I spent last week in Norway on "business". Actually, it was the most holiday-like business trip I ever took, as promised by my colleague. We went there to catch sticklebacks infected with a particular tapeworm (Schistocephalus). People here have been working with this parasite for several years, and it is my duty to carry on that research. Unfortunately, the worm seems quite rare in N. Germany, though all the necessary hosts occur in adequate abundance. So, instead of catching several thousand fish to find a few German worms, we went fishing in Norway. We visited a colleague of ours in Bergen. He has consistently found a high prevalence of infected sticklebacks in several freshwater lakes in W. Norway. Apparently it was a good year for worms, because it was actually difficult to find uninfected fish. The worms grow extremely large relative to their hosts, and they cause fish to have highly distended abdomens, so the infected fish can be clearly recognized. Such a virulent growth strategy probably helps the parasite get to its bird final hosts. We managed to smuggle about 300 fish back to Germany, at least half of which were infected. Next week we'll begin the big dissections. The fishing was made even more enjoyable by the scenary around he field site (pictured). In W. Norway, the mountains meet the sea, a lanscape which usually leads to a lot of rain. But we had nothing but sunshine for 4 straight days. Yep, very holiday-like indeed.