There’s an old British expression, ‘A change is as good as a rest’. I never gave it much credence before; after all, hard work is hard work, so how could it ever be relaxing?

Enter my mini-sabbatical at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), an idyllic outpost nestled on a steep wooded mountain overlooking Heidelberg. Founded in 1978 and supported by twenty European member states, the institute houses over 800 biologists of many different nationalities and performs cutting-edge research in the fields of cell biology, biophysics, developmental biology, gene expression, and structural and computational biology.

Clean living: yet another shiny robot welcome me to Germany

It also houses international conferences; I attended one ten years previously, although the only thing I can recall – naughty me – is ducking off from a few sessions to eat Brezel, drink Bockbier and play a fiendishly clever card game called Skat in a smoky bar with a few other post-docs (you know who you are). And of course, I remember the food. The canteen is resoundingly famous amongst biologists: for a few paltry euros, you can gorge yourself on gourmet fare every day.

I’ve been sent here from London for about three weeks, thanks to the financial largesse of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), and the kind accommodation of my host lab, to learn more about high through-put RNA interference and automated timelapse microscopy. I got a bit of a shock when I was introduced to my lab space: they’d issued me an entire empty half bay, a tissue culture hood that hardly anyone else uses, ditto the microscopes and the freezer spaces, with an incredibly competent research technician who was eager to help me. Everything is spotlessly clean and tidy, which has had a wonderful effect on my brain: faced with so much order, I feel my actions and thought processes somehow aligning to fit in with my environment. In the evenings, the setting sun bronzes the woods outside the window by my desk, filling the lab with a coral-colored glow, and all the world seems infused with a little bit of euphoria.

And here’s where we get to the restful bit: it is wonderfully liberating to have only one problem to work on, and to chip away at it without any distraction. Back home, I have a lot of lab chores, and my attendance is required at an endless parade of research talks and group meetings. The research, as it is, seems perennially interrupted, such that you fit in your experiments around the obligations, and not the other way around. Here, free of any distractions, the only thing that matters is the sole scientific question: can I spot a microarray of siRNAs onto a glass slide and achieve transfection and imaging conditions such that I can follow my cell morphology phenotypes in focus over time and space for a forty-eight hours period? After a week here, I’ve made good progress, and though I work hard and return to my guest room exhausted, I still manage to feel exhilarated.

Everyone should get away once in a while. Perhaps periodic lab sabbaticals should be an integral part of every scientist’s research life, built into the budgets of their fellowships and grants. It doesn’t cost very much to send someone somewhere for a couple of weeks, but the mental and research benefits can be enormous.

A room with a view: looking west out of my room in Gastehaus Eichwald