Program Week 5 (Berlin)

We got to Berlin pretty easily and somehow found Dr. Wasser and Nils as we were getting on the tram to go to our hotel so we made it there pretty easily. Our hotel was pretty cool. I ended up staying in an apartment with 4 other girls and we had a kitchenette and everything else. Then we went on a bike tour of Berlin. That was really fun. It was a great break from having to walk everywhere and we got to see a lot more of the city than we would have if we had walked.

On Tuesday, we got up and had breakfast at the hotel before going to Sachsenhausen which was a concentration camp a little ways outside of Berlin. Because it was in the part of Germany occupied by the Russians after WWII, the camp was mainly a memorial to all the communist prisoners during the war. It was pretty interesting. It took me until almost the end of the tour for it to really sink in that this was a place where people actually died and where all the things that happened during the holocaust, really happened. It was definitely an experience. Then we went back to Berlin and took a tour of the Bundestag (German parliament) before going back to the hotel and being set loose for the night.

Wednesday, we went to the Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine in the morning. That was pretty cool. We had a guy that was originally from San Antonio give us a short introduction lecture before we were split up into two groups. One group was sent off to learn about their neutrophil and muscle research while the other group took a tour of all their magnetic and MRI everything before we switched places. The neutrophil stuff was really interesting and it was fun to get to play with the magnets.
In the afternoon, we went to the Otto Bock Science Center and we got to learn a lot about all kinds of prosthetics. They had a lot of interactive stuff there and they let us play with it all after our tour which was a lot of fun. A couple people got a little excited because they finally got me off my feet and into a wheelchair. After that our program day was officially over and I ended up just doing a bit of souvenir shopping before going back to the hotel.
We got up early on Thursday morning and took a train to Dresden and we had a city tour as soon as we got there. The city was pretty interesting. It was definitely an East Germany city. There are still quite a few differences from the East and West and I think going to Dresden really made us realize that. The crosswalk lights are different in East Germany than they are in the West. We got to see that in parts of Berlin as well but in Dresden it seemed like they were everywhere and they had a bunch of girl ones too.

Then, in the afternoon, we went to the Hygiene Museum. It wasn’t all about brushing your teeth and the importance of showering like you normally think of when someone says hygiene but it had to do with all types of different things associated with the human body and health. There were a bunch of different rooms and each room covered a different topic. One room was all about life and death, another about sexuality, another about beauty, and things like that. They split us up into groups and each group had to present their room to everyone else. I was in the nutrition room. It was definitely a challenge because everything was written in German so I didn’t really have much of an idea about what anything in the room was supposed to be pertaining to. They had a lot of interactive things there so we ended up staying until the museum closed before going to the train station to head back to Berlin.
Friday morning, we got up and took a tour of the History of Medicine Museum in Berlin. Our guide was awesome. I think he liked having a bunch of medical students to lead around because he didn’t really have to sugarcoat anything he said. I think Nils enjoyed it more than the rest of us because he got to sit back and enjoy our facial expressions. After the tour, we had our last lecture inside the museum in what used to be a lecture hall for medical students back in the day. The building was bombed during WWII and they only partially restored it. It was so cool to have our last lecture, on the last day of the program, after a cool tour, in what used to be a lecture hall for medical students, that was partially ruined from WWII bombing. For me, that pretty much summed up the entire trip. It was a good ending.
Then we spent the afternoon at the university where we got to play with some interactive medical teaching dummies. I think the pre-med students enjoyed that a lot more than the vet students really did. It was interesting but I still prefer veterinary medicine a whole lot more. Then we went back to the hotel and had some time to pack and get ready before going out for our farewell dinner.
They took us to a really nice Moroccan restaurant called Kasbah. It was definitely an experience. The inside of the restaurant was so cool looking and the food was really good. I can now say that I’ve had couscous. They washed our hands with rose water before our meal. That was a little different. Wine and lamb couscous is a bit of a jump from beer and BBQ. It was a really great last dinner and a good way to enjoy our last night all together.