ENS and EFNS in the new Society EAN. The specific history of this town being separated in two for 40 years is nowadays providing the background for a multicultural place. The town has more than three million permanent inhabitants of which more than 400,000 are non-Germans, 33,100 children were born in 2014, 109,488 dogs are owned, there are 1931 sport clubs, and almost 11 Mio visitors have seen the place in 2014. It has a vivid cultural life with 157 museums, 247 film theatres, 79 artistic stages, 3 operas, 39 Universities and 160,100 students of these universities. There is the annual Europe festival: ‘Europe is here!’ Europe’s neurologists will be there in June.
We encourage you all to come and make Berlin to the capital of Neurology for 4 days.
