Berlin

The Bundesstadt

Where do I begin?  Berlin was perfect, but at the same time I was dreading Saturday because then I would be on a plane headed back to Texas.  Studying abroad was the best decision I could have made.

The Berlin Wall

The beginning of Berlin was anything but wonderful.  Sarah, Caleb, Mikaela, Jooy and I all decided to take the train from Switzerland directly to Berlin.  Unfortunately, because we only had one day left on our Eurail passes, we had to take a train after midnight Monday morning.  That meant a 4-hour layover in a tiny little town.  It was miserable.  I was freezing and couldn’t get comfortable on my suitcase so I shivered the entire time and prayed time would speed up.  It obviously did not.  But time did pass and we eventually arrived in Berlin suffering from sleep deprivation.  Luckily all we did that Monday was a bike tour of the city.  We traveled through the Jewish quarters, saw a portion of the Berlin Wall, experienced the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and learned much about the history of modern Germany.  I loved it.  And another wonderful thing was that I got some precious sleep that night.

Checkpoint Charlie

 The other days were equally as great.  A few of my favorite things were the Charite museum and medical school, Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and the Otto Bock center.  The Charite museum was cool because of the collection of preparations of many different organs and fetuses.  I unfortunately did not faint, reinforcing my desire to become a doctor.  Sachsenhausen was very humbling and although it wasn’t a fun thing to tour, it definitely taught me a lot about the Holocaust.  The attitude of the camp was incredibly somber.  The Otto Bock center was incredibly interesting.  I think prosthetics are especially fascinating because of my engineering brain and the Olympics.  Berlin was amazing and I learned a ton.  I would love to go back at another point in my life. 

The Soviet memorial at Sachsenhausen