Our time in Berlin

Time in Berlin was mostly spent on tours through the city, museums or centers. Most of our learning of the history of medicine Germany came from this week. However, each day had one event that stuck out among the others as one to remember for the rest of the trip and beyond

The first day in Berlin, back from our weekend excursion from Prague, was mostly spent on a city tour of Berlin. However, a short visit to the Charite skill training center and Otto Boch Science Center, were the most memorable events of this day. At the Charite we learned a little more insight into how the German medical school system is compared to the US system. The newer alternative curriculum was something interesting, as it was based on problem solving based learning and earlier clinical exposure. The most memorable part of the Charite visit was the interactive tour of the doctor’s skills training facilities. Here we got to learn how to intubate a person, received some otoscope training, and pulmonary resuscitation training. After our time in the Charite, we took our city tour of Berlin, and ventured through much of the central area of Berlin. During the tour we stopped at a Holocaust memorial site, which consisted of thousands of black stone rectangular monuments aligned in a grid. Seeing the memorial was an experience within itself, however walking through the site was a chilling experience because of the atmosphere it created. After the end of our tour, we were left with our last mandatory stop of the day at the Otto Boch Science Center. The center had to have been one of the most fun places we had visited to date, since it was a bioengineer’s playground with all sorts of different implants, prosthetics and interactive demonstrations. I’m ashamed to say that as a bioengineering student, I hadn’t heard of Otto Boch before, but after this visit, I’m sure it will not be something I will forget easily as I learned a great deal about the implant/prosthetics industry as well as arising technology and innovations in my field of study.

For a day not seeming like much when first looked at on the schedule, our second day trip to Dresden was a day visit filled with lots of walking, learning, and interaction. After the three hour train ride from Berlin to Dresden, we were thrust into another city tour. We got to walk around the”New” –Old Dresden and visit many of the historic sites. The two sites that stuck out the most on the trip were the Church of Our Lady, as it stuck out as one of the most ornate churches we’ve visited, and the visit to the Dresden Royal Palace, as it still gave off a Baroque air. After our tour and lunch, we headed towards the Hygiene Museum, for another tour. However, this tour would be like the Otto Boch tour, were the unconventional interactiveness made it extremely fun, enjoyable, and memorable. The Hygiene Museum was split into different sections of exhibits, each with their own big room filled with displays, models and information. The motor and coordination room at the museum was the most interactive of the rooms, as it had many exhibits that were hands-on as well as filled with many biomedical device displays.

I must confess, Wednesday was the least memorable of the days; however the trip to the natural history museum was one of the more enjoyable visits to in Berlin. Throughout high school, I grew up a world history buff, so what better way to stimulate this old part of me than by visiting a Natural history Museum where I saw German history from its roman roots to its current state. We also took a quick visit to the Robert Koch Institute and received an onsite lecture from Dr. Wasser about the Nuremburg trials.

Our last day in Berlin was a day that brought immense value to the study abroad trip, as it gave us a touch of the grim reality of past happenings during Nazi Germany. The beginning of the day was a day riddled with snow. This proved to be the perfect backdrop for trip to the Concentration Camp Sachsenhausen. When we arrived to the camp, the camp was blanketed with a sheet of snow, with all the rooftops covered in snow. The snow would not stop until we left back to berlin for our final museum tour. At the camp we visited many of the different cabins were detainees were kept. Each cabin was dedicated to explaining a part of the life in the camp, from medical history to survival. Reading the stories in the exhibitions of the rooms in the camp, gave me a closer understanding as to what happened in camps such as this one. At the end of our tour of the camp, we went to visit a memorial dedicated to the lost lives. Seeing the remains in which the memorial stood, and the flowers around a monument cast an air of reflectiveness on the already somber atmosphere. We ended our day back at the Charite visiting the museum of medical history. It was one of the more visually memorable museums as the museum had an exhibitions dedicated to preserved body parts and disorders.

Our time in Berlin had finally come to a close, and a new fun weekend excursion was ahead. While Berlin may not hold the same small town comfort close to me as Bonn did, it did give us a feeling of familiarity and additional fun after our New Year’s Weekend.