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.
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!!!
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