sleep, bitte

So its the end of the week here in Dusseldorf and I'm pretty tired. Monday and Tuesday we went to research facilities and learned some new things about gene target research and drug development. It was somewhat interesting...ok to be honest we all fell asleep on Monday. Wednesday was the Rhein boat tour which was really nice. The countryside was beautiful and I got a lot of good pictures. We also strolled through Braubach and I got some experience with German "customer service." I was looking through this book that I was thinking about buying and the store owner came over to me and yelled, "Please handle with care." It wasn't like I was ripping the pages apart...I was just looking through it. Oh well. I had another experience at McDonalds when I asked for a plain burger, the man rolled his eyes at me. It didn't really bother me all that much, but I'm used to being able to make special requests in the US and not having someone get mad at me. Anyways, after the Rhein tour we took this hike up to Marksburg Castle. I didn't think I was going to make it up there for a minute. As Stuart would say...we need to start putting those hikes in the schedule. The castle was pretty cool...it was weird to think that someone actually lived there hundreds of years ago. I'm not sure that it was worth the hike, I could see it just fine from the ground. Just kidding, I'm glad I got to see the inside. It's strange how short the people were back then. I'm not that tall and I wouldn't fit in the royal family's bed. It was for someone no taller than 5 feet. After the castle, we went to a wine cellar and tasted different wines, which I think was everyone's favorite part of the day. The wine was delicious. It was interesting to learn that there are mostly family owned wineries instead of a few big, commercial wineries like in the US. Thursday we went to the experimental farm in Bonn. That was really interesting to me, even though my allergies kicked in towards the end. It did made me realize that I could never be a vet. There was this tiny little piglet that was the runt of the litter and he was having a hard time getting food because its brothers and sisters kept pushing him out of the way. The vet said that he would probably die and I really wanted to save him. I know its more cost effective to let the ones that can't survive on their own die, but I would want to try and save every animal I came across. I know that its impossible to do that too, but I would spend all my time fighting for the weakest ones. I thought about stealing the pig and taking it home with me, but what would I do with a pig once it got older? Anyways...after the farm, we went to the House of German History Museum. It was probably the best designed museum I've ever been too! They had barriers separating east and west, and on the east side was exhibits on east germany and the west was exhibits from west germany. I didn't realize how hard life was after the war. People had to make household items out of war materials and they had really small food rations for the entire day. It must have been horrible to have to live like that. One of the saddest things in the museum was this dark room, with this strange background noise. The room represented the how dark and depressing everything was when Hitler was in power. The background noise was the sound of fire because many buildings in germany were destroyed by the fire of the allied bombs. It was really moving. Today we have a little bit of class, then I'm off to Paris! I'm so excited about that because I've been wanting to go for a long time! Auf wiedersehen!