Coming
to Berlin, I was not expecting to like it. Both my host mom and brother said
that they did not like the city, especially because of its size. I ended up
liking the city a lot though and never felt overwhelmed by either its size or
the amount of people there (maybe that’s because I had been in Rome the weekend
before though).
Upon
arriving, we went on a bike tour of the city with our guide Sion. He was a very
funny and honest guy and would have made the tour worthwhile even if it wasn’t
interesting. It was very interesting though, and we got so see and experience
some of the major landmarks of the city such as Checkpoint Charlie, the
Halocaust Memorial, and parts of the Berlin wall that were accompanied by
stories of escape from East to West Germany. Having been born in 1992, I never
got to personally see any live footage or know much history of anything related
to the Berlin wall, so this was particularly intriguing.
The
next day started with a tour of the Reichstag, the Germany main parliament
building. The main point that I got from that tour was that after both WWII and
the reunification of East and West Germany, that the government made themselves
as accessible to the public as possible. This includes seats within the actual
parliament for the public and offices of the politicians with glass windows
exposed to the outside to that people can always see what they are doing. That
afternoon we went to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. This was not a camp
in which hundreds of thousands were killed, but still definitely got the point
across of the inhumane and sick ways of torment of the Nazi’s. Most disturbing
for me was probably the way in which they killed most of the Soviet prisoners:
through pretending like the soldiers were getting medical checks but then
secretly shooting them while they were getting their height “measured.” Another
sad part of this camp occurred after the war in a period in which the Soviet
Union took over the camp and did not use it as a memorial for the victims as a
war but as a means of celebration and gratitude to themselves. Overall it was a
sombering experience, and I believe that everyone who visits Germany should go
to a concentration camp in order to help and spread the word of the horrific
events that occurred there so that they do not occur again.
On
Wednesday we went to the Charite learning center. We got to talk and interact
with two of the medical students there and even got to try out some of the
devices that they use for education, such as a device that causes tremors to
give students the feeling most elderly experience upon being put on too many
medications. We had gotten to learn about the German Medical School system and
its differences from American Medical School before, but they do things even differently
than the rest of Germany in Berlin. For example, after a few years of being in
school, the students are able to go through training and tutorials with
different computer run “dummies” and programs so that they can learn how to
perform certain techniques (such as how to insert a tracheal tube) before
actually doing it on a patient. I personally could definitely use more
practice, as it took me around six times to insert the tube correctly. I like
this approach though and think that the practical application of getting to
perform the actions you will have to do in the future on real people is
essential for any medical school student. Following that, we went to the
Charite Museum and learned about how some medical procedures used to be
performed (such as removing a bladder stone) as well as got to see some of some
of Rudolf Virchow’s personal collection of preserved organs.
We
went to Leipzig the next day and started by going to the hospital. A tour was
given by a nephrologist, so it and the information he gave mainly involved the
dialysis section of the hospital. It was unlike any hospital that I have ever
been to and was really cool to learn how they make their own saline solutions
for dialysis at the facility itself. Following the hospital we went to an
apothecary museum. Although it was small, I learned a lot about topics such as
the history of homeopathy. For instance, homeopathy was first started by Samuel
Hahnemann in the 1700’s when he realized that cinchona (used to cure malaria)
actually caused malaria like symptoms in patients who did not have malaria.
This created the homeopathic staple of “like cures like.” The museum was
followed by a tour of Leipzig, which was a very nice city and reminded me a lot
of Bonn.
Our
last full day in Germany consisted of going to the Otto-Bock Center, where the
Otto-Bock company showcases and educates the public on the human body and how
their devices allow people who have complications such as amputated limbs to
resume almost normal functioning in their everyday lives. The building itself
was designed to look like it was surrounded by muscle fibers, which was
extremely awesome and as a whole was very technologically advanced. It made me extremely
excited to be a part of the future of biomedical engineering.
Berlin
was a very fitting city to end our program on, as it is a city full of history
and a huge part of Germany today. I think that anyone who visits Germany should
go to Berlin and I would definitely come to it again in the future. I do not
know why so many people that I talked to did not like the city, but can only
speak for my personal experiences.
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