LAUSR

Those of you who are fond of music may have recognised the introductory song Adventure of a lifetime by Coldplay. This title summarises my relationship with the European Society of Sports Traumatology, Knee Surgery and Arthroscopy (ESSKA) over the last 20 years, starting with my first ESSKA congress participation in Nice in 1998. It was exciting and frightening at the same time. I was frightened about giving my first international lecture, but, at the same time, I felt passionate about what ESSKA was about, its scientific content, and its spirit. I am proud to say that the society and congress presidents of that time, P. Chambat from Lyon, France, and P. Beaufils from Versailles, France, later became my mentors and are now close friends. In 2001, I was selected to participate in the ESSKA-AOSSM travelling fellowship and, just 1 year later, at the ESSKA Congress in Rome, I was elected to the ESSKA board as general secretary, a task which I would perform for 10 years. The ESSKA board rapidly decided that it needed to professionalise, which is why we hired the first professional staff member for ESSKA at my hospital in 2005. My way to and my love of ESSKA may be symbolic of Europe for many reasons, but I would like to point out four of them and then reflect on how they can be transposed to ESSKA. My home country is Luxembourg. It is almost too small to be an independent country, but it managed to become a founder member of the European Union. Its independence was due to its fortress, which was difficult to conquer in the previous centuries, and its geographical location between the Frenchand German-speaking world. The owners of this small piece of land changed regularly and so my ancestors became French, German, Dutch, Austrian, Spanish, and, finally, Luxembourgers in 1839. The country developed a powerful steel industry, later became an international financial centre, welcomed several European institutions, including the European Court of Justice, and developed the broadcasting satellite industry where it is a large player nowadays. This is the HISTORY. I grew up in the 1970s and 80s in a small industrial city called Differdange, with large-scale social and cultural diversity, on the south-western border of Luxembourg, close to France and Belgium. During my childhood, I had friends with origins from all over Europe. Their fathers either worked in the local steel factory or they were miners, digging out the precious red rocks from which the iron would be made. These were hard times, where safety at work was still an illusion, and fatalities and severe injuries were, therefore, not rare. It was these miners and steel workers who came from all over Europe and established the basis for our country’s subsequent well-being, its multilingual and multicultural environment. This is the DIVERSITY. Luxembourg recently started to combine its satellite experience with its mining history by developing the space-mining sector. As Mark Twain said: “They did not know it was impossible, so they did it!”. This is the CREATIVITY. The future will show whether this is positive or negative and I am not sure if it makes sense for a small nation to reach for the stars if it still lacks the basic infrastructure like a medical school. However, in this case and in my time in the 1980s, I tried to make the best of it. Therefore, since Luxembourg did not have a university, I was obliged to go abroad for my medical studies. I went to Belgium, where I became acquainted with another culture and exported literally the best which they had. This was neither beer nor chocolate, but my wife Katy. I was blessed that she followed me—first to Germany and later back to my * Romain Seil [email protected]