FOR ALL PARTICIPANTS

This is a message with useful information concerning your transportation upon your arrival in Athens (Airport “EL. VENIZELOS”).

You can take the metro line 3(Blue Line) from the airport to “Syntagma” station. While in “Syntagma” you need to change to line 2 (Red Line) with direction to “Agios Dimitrios” then you get off either to “Acropolis station” for Divani Acropolis Palace (19 – 25 Parthenonos Str.) or “Sygrou Fix” station for Acropolis Select Hotel (37 – 39 Falirou Str.) which is 5 minutes walking distance. The metro operates until midnight.

Alternatively you may take the X95 bus from airport to Syntagma Square. Then you take the metro line 2 (Red Line) and follow the instructions that are given above from Syntagma to the hotels.

You can also use a taxi from the airport’s arrival terminal. The cost is approximately 40 – 45 euros (till midnight). ATTENTION: ask the driver to take you to “Divani Acropolis Palace Hotel”, to avoid confusion with other Divani Hotels that exist in Athens.

METRO LINES

LINE 2 (RED LINE) “AGIOS ANTONIOS”-“AGIOS DIMITRIOS”

LINE 3 (BLUE LINE) “AIRPORT”-“SYNTAGMA”- “AIGALEO”

ATTENTION: For departure, you have first to reach Syntagma and then take either the X95 bus or metro. You have to take care that the label on the metro is “AIRPORT”

Take a look at the metro schedule:

From Airport to Athens:

First train: 06:35 and every half hour

Last train 23:35

From Syntagma to Airport:

First train: 05:37 and every half hour

Last train 23:04

Tickets cost:

For Metro (one way)

1 person ticket: 6 euros

2 persons ticket: 10 euros

3 persons ticket 15 euros

For Bus X95 (one way) 3.20 euros

Kind Regards,

From The Administrative Secretariat

Welcome to the VIII International Conference on Hantaviruses

Dear Colleagues, Dear Friends and Enemies of Hantaviruses

It’s all in the Mouse Walt Disney created 80 years ago, and it was in the Mouse Apodemus agrarius where our Honorary President Ho Wang Lee and his collaborators found the first hantavirus in the late 1970s, close to the Hantaan River in Korea. Since then, we have had seven Conferences on Hantaviruses: 1989 in Seoul, 1992 Beijing, 1995 Helsinki, 1998 Atlanta, 2001 Annecy, 2004 again in Seoul, and 2007 in Buenos Aires. Now we have the pleasure to welcome you to the Eighth Hantavirus Conference in the eternal city of Athens in 2010. The logo of our Conference depicts the symbolic discovery of the ancient Greek four-segmented hantavirus, with duplication of a circular gene.

We have had enormous progress in hantavirology. For example, before the year 1993 there was one single American hantavirus, Prospect Hill, whereas today ICTV lists a global total of 23 different hantaviruses of which more than half are from the Americas. This lesson from the New World tells us that if you seriously look for something, you may find it. We learned in Buenos Aires of many new hantaviruses from insectivores. What next? Where and in which carriers? More hantaviruses from Africa and Southern Asia? What is the seroprevalence to hantaviruses in Australia? Birds, cats, dogs, bats, insects and why not plants? How do hantaviruses survive in nature? How do they cause diseases and how can we escape them? In research, anything is possible, and please bear in mind the words by Mark Twain: "Interesting if true, interesting anyway". Breaking news in Athens!

Our Conference venue in Athens, 20-22 May 2010, will be the DIVANI PALACE ACROPOLIS HOTEL with a view to The Acropolis, the pre-eminent monument of the European Cultural Heritage.

We three - A, A and A - look forward to seeing you and The A in Athens,

Antonis Antoniadis           Anna Papa              Antti Vaheri