Sunday, July 9, 2006, 8:00 p.m. in Düsseldorf. As I write this post, France has just scored on a penalty kick against Italy in the final of the Fussball Weltmeisterschaft. In this first week of our summer program, the German team went down to defeat in the semifinals against Italy and France defeated Portugal to set up this über confrontation between football powerhouses for world supremacy in the beautiful game. Sad as we were to watch our German hosts’ team not advance to the final in Berlin, we join all of the football watching world in congratulating the German eleven and all of Germany in putting on a spectacular World Cup and truly welcoming the world as friends.
We were warmly welcomed on Monday by our AIB colleagues and by our German host families as our program got underway with a successful arrival of all 22 of you! Herzlichen Glückwunsch! You students have spent a week now adjusting to living here, getting to know your hosts and figuring out how to use the wonderful public transportation system that the Germans enjoy. You’ve toured Düsseldorf (perhaps a little too thoroughly in light of the Texas-sized heat wave we had earlier this week!), have had a couple of German language and culture classes, and even a lecture in our Hauptfach, die Geschichte von Medizin. Over this weekend you all took off to Amsterdam, an incredibly wonderful city, and I hope you all had a fantastic time and are returning safely to our home here in Düsseldorf.
8:20 p.m. Italy just scored and the game is now tied (and this is still less than halfway through the first half!).
Thursday also saw our inaugural trip to the Herz- und Diabetes Zentrum Nordrhein-Westfalen. Our principal host, Dr. Nikolas Mirov, M.D., Ph.D., really organized a wonderful visit for us, packed full of interesting stuff. Cardiac surgeries, intensive care wards, patients on total artificial hearts, research in molecular medicine, medical imaging technology (PET, MRI), a look at the cyclotron, lunch! I want to let you students know that our hosts at HRZ-NRW were very impressed with your behavior, enthusiasm and knowledge and are looking forward to having our program back next summer, perhaps even for a longer visit. I want to thank you all for exemplifying the very best of what makes Aggies special.
Cologne, as always, was special to me. An ancient, ancient city and we had a chance (also a first for us) to see some of that ancientness in the Römisch-Germanisches Museum der Stadt Köln. Then, as we have in prior years, we got to see some of the somewhat less ancientness of the Dom, pride of Cologne! A true native of Köln will tell you, “...well Notre Dame de Paris, it’s nice but the Dom, the Kölner Dom, that is the most beautiful Gothic cathedral in the world!” After all, it does have two spires and it is, unquestionably, a spectacular testament to mankind’s yearning to understand that which is beyond our ken.
Tired, but unbowed, you, the students headed off for our first free weekend to Amsterdam. I stayed behind and rested in Düsseldorf, gathering strength for Week #2. We have a full complement of activities scheduled for your educational pleasure (I sound like the activities director on a cruise ship!). This week we visit a local Düsseldorf biotech firm, head to Wuppertal for a tour of Bayer Health Care, cruise the Middle Rhine by boat and travel to Bonn to the Experimental Farm at Gut Frankenforst followed by a tour of the Haus der Geschichte, the museum of post-1945 German history. I recommend getting some sleep before we begin!
As for me, I’ll post these comments to our blog along with a few pictures from the past week, pour myself a glass of white wine from the Rhine valley, and watch the rest of the World Cup final (still tied 1:1 with 5 minutes to go in the first half).
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