I feel like I am writing my farewell address to the European
world as I sit here on a train on August 11 headed from Berlin to Frankfurt,
where I will stay one night before taking my flight home. This is such a
strange feeling to know that I will be home in less than 48 hours, because I
have been away from the U.S. for 83 days, now. Tomorrow will be 84. I guess, I
really feel the same as if I were simply travelling to another city, like I
have been doing pretty much all summer, but It’s a strange concept for my
brain. Soon, I will be able to speak the terrible English that we Texans speak
and be understood. Then the question occurs to me if I will even revert
completely back to how Texans talk. Surely, I haven’t been away long enough for
it to affect my speech. This is just one of the things that I am questioning
and wondering about. Have I changed at all for the better during this summer
abroad? I don’t think I fully know, but maybe the people closest to me from
home would be able to notice a difference. I think that in order for there to
be a change in me, I need to be able to remember what I learned from everywhere
I have been. I don’t want to forget the relationships that I have grown in, the
places I’ve seen, the fun I’ve had, the things I’ve learned, etc. I want to
learn from the mistakes that I’ve made and the things I was able to do right.
Our last week in Germany was spent in what I’ve heard some
Germans call the “New York City” of Germany, that is Berlin. Our arrival into
Berlin was long awaited after what I would call a less than fun night of travel
from Lucerne, Switzerland as described towards the end of my last blog.
Basically, we got on a train a little after midnight and arrived in Berlin at
about 2 pm. After lugging all our luggage to finally arrive at the Alex Hotel,
our group went on a (no sarcasm here because I did enjoy it) relaxing bike tour
of the city. Our guide was able to highlight what seemed like the most
interesting sights in the city, including one Holocaust memorial that stuck
with me. The memorial involved several hundred stone blocks of differing
heights, evenly distributed with equal spaces between, giving it the look of a
rough sketch of a city’s downtown buildings. What was most interesting was the
fact that there was no explanation of the meaning for this memorial. I guess,
you are supposed to be able to interpret the meaning for yourself. Walking
between the ‘buildings’ gave a feeling of losing yourself and others, seeing
one person round a corner and not being able to quite reach them. This was the
part that really made me think the most on the tour, especially on parts of
what it might have been like to have been affected by the Holocaust. The next
day’s tour with Sion of Sachsenhausen’s concentration camp was even more enlightening
to ideas and facts such as these. Although this camp was not a death camp, the
Nazi’s at this camp were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Eastern
European, Russian, Jewish people groups, and many others. To think, see, and
understand the ways that people were killed or committed suicide in camps such
as this puts so much of what we learn in the classroom into perspective. It’s
hard to imagine being murdered by a guard holding you head in a toilet or
anything of the sort. Then the question pops into head of whether or not I
would be brave enough to act if I knew of something this brutal was happening in
the United States. What went through the heads of the people that knew what was
happening next to their homes? Did they work against or for this great evil?
Wednesday, the 8th, was spent in and around the
Charite Learning Center and Museum, where we were able to see the interactive
learning methods for local medical students in past and present. This was
especially intriguing, because I know that I learn better in environments that
are more mobile than stationary. Thursday in Dresden involved a war museum and
the Hygienic Museum followed by a walking city tour with a particularly
interesting and fun guide. Although the war museum caught me off guard for its
focus on the human rather than the technology, the highlight of the day for me
was the Hygienic Museum for the active way that we were able to learn about the
body’s functions. The section that I was focused on to teach to the rest of the
group allowed me to see the evolution of sexuality and changes in human views
towards it. The progression of contraception and birth control has definitely
seen a separation of sex and the function of reproduction, because now it can
be used for simply pleasure more easily without so much ‘fear’ of having
children.
Our final day was spent in visiting the
Dellbruck Center of Molecular Medicine and the Otto Bock Center before having
our farewell dinner at the Kasbah Restaurant. Our first stop for the day showed
us opportunity for students such as us to do a PhD program abroad in an area
that is relevant to what we are currently studying in our undergraduate degree.
Animal research is done, there, including the use of a three tesla and seven
tesla MRI for smaller animal anatomical study. The Otto Bock Center, on the
other hand, focuses on the study and development in prosthesis. Games and
activities are made available in the center to inform visitors on purposes and
abilities in having a prosthetic limb. Technology is constantly allowing for
people handicapped in this physical way to live very close to if not completely
normal lives in this sense. Dinner of that night was both a treat to get to
spend the final hours of the summer program having a good time with everyone
and bitter in sensing the pending end to our journey overseas. These things are
a part of my life that I wish to never forget; I want to remember them for the
sake of learning not only the facts and trends in History of Medicine, though
those are important things, but also for the sake of learning in a completely
different environment. One of the most important things to me in this kind of
situation is learning things about the perspective that people across the world
and even across the street have. The way that you may think of something may
not always be the right way, and there may not even be a right way. I believe
in truth, but some things are just different and not bad at all.
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