Days 9-11 Last Days in Berlin

On Wednesday, we spent the day at the Charité. First we visited the skills training center which is completely run by students. I don’t know how they have time to teach classes AND be a medical student, since either would be enough to keep someone busy. We learned how to listen to chest sounds, saw models of the brain, leg and ear and my favorite: how to suture and intubate. In the afternoon we went to the museum where we learned more about the history of medicine. We saw old surgery tools that barbers used to perform procedures and learned about specific cases and their corresponding tools and procedures. At the end of the exhibit were the specimens, some of them collected by Virchow. This was definitely exciting since I’ll be spending over four years studying these organs and diseases. And that night, I tried currywurst for the first time! It was absolutely delicious and easily now one of my favorite foods.

Thursday, we went to the Sachsenhausen prison camp. This was one of the most interesting excursions so far. The conditions the prisoners were in and the medical experiments performed on them are still unimaginable. What people can claim in the name in the name of a better society is completely shocking. And what people aren’t willing to do, for example the Red Cross not attempting to discontinue the Nazi’s deeds. One of my favorite parts of the camp was in one of the museums. There were quotes from different years, and once the Soviets rescued the camp, there was a definitive difference in the moods and attitudes of the speakers. That afternoon, visited the Otto Bock Science Center. This was a nice contrast to the morning. There were game-like displays so that we could see the effects of different prosthetics and the different motions that they attempt to simulate with their technology. The Michelangelo Hand was really amazing. The motions of a human hand are so intricate, for a machine to do almost the same things is mind-boggling.

Friday, we had a tour of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine. We learned about Max Delbrück and his influence on Schrödinger and Watson and Crick. We also saw the 7 Tesla MRI machine which was an interesting experience. Almost everything metal started moving towards the scanner, including earrings and bobby pins. Later, we learned about the chemical biology research and saw some of the microscopes and the robots used for the plates with hundreds of wells. That would definitely make pipetting much easier.