Traveling at the Speed of Light

250 kilometers per hour.  That's how fast our ICE train was traveling between Berlin and Bonn. 155 mph, for those of us with Imperial minds, is pretty fast, but life the previous week felt like it was speeding by at a rate closer to 671 million mph, or 1080 million km/h, otherwise known as the speed of light.

Monday began in Munich, but ended in Vienna. Then, before I knew it, Friday was there and I was leaving for Prague. Now it’s Monday again, and I’m in Bonn. My host mother and father told me, separately, today that they’d never had a group do as much traveling as ours, and they’ve been hosting students for over fifteen years.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to travel and get to see new places, but sometimes it’s nice to be back in a familiar place where I can just relax. I honestly didn’t realize this until the train ride from Prague back to Germany. Olivia and Dr. Wasser had both previously told the group we’d be thrilled to be back in Bonn after nine days away, but I wasn’t entirely sure I believed them. Sure, I’d liked the week I’d spent here before leaving, but I didn’t really feel too attached. Oh, was I wrong. Even arriving in Berlin and seeing German advertisements rather than ones in Czech was comforting. However, nothing compared to stepping off the train in the Bonn Hauptbahnhof and knowing exactly where I was and how to get “home.”

That was the first time I’d thought of my room in Bonn as home. Before, it’d just been “my host family’s house” or “where I’m staying.” Now though, it’s a place where I can just slow down, look back, and let my mind catch up with my life.

My time spent in Vienna was without a doubt magnificent, amazing, and thoroughly enjoyable. Whether I was touring the Medical University or walking through the catacombs below Stephan’s Dom, I was blissfully happy. The food was great, the history museum awe-inspiring in its detail, the Freud museum fascinating, the Belvedere beautiful, the Josephenum incredible, and the Natural History Museum too grand for words. The highlight for me though, was the Spanish Riding School, or Spanisch Hofreitschule, where I got to spend an hour watching beautiful Lipizzaner horses perform, play, and have fun. Even then though, when I was having the time of my life, that hour felt like a minute.

Five hours after the too-soon departure from Vienna, I arrived in Prague and hit the brick wall known as a language barrier. Before traveling to Germany, I’d had some practice with the German language, so I knew what I was looking at or hearing, and could maybe understand a little of it. But even though I grew up in a small Czech town, the only phrase I know (Jak se mas?) was of no help whatsoever. The Czech words are also so different from the English variations that inference of meaning is nearly impossible. Thankfully, the hostel in which I and the rest of the group were staying was incredibly helpful with directions, recommendations, and an overall just plain friendly attitude…In English. For the rest of the weekend, I and the group didn’t stray far from Sir Toby’s unless on a trip led by one of the staff members. Those trips led us to mostly tourist areas where English was much more common, and we managed to get by and enjoy ourselves immensely.

Sunday brought with it another day of travel, and for the first time in over a week, time seemed to slow back down. Perhaps ten hours of train travel always does that. No matter what, I welcomed my return to Bonn with open arms.

~Daily Blogs Posted Below Break~

Monday, July 16, 2012

Today began bright and early to catch the train to Vienna, because none of us wanted a repeat of yesterday where we almost missed the train. This morning though, we made it with plenty of time to spare and we all were able to get breakfast. I had a delicious vanilla croissant filled with cream similar to that in an éclair.

The train rise itself was mildly comfortably, although the seating was somewhat confusing because of the seat numbering system.  While I did sleep for some of the trip, I did see much of the beautiful German and Austrian countryside, and many adorable villages. The highlight, though, was the trip through Salzburg. The Sound of Music is one of my all-time favorite movies, so seeing the city in which it is based was thrilling. I may or may not have started watching the movie on my phone when I realized where we were...

A few hours later we arrived safely in Vienna, and, with only one wrong turn, managed to make it to our hotel for the week. We dropped off our bags and then headed back out to find some lunch.We decided to eat at a lovely Italian restaurant with delicious pizza. After lunch we stopped at the chocolate shop we'd passed by, and, after much deliberation, almost everyone got some of the delicious chocolate chips, balls, or marshmallows.

