July 26-29

After arriving back in Bonn following our stint in Prague we were supposed to go see a surgery, but since I had left my phone in Michael's backpack, I wasn't sure what time and where we were supposed to meet on Monday morning so I unfortunately missed the orthopedic surgery. I feel like it would have been a great experience, but alas I missed; however, I got to spend some time with my host mom and also had some time to get a little caught up on blog posts. Well then I finally got in touch with Nils and we met to go to the Haribo wholesale store on the other side of Bonn which was a lot of fun just because they had so much selection of what you could buy. Then we had a cultural studies class with Ture where we learned the difference between freund und bekannte and how Germans make a clear distinction between the two, whereas in America if we have had a conversation with one they are automatically our friend and instead we just use superlatives like best friend or really good friend to describe what the Germans just called friend.

On Tuesday we went on a hike where Dr. Wasser told us the story of some lazy study abroad students he took on a hike and how they got passed up by some nuns on the hike. We then went and saw the Marksburg Castle and I took on a bet to wear everyone's jacket for the duration of the tour and until we reached a certain checkpoint. Then we went and had a wine tasting with an older couple in their restaurant and I figured out how much of a master Nils is with wine. Then the gentleman sold the wine at a huge discount and we all, probably, bought too much to take back to America.

On Wednesday we went and saw the Horst Stoeckel-Museum of the History of Anesthesiology toured by Dr. Stoeckel who was in over half of the pictures in the museum as he had helped design and invent many of the techniques used today. I am really glad we got to see this because I doubt I'll be experience anything like that again, actually being toured by the man who the museum was named after.

Thursday felt kind of like a resting day where we just kind of saw 2 videos and I was feeling particularly bad, I think the bacterial infection I have had for the past week or so was finally setting in and while I could stay awake and was interested in the first video (Ode to Joy) the second video was too much, and I didn't really see it. Then we went and ate some sushi (waste of time) and went and attended a lecture on the Nuremberg doctor trials and human experimentation with Dr. Wasser which was quite interesting to see what crazy and stupid things the Nazis did to the Jews just because they could. They treated Jews more like pieces of equipment rather than people. Then we visited the Museum of the Federal republic of Germany and had a lot of information concerning what happened after the Nazis fell out of regime.

Friday was spent doing our AIB evaluations and then going to Koln zoo and getting the awesome tour of the elephant cages which is something that would be rare to do in America, but apparently is commonplace in Germany.