Week 3

To quote my journal on Monday “we basically had LOADS of class, which was at least super interesting because it was Dr. Wasser [lecturing], and because the topic was medicine.” I’ve noticed that the longer I’m in Germany the worse my English gets! But it was really interesting, Dr. Wasser lectured about prehistoric medicine and got really excited when he started to explain the growing evidence that interbreeding occurred between Neanderthals and Cro Magnons (early Homo sapiens) indicating that we all most likely have some Neanderthal in us. I mean not gonna lie that’s some pretty exciting stuff =] I found out William Harvey is the Father of Cardiology so basically an all around bad a and I intend to learn more about him. Later we had cultural studies with our program coordinator, Nils where he lectured about German politics. Normally I don’t find politics all that interesting but Nils kept comparing the German system to the American one and I finally realized that my disinterest has resulted in me knowing absolutely nothing about our political system. I never realized how much decision making went on in government, kind of silly I know but before it had always seemed as a kind of one-track road with a specific destination. I enjoyed seeing how another country could take a different path and be their own kind of successful, politics definitely isn’t black and white. After class we went to the Haribo outlet and were literally little kids in a willy wonka wonderland! I stocked up on all of the candy I used to eat when I was younger, I blame my over-indulgence on the sentimental ties! And then we went back to AIB to watch a screening of the movie Goodbye Lenin. It was really good, set in the 90’s after the Berlin wall fell, unknown to a pro-soviet mother who had been in a coma the entire time. Her son didn’t want her to find out and there was a comedic twist to his struggles. Tuesday we took a charter bus to Bacharach, a cute, little town on the Rheine and walked around a little bit before jumping on the Lorelei Rheine river cruise! The weather was exceptionally amazing and sunny and we sat out on the deck, sipping on weiss wein schorles, soaking up the sun like true Germans and enjoying the gorgeous views. It really was something of a fairytale; the river was lined on either side by green rolling hills with castles tucked away every couple of miles, the history and stories of them playing in the background. My favorite story was of two castles situated less than a quarter mile from each other, apparently built by brothers who disliked each other so much they couldn’t live in the same castle. We got off at a different town and ate schnitzel for lunch before talking a short hike up a mountain to a castle. The view was so pretty from up there. And then after- surprise we went wine tasting!! By far one of the most fun things we did, we tried two white wines and three red while and the table quickly became very social and everyone was having a blast. Wednesday we had some class in the morning and then went to die Museum der Deutsch Geschichte, the German History Museum. It appeared deceivingly small and we spent a good few hours in there but learned a lot. I really need to stop being so surprised that Dr. Wasser knows so much about.. so much! He always has colorful facts and details to add to everything we see, it’s somewhat reminiscent of that movie Limitless. Later a group of us went to a Biergarten overlooking the Rheine and just chilled out, the weather had cooled off and our table was situated under these massive trees that must be decades old- whoever said nothing in Germany is younger than 100 years wasn’t kidding. Thursday we had class in the morning about the Nuremburg Doctor Trials. It was a pretty emotional topic to get through for me, I visited Ausschwitz when I was younger and read ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel and have even met a Holocaust survivor but every time I learn a little more about Holocaust it seems to only get worse and the picture in my mind becomes even more terrible and unbelievable. There always comes a point where I just can’t understand how something so horrific ever happened, and to the extent that this did. Although it was hard to get through it was extremely interesting from a medical standpoint and definitely important in medical history. But man, some of the details of what went on in the medical experiments were just so despicable it made me sick to my stomach and I couldn’t bring myself to write it down. Even thinking about it now still makes me sick. But after that we went back to Koeln and this time took a tour off the roof of the Cathedral and it was one of the coolest things I’ve done! Right before we went up it started to storm as if it show us the gothic architecture in it’s element and it was incredible. I have so many pictures of random things on the Cathedral because I just couldn’t get over the fact that I was so close to it all! And then we walked around inside the cathedral but on a walkway up high by the ceiling that went right by all of the huge stain glass windows that had always loomed over me, and now they were eye level! Walking by the newly constructed stain glass window was my favorite because all of the colors were so bright and the light shining through them bounced off of the stone pillars making a starry effect that I could have stared at for hours. Afterward we went to the zoo and took a tour around. There was an Animal Body Worlds exhibit there that was so cool with a huge elephant and a giraffe and guerilla and other animals plasticized to where we could see all of the muscles, veins, nerves and organs. At the same time it was a little morbid that it was located in a zoo but nonetheless very cool. That was our last night in Bonn, my host family made me a nice dinner of steak and barbeque sauce =] and I got to hang out with the girls for a little bit before they went to bed. My host dad had a surprise for me- an Abschieds shot! A farewell shot of Vodka lol. Bonn has been an awesome city and I loved being there for the first three weeks and living with a host family was a blast! I’m excited to see Vienna and Berlin too though, it’s bittersweet but I definitely had a great time here.