We started to walk around the city some more after we all had enough food, but unfortunately it began raining so we all went back to the hotel lobby where we proceeded to play cards until we were given Internet access. Then it was just a short wait for Olivia and Dr. Wasser before we were actually able to check in to our rooms.For dinner we went to a lovely Viennese restaurant where they had huge, delicious wiener schnitzel. Thanks to Olivia and the AIB for buying dinner and drinks and to Dr. Wasser for the dessert!

After dinner I had a lovely walk back to the hotel with Olivia and Dr. Wasser while the others took the tram. Then, some of the group went out to meet a friend at a live-broadcast concert while others decided to stay at the hotel...I actually posted my first blog in that time. Now I'm heading to bead so I can be well-rested for the large amount of walking on the schedule tomorrow.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

This morning started with a lovely (free!) breakfast at the hotel followed by an interesting medical tour of Vienna led by Dr. Wasser. He led us around the city, stopping at former homes of famous Viennese doctors, like Paracelsus and Auenbrugger, or other buildings, including the Vienna Academy of Science where we were able to go inside and see a beautiful room where they hold special events. The entire ceiling was a beautiful mural, and there were beautiful stone figures and an intricate crown molding. There was also a room with busts of many of the important school presidents.

We also saw many statues on the tour, like Gutenberg, Maria Teresa, and a memorial for WWII victims. Another highlight was when we walked by the Spanish Riding School (Spanische Hopfreitschule), they were exercising two of the Lipizzaners in harnesses and we got to take lots of cool pictures.

Just before the end of the tour, we came to Cafe Demel where we stopped for coffee, or tea or hot chocolate, and a sweet dessert. All the food and drink was delicious, and even though we each had only one small dessert, we were stuffed.

We ended the tour at Stephen’s Dom where we all split up for lunch, or to go shopping as the case may be. Some of the stores visited were Zara, H&M, Swarovski, and a gift shop run by a very nice Cameroonian woman.

We met together again by the cathedral and then walked to the Vienna history museum. We were given a tour through the development of Vienna over the past almost 2000 years. There were incredibly detailed models of the city throughout the years, so we could see how the design and wall placement changed from the time of the Romans until Maria Teresa had it torn down. There were also spectacular paintings of the city and battles like the Turkish sieges. Also displayed were some of the original statues from Stephen's Dom that were replaced by copies so the originals wouldn't be damaged by acid rain.

From the museum we headed back to the cathedral for a tour of the catacombs. We had our own private tour guide, so it felt almost like we were VIPs as we passed the group waiting for their guide. In the catacombs we saw the coffins of some of Vienna's arch bishops and the room for the dukes and rich along with urns filled with alcohol and their internal organs, removed during the embalming process. We also saw the casket of an unknown Roman found during the excavations. There was also the "house of bones," a room where prisoners had to stack the bones of the long deceased tightly against the walls to make room for more dead in the other burial chambers. Then there was a room where the victims of the black plague were literally tossed because it was too dangerous to handle the remains of the infected. The whole experience was rather creepy because much of the catacombs were barely lit, but it was extremely cool.

After our "school" day was through, we split up again. My group went to various gift shops around the city center. After about 5 shops I finally found a purple bag that says Vienna so I can carry all my other souvenirs. Then we found food to-go and took the subway back to the hotel to eat and relax before some headed out to a club while others, like me, stayed at the hotel to rest. I spent much of my time figuring out the best way to get to the Spanish Riding School and buying tickets for the performance tomorrow. I can't wait!

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Today was our free morning, so we got to sleep in (yay!). We were all planning on leading at different times to do different things, but somehow we all ended up at the hotel breakfast at the same time. Afterwards we split into groups to visit different attractions for the rest of our morning. Most people headed to the famous huge ferris wheel. Mikaela and I, though, went to the Spanish Riding School.

The how this morning was called "Piber Meets Vienna" and involved the Lipizzaners usually kept at the stud in Piber. The first part of the performance was a pas de deux by two single horse carriages. The Lipizzaner gelding pulling the 1800s style carriages were wearing period collared harnesses and driven by men in traditional clothing.

