Dins of Berlin: Days 6 through 9

Guten tag again! This is for January 1st through January 4th and this is sort of a delayed post due to Internet issues in Hanover but the connection here in Vienna is reliable and I will write this post as I started. So we arrived in Berlin on December 31^st 2013 and it is now January 4^th 2013. We are on our way to Hamburg, which is in the north of Germany on the Elbe River, for the free weekend on this trip. I will now recount my time in the amazing city of Berlin. However, I miss Bonn which definitely has a more cozy, small town feel compared to the vast metropolis that is the capital of Germany.

Walking around Berlin.

On day six, January 1st, we woke up somewhat late around noon after a night of partying on the Fest Mile to eat breakfast and go on a Berlin city tour with a tour guide named Shaun, who was from the United Kingdom. We walked around and saw incredible structures such as the Alteus Museum, the Berlin Cathedral, and other structures in the city. Another highlight of the tour was a rather large chunk of the Berlin Wall. We even got to see the sight of Hitler’s former bunker where he hid and committed suicide around the end of WWII. Unfortunately, the actual bunker no longer exists as it was filled in with cement and there is now a parking lot and apartment complexes on top of and near the former bunker. The history that surrounds Berlin is vast and goes beyond the buildings seen and everything that was covered in the tour. After the tour, we ate at a famous potato eatery called the Kartoffelkeller where I ordered a dish of fried potatoes and three eggs. It was definitely comfort food to the max. Later that evening, I was able to get into contact with Maura again and she, Cassie, and I hung out around the Jewish Holocaust Memorial and the Brandenburg Gate area. After a while of walking, talking, jumping about, hanging out at a coffee shop called Balzac Coffee, and freezing from the cold weather, I said farewell to Maura and Cassie and I returned back to the hotel with Maura going back to the USA in a few days. It was nice seeing her and I hope to see her again soon in the future! It is crazy how I got to meet some people that I never usually get to see on a normal basis halfway around the world from home in Europe.

The German public transport is one of the most convenient things I have ever used.

On the seventh day, January 2nd, we ate the same type of breakfast that was provided at Hotel Alex which consisted of fruits, cold cuts, cheese, bread, eggs, and such, and we left to ride the train for an excursion in Dresden, which is a city in Germany that was heavily bombed by the Allies in WWII and caused the deaths of many innocent civilians. The tour guide walked us around the city to see and explain sights such as the Church of Our Lady, which is interestingly a current Protestant church that used to be a former Catholic church. So many buildings in the area were rebuilt as they appeared in the past such as historical places or more modern-looking buildings were rebuilt in the sites of destroyed buildings. The city appeared to have never been bombed at all and it is difficult to see how such a place was smoldering in flames and ashes back then. We then proceeded to go to the Treasury “Grunes Gewolbe” where we saw treasures of the wealthy individuals and rulers of Dresden. There were incredibly intricate pieces of metal work such as complex clocks with music-playing capabilities and it was hard to believe that people built these manually back then before the seventeenth century! Some other highlights were a large drink set and table made by a goldsmith who integrated many valuable materials and Roman motifs in the piece, a large figurine set showing the Royal Household of Delhi at the ruler’s birthday party, and the current largest green diamond in the world. The diamond was placed in a necklace with other regular diamonds and as discussed by the tour guide and Dr. Wasser, was too valuable to price like all the other masterpieces in the museum. No matter, all the pieces in the museum must have been extremely painstaking, careful, and tedious work. After the museum, we went to the Deutches Hygiene Museum where different aspects of the human body were displayed in interactive and informative formats. Each aspect was divided into different rooms and Leo and I were assigned the Eating and Drinking room where we discussed different areas that provided information into the matter at hand. The coolest thing in our room was a large cornucopia that showed a variety of foods people eat and if one touched a certain animal or plant, information, history, and a recipe of the food. There was even a recipe for horse! The most interesting room overall was probably the Sexuality room which was somewhat hilarious and extremely informative. There were plenty of things there that I would have problems showing children. We then returned to the hotel room afterwards to crash. Later that evening and hilariously horribly, I realized I had accidentally deleted photos from day six and seven which consisted of the Berlin and Dresden city tours, but I will be using some software when I get back to College Station to see if I can hopefully recover the photos but it is all right. There is no point in crying over “spilled milk” and luckily, my fellow volks on this trip took photos so I am not totally left out in the cold on those days.

Austin and I with the Charite medical students.

And for the eighth day, January 3rd, we woke up and traveled to an area in East Berlin where the Max Dellbruck Center for Molecular Medicine was. There was definitely a discrepancy between the West and East sections of Berlin as the East section appeared to be more backwards and older-looking than the West section. It was clear that West Berlin had it better than the East before the Berlin Wall came down. The MDC was historically a Nazi-affiliated research institution that conducted experiments on humans but it is now one of the leading research institutions in the field of molecular medicine. We were shown the history and information regarding the institution and were able to speak with researchers there who explained some of their work and equipment. The genetics researcher definitely interested me more as I work in a genetics lab back at Texas A&M. We then ate at the mensa at the MDC and proceeded to go to the Charite Medical Museum. The museum is located on the Charite campus and we had an enthusiastic tour guide who showed as incredible medical specimens such as preserved human body parts and even ironically beautiful gallbladder stones. Medical history came even more to life when we went to an original, basically unrestored room that was bombed out during WWII and it was a place where medical lectures took place. After that, we went down the street to the Charite study center where two medical students explained the German medical education system and even showed us different learning devices used to train them. One of the interesting differences between the German and American medical education systems is that Germans enter medical school directly form high school while Americans need to go through undergraduate before attending medical school. The last activity of the day after that was a visit to the German parliament building called the Reichstag. Security for getting in was rather tight akin to an airport. We then had a tour around the building and were shown the original Russian graffiti on the walls and the magnificent parliament room. After the Reichstag, a group of us ate dinner at a nice eatery and returned to the hotel to retire for the day.

A sensory homunculus at Otto Bock demonstrating the importance of the sensory aspects of our limbs and hands.

Finally, on day nine, January 4th, we returned to the Charite study center for a lecture that Dr. Wasser gave regarding important figures in German medical education and innovations. It was interesting to hear about how medical education and treatments evolved over the years through different figures in history. We then ate lunch at the Charite mensa, or cafeteria, which offered a pretty good selection of food. It was then after lunch that the rain began to pour very hard but I had no hat at the time, which was unfortunate. We were then placed into different taxis and driven to the bus stop near the Otto Bock Science Center. The tour there was nice and we were shown the history, innovations, and ideas regarding the prosthetics manufacturing that Otto Bock does. Prosthetic legs are incredibly complex and require much fine-tuning and engineering. After the Otto Bock Science Center, Ariana, Kitty, Cassie, and Austin, and I left for Hamburg on the free weekend, we took a train while all the others went to Munich. We all shared a booth with an old lady on the train ride over and it was pretty relaxing. Upon arrival, we all crashed at our hotel rooms where I roomed with Austin at a place called Hotel Continental. However, the next morning, we proceeded to explore Hamburg with Cassie going off on her own. 

Berlin is an incredible city to walk around in.

I will recount the Hamburg and Hanover adventures on the next post in a day or two. This whole experience has been nothing short of amazing! Something that has changed for me is that the German language sounds more “normal” to me, even though I do not know it well at all still. I hear a lot about how crazy it sounds from people back in the USA but it really is just another amazing language that adds diversity to the cultural heritage of humanity. Since I have left Berlin, I have been missing it but I hope to return someday. So for now, tchuss Berlin!