On Tuesday, we got up early and went to Cologne to take a tour of the cathedral and old town. The Cologne Cathedral has the solid gold tomb with the three wise men inside. It was pretty cool to be able to see that. In the afternoon, we went to Elde House which was basically a Gestapo prison during the Nazi time period. It was a place where the Nazi’s would take people who they thought could be Jews, homosexuals, Sinti, Roma, Jehovah’s witnesses, or anyone they even suspected of not being completely loyal to the Nazis. The people they brought would then be “questioned” before they were either released or sent somewhere else. They showed us all of the tiny cells where they would put 30-40 people in at once as well as all the writing the prisoners put on the walls while they were there. The writing told a lot of things like all the different places the prisoners were from as well as all of the things they had to endure during their stays. Then we were supposed to go on a rooftop tour of the cathedral but our guide never showed up so we just went back to Bonn for the night.
We had to get up early again Wednesday morning so that we could go to the teaching hospital here in Bonn to watch surgeries all morning. I do believe that I am even more sure than ever that I want to be a veterinarian and not a human doctor. I just don’t have the patience to deal with too much human stupidity. The first surgery I saw was on a guy that had crashed his motorcycle into a parked van going 100 km/h in the middle of the city. It was pretty cool to see some of the differences and similarities of surgery in humans versus that on animals. There’s a lot more equipment and technology that goes into human surgery but they take way more time than an equivalent surgery would take with an animal.
Then, in the afternoon, we went to the USA v. France women’s world cup semi-finals game. That was so much fun. It was pretty chilly outside but we still took full advantage of being able to act like crazy Americans and we painted ourselves and ran around to make sure as many people saw us as possible. Most of the other Americans I saw there looked about as crazy as we did. It was awesome. There were a bunch of French and German people there, who were all bundled up, who kept asking me if I was cold. Got to love the USA. Then, after we BTHO France, we came back to Bonn and celebrated for a while.
Thursday, we spent all morning in class and Dr. Wasser went over euthanasia programs and a lot of Nazi history and how it all affected present day thinking. It’s really cool to have a teacher tell you something about history and then relate that to its affect of something present today that we can see for ourselves. I don’t think I’ve ever had a teacher that has done that before. It really makes you think about things and helps to understand them more. All of the euthanasia type of stuff was a lot more medical related and kind of cool but completely twisted at the same time. The Nazi’s initially started euthanasia programs for mentally disabled people because they believed that they would pollute the gene pool and that they were a burden on society and the people around them so they had a negative worth and needed to be gotten rid of. Then the euthanasia ideas sort of spread from there out to all the different groups that the Nazi’s persecuted. Then Dr. Wasser showed us some numbers from a survey that was done and a majority of Germans would support euthanasia or assisted suicide for a person with cerebral palsy who stated that they wanted to die once they couldn’t move anymore but euthanasia is still illegal in Germany today because when Germans think of euthanasia, they think of the Nazi time period and they don’t want to relive that in any way possible.
Then we spent the afternoon in the botanical gardens in Bonn for our guest lecture on homeopathy. He definitely had an interesting way of looking at things.
On Friday, we went to the Institute for Aerospace Medicine. That was not what I was expecting at all. I didn’t have many expectations about the tour but I figured since it was called the “Institute for Aerospace MEDICINE” that we would actually talk about medicine. No such luck. It was pretty much just a tour of the facility.
Then we went to Bruhl to see a palace. It was crazy how big and elaborate everything was and the fact that it was all for one person. All the people that went to Paris for the weekend had to rush out of there so that they could make their train to start on their adventure to try to make in to Paris for the weekend. I decided to go to Switzerland instead and I’m so glad that I did. We got to hang out at the palace in Bruhl for a little after our tour was over and we went and walked around the gardens there. It was so pretty.
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