Next they brought out six 3-year-old stallions, fresh from the pastures at Piber, and turned them loose. The horses ran around and play-fought with each other; trainers cracked whips at them, never touching them, to keep the boys moving. Near the beginning of their free time, one of the horses defecated, so at some point, every other one had to "dominate dung," a source of laughter for the crowd.

The third act was another pas de deux, but this time one of the carriages was pulled by a pair. They again performed intricate mirror-image patterns to beautiful classical music.

The penultimate performance seemed to be the crowd's favorite. Six mare and foal pairs were released into the gorgeous riding hall. The foals were only a few weeks old, so most stuck close to their mothers at first, but eventually gained the courage to explore on their own or with their young playmates. The mares were very sweet and intelligent--the first row of the audience were able to give them sugar cubes, and the mares kept returning to search for more tidbits while their foals continues to romp and play.

The final performance was the imperial quadrille. Two mares under saddle led a pair pulling a carriage. Sometimes they would lead or follow together, but at others they would split up only to pair up again on the other side of the carriage. It was a very awesome experience.

After spending way too much time and money in the gift shop, Mikaela and I grabbed pizza to-go for lunch before returning to the hotel. Eventually, everyone else returned as well, and we all left with Olivia and Dr. Wasser to walk to the Freud Museum.

The museum is actually in the apartment Freud lived and practiced in for nearly 50 years. In the basement-turned-lecture-hall, we were given a lecture on Freud's life by Dr. Wasser. We learned much about his personal life; like that he almost always split with his colleagues and friends, nearly always smokes cigars, and died of jaw cancer.

After the lecture we walked around the museum, Dr. Wasser describing what we were seeing, and more people following again. We saw the waiting room where Freud's patients would await their appointments while observing the many historical knickknacks Frued liked to collect. We also saw the room where patients would lie on the famous couch and talk while Freud sat behind them and listened. Unfortunately, the original couch is in a museum in London, where Freud spent the last year of his life, but there was an artistic representation of it in one of the other rooms. We were allowed to sit on it, but since it was made of metal, it was rather uncomfortable.

After we were done with the tour, we again headed back to the hotel where we took a 30 minute break before heading out again, this time minus Dr. Wasser. We first went to the belvedere where they had on display hundreds of paintings from the medieval period to baroque to impressionist to realist styles. The main attraction was a collection of Klimt works, headlined by "the Kiss." My favorite piece, though, was  Jacques-Louis David’s "Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul, crossing the Alps at Great St. Bernard Pass" because I see a much smaller print of it every time I walk out the front door of my home.

After walking around the palace looking at pictures, we took some of our own outside before heading to dinner. We ate Italian food again, but I'm not complaining--it was delicious. Then we walked around a while looking for a gelato place. Eventually we found one and Olivia was very kind and bought us all two scoops.
Then we walked some more looking for "Sand in the City." Finally, after 40 minutes and a phone call to Alexis's dad, we found it. We stayed about half an hour, some people buying drinks while others just enjoyed the atmosphere. We headed back to the hotel around 11:45 to get some rest before our day at Vienna's medical university.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

This morning we had to get up earlier so we could make it to the Medical University of Vienna (Med Uni Wein) by 9:30. The hotel breakfast was wonderful as usual, and we all made it on time.
When we got to the university/teaching hospital, our first stop was a lecture by Dr. Marz about the differences between medical schools in the US and those in Europe, specifically those in Austria. Here, most students enter medical school at 18, fresh out of the gymnasium instead of completing four years or undergrad work like in the US.

Also, there is only one way to get into the med school in Vienna--make one of the 740 highest scores on the skills exam; no experience or letters of recommendation necessary. It's not even necessary to make good grades in the gymnasium, although in the Netherlands, where med school entrance is based on a lottery, better grades gets you more tickets.

