Last Week in Bonn / Long Weekend in Switzerland

Our last week in Bonn was well spent, but I know that I will miss the college town that we came to know more than any other city in Germany. I know that I will miss the Welker family, because there was never a dull moment in that house. I came to expect the unexpected at any moment while I was living in that house, and I loved every minute of it. I feel bad for the small amount of time I was able to spend with the whole family; there was just never a time where I could really have a chance to hang out with the older brother, Chris, on the boat him and his friends had gotten for the river. The sister, Lisa, had taken me out with some of her friends when I first arrived in Bonn, and that was definitely a fun experience to walk around Bonn at night and get the feel for a European club. My host family was always looking for ways to make sure I was enjoying Germany, and I am really grateful for that. They never once made me feel like a burden on the family, and I wish I could have done more with them and for them to show my gratitude. I had wanted to go and see Chris’s new flat (apartment) because of his numerous invitations, but nothing seemed to work out for timing for either that or his boat excursion, which would have taken a full day. Having said this, I do not at all regret having made plans for every weekend, travelling to different countries and cities. I simply wish there was more time in a day, so that I could add more things I could do and places I could go. The program seemed to have us moving at every moment possible with some breaks, so these breaks were spent in resting in preparation of the next day’s tasks.

Our week was supposed to start out with a bike tour to Remagen, but the weather said otherwise. The bike tour was postponed to Wednesday, and Monday schedule was replaced with class. Class was focused on Galen, his contemporaries, and bio-ethics surrounding the history of Nazi euthanasia. It was interesting to see the actual intellectual thought process that preceded the Nazi movement for euthanasia. Some doctors and authors may not have meant for their thought process to have been carried out in real life. Others, who had seen the carnage that came as a result of the Great War, may have been more ready to sacrifice the greater needs of a few for the smaller needs of the many. Men who had seen the lives of the young and strong generation stolen from them may have wanted a better solution than the sacrifice of what would become the future generations. It is interesting yet dangerous to go near the thought process of seeing one life as more important than another. I think that the Nazi’s perverted many of society’s intellectual ideas into their own dogma.

Tuesday morning was spent in the surgery center in Bonn, where I was able to see three different procedures, though not all in full. I was given the privilege to witness most of a procedure dealing with a low fibula (or tibia, I can’t remember exactly) break near the ankle, where the doctors had made a large incision and began what appeared to be some kind of cleaning out of the open incision. I was then told to leave, so I next witnessed a procedure dealing with a woman’s spine. What intrigued me about this was that no incision into the back was made. The doctor, who appeared to be a resident taking instruction from a more trained doctor, seemed to hammer a hollow kind of nail into the patient’s spine from two different angles, taking an x-ray after every few hits with the mallet. Once the appropriate depth was reached with the appropriate angle, this ‘needle’ supposedly injected cement into the spine of the patient. I understand so very little about these surgeries, but this one was done very shortly with seemingly no hold-ups. The third procedure I was able to witness involved a patient with an infected foot. I questioned whether this patient had diabetes, because I think some diabetes patients often have foot wounds such as this. The patient had only one toe remaining on the foot that was being operated on, and the doctors seemed to be cleaning out the side of the foot, where the incision was made because of a fracture injury. I feel like I know so little about all of this, but I feel eager to learn more. These surgeries, I think, confirmed in my mind my ability and my want to proceed onto medical school. This being my first time to witness any kind of surgery, despite my having a doctor for a father and having had three surgeries myself, I now feel even more inclined toward the medical field.

After Wednesday’s 22 km bike ride to Remagen, our tour of the Peace Museum of Remagen was guided by Dr. Kurten. It’s always more than a treat to hear from someone who had a part of one kind or another in World War II, and I liked the perspective that his stories gave. I also liked how the museum highlighted the fact and importance of saved lives in this war effort in 1945. The tour guides are always able to add a little extra something to what you may have tried to or actually learned in the classroom. The tour guide at the museum “Hildegard von Bingen” (Museum am Strom) was not only able to tell us more and reiterate things that we may have heard already, but he also was able to show some of the floral remedies used and written about by Hildegard von Bingen in a garden outside the museum. Being able to actually see and interact in such a way as this helps with the learning process in almost every case. When our Rhine-cruise ended in St. Goar, our tour of Rheinfels Castle was missed. Therefore, we made up our own tour in different groups assigned different parts of the castle. It may have been silly, but it made the castle that much more enjoyable because of the interactive thinking required in making up your own tour. This was definitely an exciting last week to spend in Bonn, but there was bittersweet taste in my mouth for leaving the city we had come closest to knowing.

