Sunday, September 11, 2011

Munich, Part Zwei

[July 31] Having done very little in Munich last week, I took a train back there on Friday evening. As usual, it took me nearly an hour to find the place I’d booked to leave my things, and still I headed out to meet a friend at midnight, when nothing was open. But with a bit of optimism, it can be an adventure in itself to search the city at night to find a place to sit!

I slept later than I had in weeks, then walked the English Gardens all day. That evening I took a brewery tour and met an amusing assortment of people from all over the world; if I were to do it all over again, I would definitely take more of those tours and meet more of those people. On Sunday I found another coffee shop and wrote most of the entries you’ll see below, as well as a bit of personal writing.

I cannot believe it has been four weeks. I’m sure all of the other posts around me share similar sentiments, but maybe it bears repeating. These days have gone by so fast, I don’t know what to do with myself. All I know is I haven’t nearly seen as much as I would like. It’s really impossible, even with a month to do it in. I’ll just have to come back and tour the country again, I guess, when I’m rich and have another month to spare.

Coffee Shop Corners

[July 30] Vienna, though it was not entirely deprived of the reach of the Nazis and subsequent cultural angst, seems a lot more composed than the German cities in my experience. It is classic, conservative, and beautiful, despite the amount of construction it had to undergo while we were there. We took two tours of it, saw all of the large buildings and unique architecture as well as the tucked-away alleys where the greatest medical minds once walked.

Possibly the most interesting lecture to date was the one on Sigmund Freud. I haven’t studied psychology at all, and I was looking forward to at least becoming acquainted with the classic terms used in essays and conversation alike. It definitely lived up to my expectations, and the tour of his life history in his old home and office was similarly enlightening. That evening we went to the opera; later review saw a lot of different opinions on it, but I thought it was alright. Certainly entertaining, but not my favorite to date. The atmosphere—the outdoors, the people, the novelty—was more worthwhile than the performance itself.

Maybe because we have all been taking it easy after so many weeks of fast-paced tourism, half of the week’s afternoons left us free to see Vienna as we pleased. I did a bit of wandering and souvenir shopping and I feel like I know the streets of Vienna’s downtown better than I ever knew Bonn. I especially loved the coffee shops, where a goblet of half-cream latte came with an overpriced and infinitely rich slice of cake. This city is the kind of main attraction where a person should spend more than four days, just seeing and eating!

Take It Easy

[July 25] This was my first time travelling on the weekends with other people; while it was certainly more fun than being alone, the downside is inevitably the amount of time it takes to come to a compromise about the day’s events. After a Friday spent catching up on sleep at a comfortable Holiday Inn, Saturday was a long stroll through the Munich Zoo. While generally the same as the one in Cologne, it seemed a lot more fluid and natural. Each of the exhibits (at least the terrestrial ones) sort of blended with each other and the path. You had to look for the seam between the people and the other animals. There was even a sort of outcast medley of peculiar looking animals that didn’t seem to have any relationship to each other, but that in itself made the enclosure the most endearing.

We ended the day with a night at the HofbrÀuhaus, but not before walking around the city. Munich, the capital of the American sector when Germany was split in quarters, is a city of boisterous pride and liter-large mugs. It was a feat to find your way to the most famous brewery in the country; after all the twists and turns you really felt like you accomplished something. And though it is still perfect place to buy a stein or some lederhosen, its people were surprisingly down to earth. You have to be, to find patience with the throngs of tourists that consume the city, come October.

The following morning I departed for Salzburg. There I took a four-hour tour of all things Sound of Music with another group of students. Among other things, we saw the trees where the curtain-clad children greeted their appalled captain-father, the gazebo where Rolf and Liesl danced, and the church where Maria got married. It was nice to be able to watch the countryside and learn something new while in the comfort of a bus seat, since I feel like I have spent the last two weeks constantly walking. I might be biased because of the tour, but this city seemed to me to have achieved a level of quaint modesty that most large cities outgrow. We had Melange at a warm coffee house, then walked around until dusk over close buildings and cobblestones. I bought a scarf.

This weekend taught me the the good it can do to take it easy on such a long trip. While it may be important to see a lot of history and experience the culture with whatever time we have here, it shouldn’t be at the expense of your health and comfort. I had fun this weekend and honestly, I didn’t do much. Sometimes the best way to have a good time is to take your time.

History + Wildlife

[July 22] Following the making of some hasty weekend plans after Monday’s class, I was taken by an AIB coordinator to the UN headquarters in Bonn to learn about the logistics of international migratory bird laws. We spoke on the topmost floor of the building, with a breathtaking floor-to-ceiling view of the Rhine; if you have any excuse to somehow get into the UN in Bonn... do it.