The teaching style is also different. Instead of teaching the basic sciences and later the clinical applications, the Med Uni Wein takes an integrated approach so that all knowledge is taught along with its application.
After the lecture we walked to the pathological museum in the old psychiatric hospital at the university. We walked all around the second, circular floor looking at wet specimens, wax models, real bones, and even one stuffed specimen. We saw all sorts of things, like lungs infected by  tuberculosis, skeletons of Siamese twins, and models of skin diseases and cancers.

Right after looking at all the cool dead things, we ate lunch at a restaurant near the university. I had a kid's schnitzel, and I actually finished it! Usually the meals are so large I can't come close to cleaning my plate.
Our next stop was the Josephenum where they had on display important medical inventions created there, like instruments for ocular operations, and a huge collection of wax anatomical models. All of these models were used to teach students studying medicine in the late 1800s. Most were models of normal, healthy people, but there were some obstetric models showing problems that can occur during birth and how to resolve them.

Our final stop was the main building of the regular, not medical, university. In the middle of the gorgeous building, there was a courtyard with busts of famous professors and leaders along each wall.
Afterwards, we returned to the hotel for some rest before getting ready for the farewell dinner and concert. I actually ended up taking a 20 minute nap before getting all dressed up for our evening out.
The dinner together was very nice, and made better by the fact that AIB was paying. However, there was one incident where food ended up on someone's dress clothes...Not mine, really!

The concert was held in Karlskirche Wein, a beautiful old church with gold and marble everywhere. The program consisted of selections from pieces by Mozart, including a soprano singer, and Beethoven's Symphony Number 5. The music was wonderful, and I think they were playing period instruments, making the experience all the more special.

After the concert we walked to a cafe where Dr. Wasser kindly bought us coffee and desserts. Finally, we returned to the hotel to pack our bags for the trip to Prague tomorrow.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Today began with our last hours on Vienna. After rushing to get packed and get ready, we headed downstairs for our last Deutschmeister breakfast. After eating and storing our bags in the shed behind the hotel, we left for the Vienna natural history museum.

The Naturhistorisches Museum Wien was in an incredibly gorgeous building, actually originally intended to be a museum when it was built in the 1800s under orders from Emperor  Franz Joseph I. It consists of many departments including mineralogy, geology, archeology, anthropology, and others. The most well-known object in the museum is the Venus of Willendorf, a 25,000 year old sandstone sculpture of a woman with exaggerated feministic qualities. There were also many other interesting exhibits like a flower bouquet made with silk and precious stones, a large meteorite from Mars, and hall after hall of animals stuffed for display. There were canines, felines, bears, hooves animals, reptiles, birds, and more. Another of the fascinating objects on display was the most complete skeleton of the Steller sea cow, extinct since the late 1800s.

After too short a time at the museum, we went back to the hotel to pick up our bags before heading to the subway so we could get to the station for out train to Prague. We said goodbye to Olivia and Dr. Wasser on the way when they left to catch their flight back to Bonn.

We got to the train station almost 2 hours early, so we had plenty of time to find lunch and then wait for the train. It actually didn't arrive until less than five minutes until its departure time, so after waiting for a good chunk of time, we had to run to find our seats.We all made it though, and the 5-hour trip to Prague was fairly pleasant. We had two compartments to ourselves, so we all had plenty of room. The seats also reclined for increased comfort.

We arrived at the Prague train station on time, and after withdrawing Crowner from the ATM, we bought public transportation tickets and found the subway we needed for the first leg of our trek to Sir Toby's. The tram we needed for the second leg of the trip was only 1 car long he first time it came, so we waited for the next and made it to the hostel without problems.

The man who greeted us at there was incredibly welcoming, telling us about many of the events happening near the hostel, giving us a map of the city and pointing things out on it, and offering us vouchers for free or discounted things.

We spent the early evening at the hostel, enjoying their free BBQ and relaxing in the bar and lounge in the basement. There we met people from California and Melbourne, Australia, and four of the group joined them for a night out.The rest of us stayed downstairs a while longer, even playing a quick game of Janga before heading upstairs to our room to get ready for bed and watch the Phantom of the Opera.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Today was our only full day in Prague, so we did as much as we could. We started with breakfast at Sir Toby's, a buffet where you could make your own omelets and pancakes that also included most of the staple European breakfast dishes like musli, bread, meat, cheese, jams, coffee, tea, and more.

