Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We feel honoured and privileged to invite you to participate in the Second Balkan Fungus (Balkan Fungus 2022) which will take place in October 6-8, 2022 in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Balkan Fungus is a regional meeting that started very successfully in 2018 from the charming and heroic city of Timisoara, Romania, as a promising initiative of five Balkan national societies of Medical Mycology (Croatia, Greece, Romania, Serbia and Turkey). It is a great opportunity for all scientists that come from the Balkans and are involved with Medical Mycology and Mycotoxicology to meet, discuss and exchange their scientific interests and work results. The ambition is that these meetings will progress friendship, collaboration and understanding between all of our neighbouring countries.

Thessaloniki is the second largest Greek city and since its foundation has remained always a metropolis, a great sea harbour for ships, dreams and expectations. It was founded in 315 BC by Cassander and named to his wife Thessaloniki who was sister of Alexander the Great. A well-known centre of civilisation during the Hellenistic and Roman years, became one of the most symbolic cities for the whole Christianity and prospered as the second largest and wealthiest city of the Byzantine Empire, acting again as the spiritual motherland for the spreading of religious faith and written language to a great part of the Balkans and neighbouring regions up to Russia. It remained equally important during the Ottoman period, also becoming the second homeland for thousands of Jews that came and inhabited the city in addition to the ones living here since the antiquity. Product of all fabulous and often turbulent centuries of history, nowadays Thessaloniki is a nice, modern and colourful city, offering an outstanding landscape, exceptional sea front, extraordinary monuments from all eras (with cornerstone the Byzantine churches) together with rich entertainment and extraordinary gastronomy. It is a trade and cultural centre with vivid intellectual and artistic life proven by several relative events all around year. Aristotle University is among the biggest Universities in the Balkans and together with the University of Macedonia and the International Hellenic University adds the freshness of youth, originality, innovation and progressiveness to the city.

In this city we hope that we will meet again and deepen our friendly ties by the occasion of a very interesting and stimulating conference, where important and “hot” topics of medical mycology will be presented by a multitude of experts and broadly renowned colleagues coming from our region or other European countries.

With all our best and warmest regards, we expect you in Thessaloniki.

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Committees