The Convention for Migratory Species meets annually to discuss the funding of conservation projects in countries all over Europe and Africa. Proposals are submitted by participating countries (mainly requests that other countries take certain measures to protect a specific species from hunting, pollution, or other human threats) and voted on by the others. While this project does eventually get a lot of legislation passed, it cannot make any of its ruling mandatory, due to the fragility of many nations’ economies.

The next day was spent mostly on the Rhine. A tiring trek through Bacharach’s wine country was a small price to pay for a few long hours relaxing on a boat. We saw Lorelei Rock, responsible for many a shipwreck at a particularly sharp bend in the river, and countless castles that sent everyone running to one side of the boat with their cameras in the air. We disembarked to tour Marksburg castle and learn about the dreary lives of old lords. Some of the doors were remarkably short, but none of them were too short for me! The day ended with a (rather educational) wine-tasting at Mayschoss and a more than entertaining bus ride back to Bonn.

This week seemed to be a lot more class than usual, with the break of a cruise stuck somewhere in the middle. Between movies/documentaries about Berlin’s recent history and lectures about the country’s last century, we visited the Haus der Geschichte, a modern history museum. We went through twice; once with a tour guide, and another time so that Dr. Wasser could include the interesting parts that the guide... forgot.

The day before we departed from Bonn, we went on a long-awaited trip to the Cologne Zoo, where they have ditches to keep animals in their places instead of bars. I thought it was kind of amusing that they kept raccoons on display, but my favorite were the elephants and their babies. Their enclosure took up ten percent of the whole park, and it was both natural-looking and aesthetically original. Then I slept my last night at the Nipkow Family Residence and headed to Munich in the morning with a ton of gift-snacks at the top of my bag.

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

Nothing will stand in my way of getting to Paris!!!!

It only took 8 hours and 6 different trains, but we made it to Paris! I definitely learned my lesson that you need to book trains in advance instead of waiting until the night before you are suppose to leave. Out of the 15 people that were originally suppose to be going to Paris, only 8 of us made it. Once we made it on the first train we were fortunate enough not to have any delays on the next five trains. On the fourth train that we road on we met two guys from Norway. Their names were Peter and Karl. They were a blast! I think they were the only other people in Europe that were crazy enough to take such a roundabout way of getting to Paris like us. We did not arrive into the train station in Paris until nearly midnight and we all went to our hotels and got some sleep.

Some of my favorite things in Paris:

Arc de Triomphe

Notre Dame

Eiffle Tower
One of my other favorite things about Paris was the food!! I think i probably ate about five crepes during my weekend in Paris. It was probably so unhealthy but I really did not care about that at the time. Someone should really think about opening a crepe place in College Station. I would spend all of my time there! I also loved the shopping!!! Although I could not afford anything from the majority of the stores that we saw, I was perfectly content with just walking through them. Paris was probably my favorite free weekend! Drew's cousin lives in Paris so it was really neat to be shown around by a local. We were able to see a lot of things that we otherwise would not have seen.

Monday, September 05, 2011

So this is a beautiful palace but we have to GO!!!

Our second week began a lot like the first. Monday we had class in the morning and then visited the Museum of Anesthesiology in the afternoon. The museum was very interesting but I think I would have enjoyed it a little more had it not been 100 degrees in the building. On Tuesday we made our first trip by train to Cologne! The first thing that I saw when I exited the train station was the huge structure of the Cologne Cathedral towering over everything else in the city. It was magnificent!! I had seen pictures of the cathedral online but that was nothing compared to seeing it in person.
The first thing on our agenda for the day was a walking city tour. I could tell immediately that Cologne was much larger and more populated than Bonn. After our city tour it was lunch time. I grabbed food at a bakery. I think that bakeries became one of my new favorite things since I arrived in Germany. Bakeries were on every corner; it was like Starbucks in the states. Next stop after lunch was the Elde Haus. The Elde Haus is the former headquarters of the secret police, the Gestapo, and now a museum documenting the Third Reich. Walking through the lowest level of the building where all of the prison cells were was kind of unsettling. There is still to this day writing on the walls from prisoners who were kept in the cells during World War II.

