bonn week two

Monday July 11th

Today our group went to the museum of anesthesiology. When we arrived at the museum we were greeted by an older man. He is a retired anesthesiologist with multiple doctorate degrees. We started in the early days of anesthesiology when chloroform or ether was used to anesthetize patients. The museum then progressed into the modern age. They had the second largest collection of historical anesthesia equipment in the world. They had an interesting collection of vet equipment as well. It was neat to see all of the old equipment. It was rather hot today which made the tour seem extremely long. The building had no AC so it was probably 80 degrees. Everyone seemed glad when the tour was over to get some cool air from the outside.

Tuesday July 12th

Today was our first trip into Koln. Once we left the koln Hbf we instantly saw the dom. The dom is the large gothic cathedral in which the three wise men are kept. The three wise men are kept in a golden tomb in the center of the cathedral. The size of the dom was amazing. It took three pictures to get the entire structure. Once inside we got a wonderful guided tour. We learned various things about the seal of koln, the three crowns are for the wise men and the 11 tears are for 11,000 slain virgins. We also got to see the roman ruins under Koln. It was neat to see how advanced the romans were with sewage and water supply. For lunch I had my first jager schnitzel which was served with Gaffle Kolsch (bier) and some kind of thick noodles. The jager sauce was a mushroom based sauce which was extremely good. The Gaffle kolsch was good, but nothing I would kill for. After this we saw the Elde house which was the house the Gestapo worked out of. From the outside one would never know what was contained inside the house. Once in we got to get a glimpse of what life was like during the Nazi reign. What shocked me was the amount of people they would detain in a 4x10 cell. After the tour four of us Josh, Travis, Drew and myself walked around the central market. The girls all went to H&M while we went to the European version of Rei. They had a freezer to test your jacket and even a lake to test a boat in. I bought Chlorine tabs to clean out my nalgeen because I am sick and don’t want to stay sick. I also bought a towel because I have found out that hostels don’t have the best towels. From here we went to the Fruh brauhaus and had a few beers before we were supposed to go onto the roof of the dom. Once we arrived at the dom we waited for our tour guide outside. While waiting a crazy homeless guy came up to our group and just silently stood in the middle of our group. Idk if he was on drugs or if this was his tactic to get money. He made everyone feel awkward, but finally Niles asked him to leave. After 30 minutes of waiting in a slight rain we found out that our tour guide wasn’t going to show up so we didn’t get to go up the dom. I was disappointed but what can you do if there is no way to fix the situation. Niles made up for the mistake by taking us on a pub-crawl in Bonn. Our group had a blast learning german drinking games. There was one game with dice and disks which was my favorite. I need to learn what it is called so we can bring it to the states. It used three dice and a cup, certain hands would be better than others and the loser takes an allotted amount of disks. If one person gets all of the disks they buy a round for everyone. I never lost but I did get two free rounds of drinks. There was also a long pour device that was fun.