Week 2

This week started out with a lecture from Dr. Wasser over the Hohenstaufen Dynasty. It was mostly about religious history involving Martin Luther which I found really interesting because Dr. Wasser managed not to paint him in one color but in many shades. Afterward Elena and I were taken to a radiologist by Sebastian for our german lesson since we already speak some german and it was so much fun, I was surprised by how much I could understand and loved going over case after case of fractures, birth defects and cath lab images. Some of the images of narrowed arteries in the brain were insane; I couldn't believe some of these people were still walking around. And then we went to an Anesthesiology Museum which seemed to contain pretty much every device in the history of anesthesia and was run by an adorable retired anesthesiologist. It was really cool to see the predecessors of all the machines I had seen in the OR earlier this summer, I can’t imagine what they will look like when I’m running my OR. Tuesday we went to Koeln and took a tour through the cathedral and around the city. The cathedral was absolutely breathtaking, the gothic architecture gave it so much stoic character. Our tour guide was incredibly knowledgeable and really made me wish I could see what it looked like when it was originally built, painted with lively and bright colors on the inside instead of the cream walls it has today. We toured some Roman ruins that had only been found five years ago which mean that the last time I had been in the city I had unknowingly been walking right over them, pretty trippy if you ask me. We toured a Holocaust museum that was actually an old Stazi prison. It was pretty creepy, the eeriest part was definitely when we could see into the prison cells and read the inscriptions that had been left by prisoners awaiting their death so many years ago. Some were encouraging, others angry and the worst just completely hopeless. Anything involving the Holocaust is always really interesting to me but at the same time just so unreal. On Wednesday we got to go to a hospital in Bonn and shadow doctors! I saw a radial fracture repair, a soleus muscle biopsy and the beginning of a nucleotomy, the repair of a herniated disk. The doctor I shadowed was really funny and so willing to answer any questions, it was definitely one of my favorite trips. That night we went to the women’s world cup game USA vs France! I think the win was ever so slightly due to our incredibly spirit that we showed by painting ourselves red, white and blue. On Thursday we had a really long but incredibly interesting lecture over the Holocaust- as eerily fascinating as ever. More specifically it was about the Nazi Euthanasia Programs. The whole lecture I had a slightly sick feeling coming on, some of the things that Dr. Wasser talked about were just so unbelievably terrible. Afterward we took a tour around a homeopathic garden which was really a lot of fun. I had never really heard much about this kind of alternative medicine and I wish we could have learned a little more of the theory behind it, but I really like the whole natural-ness of it all. Friday we took a bus to the Aerospace Museum of Europe which turned out to be a lot cooler than I expected. All of the astronauts up at the space station are from all around the world but the funny part is that they each generally live in parts of the space station that were manufactured by their country. Afterward we visited a palace nearby that was absolutely gorgeous. The decorations were so over the top and fairytale like. And that was the end of week two! A lot of things in our schedule but all of them worth the time and a great learning experience.