After the Elde Haus tour we had free time for shopping. Drew and I looked all over for a wine store to buy ice wine. We finally found one that was owned by an older couple that helped us out immensely. The wife lead us right to the section of the store where the ice wine was and gave us recommendations on which ones she thought were the best. I bought one bottle and Drew bought two bottles and then we were on our way to meet the others by the Cologne Cathedral. We were suppose to have a rooftop tour at 5:45 but our tour guide never showed so instead we just headed back to Bonn and called it a day.
Wednesday was our day to go to the University Clinics in Bonn to observe surgeries. In my OR room there was Michelle, Josh, Matt, Carrie, and I. We were lucky enough to observe a spinal disk fusion surgery. I had only ever seen surgery done on animals up to this point so I was a little worried that I may get dizzy or even sick when I saw a human surgery. Luckily neither of these things happened. I rather enjoyed the surgery and wanted to get as close as I possibly could to see what was going on. I don’t know if I could ever by a surgeon. I was tired after being in surgery for only four hours; I cannot imagine how I would feel after an eight hour or even longer surgery.
Wednesday night we had the opportunity to go to the Women’s World Cup Soccer game against France. I had never been to a professional sports game before, especially one in another country. The game was a lot of fun! We won 3 to1!! It was cold and kind of drizzly throughout the entire game but I did not let that stop me from enjoying the game. When we won everyone in our group went crazy and no one could settle down for the bus ride back to Bonn.
Friday morning we took a bus to the DLR Institute for Aerospace Medicine. We were shown a scaled down model of the International Space Station and our tour guide explained everything about it. We also got to see where the astronauts train before being allowed to go into space. Friday afternoon we went to Schloss Bruhl. It was a gorgeous palace; more beautiful than anything I had ever seen. Our tour started at 2:00 p.m. and it was really hard for me to pay attention to the tour guide because all I could think about was catching our train to Paris. There were only eight of us left out of the original 15 people that were going to Paris. The train that we needed to catch from the train station in Bruhl left at 3:07 p.m. and our tour was not supposed to end until 3:00 p.m. Nil’s spoke to the tour guide before the tour and asked if there was any way possible for her to speed the tour up a little bit so that those of us going to Paris could catch our train. During the tour, those of us going to Paris kept staring at our watches and when the tour ended we all sprinted as quickly as we could down the long entrance into the palace to the bus to grab our bags we had already packed for the weekend. Then we all sprinted to our platform at the train station and made it there two minutes before our train left. Whoop… we were off to Paris!!!

Amsterdam here I come!!!


We arrived in Amsterdam around midnight Friday July 10th. When we walked out of the train station I was amazed with what I saw. There were people everywhere and the very distinct smell of marijuana. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. Matt, Elyzabeth, Kaitlyn, and I were rooming together for the weekend in Amsterdam. The bad part about arriving in the middle of the night in a strange new city is that we had no idea how to get to our hotel. Let alone the fact that this was our first weekend in Europe on our own and none of us were use to taking buses and trams anywhere. The hotel had given us the bus number for the bus that we could take to the hotel but our bus never came. So we waited and waited and finally figured out that maybe the buses weren’t running this late at night so we settled on taking a tram. Now the trick was figuring out which tram to take. We wondered around until we finally found a map and we looked up where our hotel was and found the tram we needed to take. When we finally arrived at our hotel about 30 minutes later we were all exhausted and pretty proud of ourselves for figuring our way around a new city on our own.

Saturday morning we all woke up and met the other groups downtown by the train station. First thing we did was go on a canal cruise. The canals were beautiful. They explained on our tour that there are approximately 2,500 houseboats that line the canals of Amsterdam. The tour guide also said that the government has put restrictions on the number of house boats so that no more may be brought into the canals. Nowadays if you want to live on a houseboat in Amsterdam, that is if you can afford it, you either have to wait for someone to move or sell theirs. After the canal tour a few other students and I had lunch at a bakery downtown and then walked around and shopped for awhile. Saturday afternoon we all took a nap in the huge park by the Van Gogh Museum. We definitely do not have grass in Texas like they did in this park. It was so soft and green. Once we were all done napping and decided to get our butts up we took a tour of the Anne Frank House. By the time we were done with the Anne Frank House it was about 7:00 p.m. and we were all getting pretty hungry. We made our way to a little pancake house for dinner. I ordered a strawberry and whipped cream waffle. It was possibly the best waffle I have ever had!

Sunday morning everyone woke up and met downtown again. Our first stop of the day was the Van Gogh Museum. We tried doing the Van Gogh Museum on Saturday but we ran out of time. I really enjoyed walking around the museum. I spent about two hours walking around and looking at all the beautiful art work. After the museum we all walked around downtown again and shopped until it was time for us to take our train back to Bonn. Overall I have to say that Amsterdam was a very pretty city and different from anywhere I have ever been before. I really liked all of the canals and the houseboats lining the canals. Amsterdam was not my favorite city that I visited on the trip though. I really did not like walking around and having to constantly smell the lingering scent of marijuana. I also did not like all of the advertisements and stores related to sex or the smell of urine that was very apparent in parts of the city. I am glad that I was able to spend one of my free weekends in Amsterdam and experience the city but I do not foresee myself returning there in the future.