Our long weekend was then spent seemingly much in travelling well worth the trip to Switzerland. Despite the late and long hours of travel, Switzerland proved upon first site of the landscape that time would be well spent (and money for that matter). If I could, I would have spent an entire week in our first destination of Interlaken, where extreme sports like bungee jumping, canyoning, white-water rafting, paragliding, etc. dominate the tourist and local activities. Balmer’s hostel proved a good choice as well with its accommodations for rooming, food, clubbing, and canyoning. The only complaint I had was having to pay a few francs for a towel.

After a long morning of travel to Interlaken from Bonn, we were able to leave our luggage at but not check into the hostel before walking literally only fifty feet down the street to the meeting point for the canyoning trip we had all (eight of us: me, Sarah, Meredith, Mikaela, Jooey, Katharine, Morgan, and Michelle) booked for that afternoon. Luckily, we were all able to go in the same group, so we suited up for the cold water and headed up into the small mountains close by. The trip lasted about two hours and was filled to the brim with action-packed-adventure that made me thirsty for more. Repelling, jumping off of rocks, and sliding down the river gave me the thirst for more of that adrenaline rush. I wanted to go bungee jumping the next day, but they only offer it in the afternoon. Our train was leaving the next day at three, so I couldn’t fulfill my appetite. Nonetheless, we were able to have a blast in this town between two massively beautiful lakes in the Alps without any difficulty. Our next morning was mostly spent in going to one of the nearby lakes, called Thunersee, where we all pretty much did what we pleased. Sarah and Meredith relaxed on the lakeside, falling asleep in the son. Mikaela and I rented some paddle boards to go out on the lake even though we both didn’t have swimsuits. That worked out better with my wearing shorts than Mikaela’s wearing jeans on a big wobbly surf board that you stand up on and paddle. Neither of us fell, but we definitely weren’t dry by the end of it. I had never been paddle boarding, and it was a more than cool experience on such a lake in a valley of the Alps. Jooey, Katharine, Michelle, and Morgan all rented a paddle boat and chilled out on the lake with us some. I would definitely advise going to lakes in Switzerland.

The afternoon was spent in more travel from Interlaken to Lucerne via the Golden Pass train. This train gave us a scenic route with open windows, so being the natural Americans that we are, we were taking pictures at every opportunity (when trees weren’t in the way) of the Swiss countryside. Seeing the European bachelor and bachelorette parties still makes me laugh every time for the absurdity that it seems to have in comparison to what I think of as American bachelor parties. One of the stops on the Golden Pass train had a bachelor party going on right outside the window, where about ten or twelve guys were all dressed in leathers, looking like they were straight from the 80’s. One guy had a boom-box blaring “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” by Guns N’ Roses while the main guy (groom) pretended to play his electric guitar and sang poorly and loudly with the song into a megaphone. It was a ridiculous sight, and it made the whole train laugh.

Once we got to Lucerne, we were able to check into the youth hostel and find a little Swiss restaurant, where the girls were able to get their fondue, I was able to get my steak, and then I was able to finish their fondue. The next day (Sunday) was a long but exciting one, starting out with reaching the top of a 7000 foot peak called Pilatus. All eight of us took the gondola up to the top and took lots of pictures of the views when the clouds were clear. After spending a few hours and lunch at the top of Pilatus, five of us spent the remainder of the afternoon and evening walking around the lake and old town of Lucerne while Katharine, Morgan, and Michelle returned to Bonn for the night. We saw the supposed oldest standing wooden bridge in Europe near old city Lucerne, and we ventured over to see the 19^th century stone carving of the dying or wounded lion, seemingly symbolizing the notorious neutrality of Switzerland since the Napoleonic era. We ended the night relaxing in an Irish pub called Mr. Pickwick’s until our train left a little after midnight. It’s a good thing we relaxed some before, because that night was hectic and tiring for all sorts of reasons. We almost missed the last bus to the hauptbahnhof, our first train was delayed, we had to wait three hours in a closed train station in a tiny town in Switzerland from about 2 am to 5 am, there was no bathroom, we had to then ride a 7 hour train from Basel to Berlin, etc. Little things just seemed to add up to a crazy night and morning with very little sleep, but it was all worth the trip to Switzerland.