Sunday, August 01, 2010

Vienna/ Prague weekend

July 21- 25

To finish up our week in Vienna we toured the Vienna museum and the Central cemetery in Vienna (wednesday). The cemetery was one of the largest cemeteries I have ever seen, in addition to the largest tombstones I have ever seen.
On Thursday we toured the University of Vienna which was fairly interesting. We also toured the old hospital for psychiatric patients/ naretorum (cant remember what its called/ how to spell). They say the hospital was built in a circle so that if a looney patient escapes he/she will just wind up back at their room. After walking around the place this seemed very likely, I lost my bering and couldn't really tell where we were in the building after taking the tour. The exhibit contained early (abnormal) specimens of med importance which had many diseases and conditions documented for use in the future. I think it was a collection of certain specimens and documents to help doctors diagnose patients with other patient histories.
On Friday we visited the Neurological Center Rosenhugel. This center was something around 60% privately owned and 40% publicly funded (or something to that degree). It was unique because I think most German hospitals/ health centers are primarily funded by the government. It was a very nice neurological rehab center designed primarily for recovering stroke patients. It was almost like a hotel with all the up to date medical equipment. One of our group members commented that she wished she could check herself into the rehab center. I think because she thought the patient rooms/ facilities were extremely nice, not that she needs neuro rehab but who knows... At the end of the day the group headed out for our weekend trip to Prague.
As usual we arrived to our hostel late in the evening - the fact that it was raining and got on the wrong tram didin't help. We caught one train, not exactly sure of where it would take us, convinced ourselves it was the wrong one and turned around. We proceeded to get lost even further and finally took a cab to the hostel. Turns out we were headed in the correct direction originally - just our luck. We finally arrived to our hostel, Sir Toby's, which has turned out to be the nicest place we have stayed so far. Before we could check in the guy at the front desk gave us the "mandatory" briefing. He gave us maps and showed us where everything was in the city that we needed to know -restaurants, bars, etc. he was very helpful and made our stay at Sir Toby's that much nicer. We spent the entire next day in Prague walking through the city and enjoying ourselves. That night we did a bar crawl in Prague - it was a blast. The only downside was that our train left at 6am the next morning and the crawl ended at 3:30am. However, the train back to Bonn was extremely long so we just slept the entire way back. Prague was a wonderful city and I hope to visit again somewhere down the line.

No comments: