Professor Brenda Wingfield had the privilege of attending the MPI Fungal Symposium in Plön, Germany from 2-4 September. This symposium included several speakers well-known to FABIans, Dr Alistair McTaggart and Prof. Dominik Begerow. The three-day symposium had four sessions focusing on fungi in changing environments, life cycles and development, genomics, genetics and fungal evolution and fungal hosts. Lizel Potgieter who completed her Masters in FABI at the University of Pretoria and who is now a PhD student at the University of Kiel was involved in the organisation of the meeting. She and several students from Kiel attended the meeting. The meeting was well attended and there was active discussion amongst the attendees during the breakaway sessions. Brenda returns to South Africa with a number of new ideas and some potential for collaboration with MPI in Plön.