Directly after breakfast we gathered for the free walking tour offered by the same company we used in Munich. We took a tram across the river to the old city, specifically the republic square. From there we ventured all around the city for the next three hours viewing many of the important and famous landmarks like the astronomical clock and Charles Bridge learning some of Prague's history along the way.

After the tour we ate lunch in a little restaurant serving traditional Czech food, and then split up to either go souvenir shopping or see the incredibly palace at the highest point within the city.

Eventually we all made it to the castle and met behind the beautiful gothic church at a site with an amazing view of the city below. We then headed back to the hostel for dinner and to get ready for the bar hop that evening.

Dinner for some was Chinese food from the restaurant down the street from Sir Toby's, while for others it was mainly junk food bought from the grocery store down the street the other way. I went for the grocery store option and ended up with strawberries and cream cheese, pretzels, and a Kit-Kat.  Maybe it wasn't the healthiest dinner, but I was happy.

After dinner and a change of clothes, we went with a guide to the first stop of the bar crawl—another, larger hostel. I never drink alcohol, so I'm not really sure why I went, but they were showing Olympic stadium jumping on the TV screens there, so I was happy.

After an hour in that bar, we headed out to the next, but Alexis and I bailed out and took a cab back to Sir Toby's to sleep. We knew the last stop on the crawl started at 2AM, and we didn't want to stick around that long so we could actually get some rest tonight. It's about 1AM now, so I have no idea when they'll be back, I just hope everyone makes it back safely.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Today was the day of the great train ride. And by great, I mean long, not awesome, although it wasn't terrible either.

We left the hostel around 11 o’clock this morning to make our 12:30 train back to Bonn at the main station. And by “we” I do mean all 10 of us, so everyone did make it back from the pub crawl last night, though some not until after 4am.

We arrived at the train station with about an hour to spare, but we couldn’t go to our platform to wait because it wasn’t listed yet. First we stood around in the center of the station while Morgan went to ask the information desk which platform, but she found out the help desk wouldn’t know for another 20 minutes. So we moved our pile of bags over to a wall in front of Sephora, but that lasted all of three minutes before we were told to move. Finally we just found an empty wall in a deserted hallway to set up shop so some of us could walk around the station looking at the shops or getting food.

As it turned out, the platform for our train wasn’t listed until after it was supposed to have left. We did know there was a 10 minute delay from the display screen, but there was still a mad rush of what seemed like hundreds of people to platform 3 when the number went up, even though we had to wait another few minutes, being jostled around, until the train finally showed up. Luckily, we were standing right in front of the car where our reserved seats were, so we were able to get on and find our places fairly easily. We had to 6-seat cabins with 5 of our group in each again, but this time the train was very crowded, so there was a random person in each cabin as well.

The journey was pleasant enough, after some rearranging of the bags so everyone would fit. Much of the ride we spent entertaining ourselves individually with various I-devices, but towards the end of the 5-hour ride, we all got a little anxious and began chatting to pass the time.

We arrived at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof in time for our connection to Bonn, although we had barely enough time to either use the restroom or grab a coffee or bakery snack. Still, though, I never thought I’d be so happy to be back in Germany, where I can understand much more of the language, and the people are more understandable as well.

The Berlin station has multiple levels so we had to go up three stories from our original platform to reach the one we needed to head to Bonn. The train arrived about two minutes before it was supposed to leave, and this time we weren’t so lucky when it came to reaching our car. We basically had to run down the platform past four or five cars to reach ours, but we all made it.

This time the seating was more like that of an airplane, so we didn’t have our own cabins. However, we were all fairly close to each other, so we got all our bags stored overhead with help from the boys and sat down for another 5-hour train ride. This time around, most people pulled out their computers to write their blogs. Some of us, however, chose to procrastinate, and just enjoyed the ride (with our I-devices of course).

We arrived back in Bonn around eleven pm, and all split up to head home and crash so we could get in some rest before class tomorrow morning.