Week 5 - Berlin

Monday we took a long and early train from Prague to Berlin. Once we arrived and checked into the Hotel Alex, the first activity was a Fat Tire bike tour of Berlin. It was so fun to be able to explore a city by bike for a change! Plus the bikes were super comfortable, which was necessary since it took four hours! We saw a lot of interesting buildings and monuments. Our awesome guide would lead us through the streets for a few minutes then stop at important places and talk about their history and significance. We saw the television tower, Checkpoint Charlie (the famous Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War), the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (2,711 concrete slabs arranged on a slope; open to interpretation), and tons of interesting and beautiful buildings.
The only down side was that it rained the entire time. Hard. Twice we had to take shelter but most of the time we just kept going. It made it more exciting!




Afterwards, a few of us ate dinner at an asian restaurant next door to the hotel and then went to bed.
Tuesday we started off the morning by going to a concentration camp outside of Berlin. Sachsenhausen was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May, 1945. We saw "Tower A", which is where the prisoners were brought in and which held a gate that read "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Sets You Free), like Dachau also did. We also saw the "neutrale zone" which was a strip of land just before the barbed wire fences. If a prisoner were to set one foot in that area, he would be shot. Many used this as a means of suicide. We learned a little about Georg Elser who is known for his failed attempt to assassinate Hitler. Finally, we toured "Station Z" which was the crematorium. Some 30,000 inmates died at Sachsenhausen from exhaustion, disease, malnutrition or pneumonia from the freezing winter cold. Many were executed or died as the result of brutal medical experimentation. The experience was extremely eye-opening and provided an interesting compare and contrast opportunity to Dachau which I visited a few weeks ago. I plan on visiting Auschwitz at some point in my lifetime.
After lunch (currywurst), we had a guided tour of the German Parliament.

Wednesday we went to the Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine. First we had an introduction lecture by Dr. Luft (from San Antonio!) and then we split up into groups. I saw toured the Ultrahigh-Field Magnetic Resonance Facility and got to see imaging machines of 3, 7, and 9.4 T. We even got to play with a sheet of aluminum in the magnetic field. Next we heard a little about research being done there over neutrophil biology in health and diseases. After this we had lunch at their cafeteria.
Next we visited the Otto Bock Science Center. The Otto Bock Corporation has been responsible for several innovations in prosthetics, including the pyramid adapter (a highly adjustable linkage for prosthetic parts) and the C-Leg, a computerized knee that adaptively varies its passive resistance to suit the patients' different walking gaits. This was one of the coolest museums I've been to because there were a lot of interactive displays to show how their prosthetics work.
After that we had some free time so a few of us took a walk to the East Side Gallery on the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall East Side Gallery is a 1.3km-long section of the wall near the center of Berlin. Approximately 106 paintings by artists from all over the world cover this memorial for freedom and make it the largest open air gallery in the world. It was interesting to see and appreciate the different kinds of art.

Thursday we spent the day in Dresden. First we had a walking tour of the city, where we saw the Dresden Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) and several other interesting buildings. I had lunch at a cafe and then we headed to the Deutsches Hygiene Museum. The museum's permanent features are the exhibition "Human Adventure" (Abenteuer Mensch), covering the human race, the body, and health in its cultural and social contexts, and a children's museum of the senses. We also saw the temporary exhibition on the mind and brain. It was an extremely interactive and well set up museum and probably one of my favorite museums. There was this cool "relaxation game" where two people sat and a computer measured their brain waves to see who was more relaxed. There was a magnetic field and a ball that rolled towards the loser. Needless to say, we had many competitions with each other.

Friday we spent the day at the Charite Museum and Center. First we toured the museum which was essentially the history of medicine. It had really interesting specimens and an especially enthusiastic tour guide. We also recieved a lecture from Dr. Wasser over the museum's founder. Next we went to the center's training facility for their medical students. We got to practice suturing, intubating, looking in the ears, and listening to heart and breathing sounds.
Later that night we had our farewell dinner at a Moroccan restaurant. The food was delicious, the company was amazing, and I will certainly miss everyone I met here. Most of the students, fortunately, are in my major and will definitely become new friends over the next few years of classes.

More than anything right now, I cannot believe how fast this program went by. I went into this thinking five weeks was entirely too long to be away from home and surely I'd be wanting to come back - but neither of these are true. I wish I had booked more days to stay but my plane leaves in two days!