Thursday, August 09, 2007

Our stay in Berlin, Farewell

On Tuesday afternoon, we arrived in Berlin and had a pretty fun bike tour. My favorite part was probably the memorial. According to our guide, the concrete blocks were constructed to capture the feeling of being lost, something many of the holocaust victims probably felt during and after the war.

Tuesday night ended with a nice excursion to a local bar. The bar was interesting, due to the stock market beer pricing system. Each beer purchased affected the price of the beer in the subsequent round. Since nearly 20 of us were having drinks at the bar, we affected the beers in each round fairly significantly.

On Wednesday, we took had a lecture on Virchow in the academic hospital area. I enjoyed looking at the heart specimens in the preservation gallery, because the use of cardiac devices in some of the specimens. Devices, such as pacmakers and VADs, were shown on certain diseased hearts.

Since we were given the rest of the day to do as we please, a small group of us students went to the Berlin zoo. Although the selection at the Berlin zoo was better, I think (in my opinion) that the Köln zoo had better accomodations for the animals, and thus a better environment to witness the animals.

At the moment, my thoughts concerning the future are somewhat focused on the train strike. Apparently, the strike began this morning, and I am worried my trip to Brussels tomorrow will be sporadic (at best). I have no way to communicate with my grandparents in Brussels as well, so the situation will be interesting. However, the farewell dinner tonight will be fun, and I will miss everyone in the program. I hope that our group can have reunions once we return to College Station!

Tschüs, Deutschland!

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