Week in Vienna

For our week in Vienna I was really not sure what to expect. The city sounded like a great city after our introduction from Olivia, but I had not really heard that much about it before coming to Europe so I was really excited to experience something that was going to be quite new to me and I was also excited about a whole week with the program in a city other than Bonn.

We got there a little early on the first day after a very long hot night train, so everyone was pretty tired and also very hungry. We walked to our hotel and put our luggage away and then went and found a café for breakfast. WE ACTUALLY HAD REAL BACON! I knew Vienna was going to be okay in my book after that delicious breakfast of bacon and eggs for less than 5 euros. After breakfast we went to a park down by the river and just relaxed until we could check into the hotel and take a much needed shower. The first thing I noticed about Vienna from our city tour was how much smaller the city felt than its actual population. The city was all compacted into a small area and many of the streets were narrow and made from stones. After the city tour we went to the catacombs of the St. Stephens cathedral, which is definitely one of my favorite tours we have been on so far. It was fascinating that the remains of the dead were separated into different churches around the city; one got the guts, one the heart, and one the body. My favorite part of the tour however was the older section of the catacombs where older graves had been discovered. The older section was right under the square in front of the cathedral which was cool in itself, but I was more amazed by the number of bodies that were all together in the catacombs and the fact that prisoners had to scrape the flesh of the bones of the dead and then stack them several meters high in these mass graves. I don’t think even a bottle of rum would make me happy about doing that job.

The next day a familiar looking Dr. Schnabel took us around Vienna for another walking tour around the city. We got to see the beautiful old medical school and walk around in a magnificent lecture hall that would surely intimidate just about any student. Another interesting thing that I got from Dr. Schnabel’s tour was the prison where students could be held if they were being too unruly. I was amazed that they dueled in college with swords, and that a scar on the cheek was something to be proud of. After the tour we went to the funeral museum, which was much more interesting that I initially thought it was going to be. Vienna’s obsession with death and the funeral process was nothing short of fascinating. The most interesting thing from the museum was that they actually had a bell system that led from the coffin to above ground so that someone could be notified if one happened to wake up in the coffin six feet underground. It was also quite funny that there was actually a phone you could have placed in a coffin so that you could talk to the dead for another full year over the phone.

We got a lecture from Dr. Marz the next day about medical school in Europe and in Vienna that has been one of the most surprising lectures of the trip for me. I didn’t realize how many differences there were in the American medical school system compared to the European one. The biggest differences were entering medical school when you are 18 and one admission test being the single factor in acceptance. Personally I liked the system and agreed with many of the things it tried to accomplish. I like how you have a longer medical school and that you start in a clinical system much earlier than you do in the US. Later that day we went to Fool’s tower and took a tour of the old psychiatric ward which contained thousands of interesting preserved specimens. My favorite specimen was a pair of siamese twins that were fused at the head, with a face on each side of the skull, a condition called cephalopagus or janiceps.

On Thursday we focused on a very interesting man, Sigmund Freud. His method of psychoanalysis was quite strange. Smoking 20 cigars or more a day, he sat in his apartment just listening to the dreams of his patients, relating everything back to a persons Id, or type of inner drive that cannot be controlled. I found it interesting that even his daughter followed in his footsteps in psychoanalysis.

The Josephinum and body worlds were two of the most medically applicable tours we have done. It was incredible how detailed both of the exhibits were and in the Josephinum how accurate the models were without the use of the technology we have today. My favorite part about Body Worlds was the fact that many of the models were of a body in motion and you were able to see the detailed contraction of one muscle or a group of muscles and the elongation of others.