Berlin/Dresden – 1/3

Let me just start by saying that our New Year’s Eve in Berlin was spectacular. I am so used to spending New Year’s at home on the couch with family – what an exciting way to experience the culture of a country! We had a ton of fun with other students from other countries studying abroad and even saw pop star Heino and Trans Siberian Orchestra perform! By the end of the night the city was an apocalypse, with glass all over the streets and firecrackers going off EVERYWHERE. I couldn’t help but think that this would never happen in America, for instance in New York City, and that the activity seemed inconsistent with German character, which tends to be more serious, quiet, and outwardly emotionless. By the next day though, most everything was cleaned up and life was back to normal.

I absolutely loved visiting the Deutsches Hygeine Museum in Dresden, especially the ‘Sex’ room. Never in my life have I seen a culture so much more comfortable with sex than America. Even my best friend from Germany can’t quite understand the idea of ‘waiting until marriage’, so distinct is the sex culture in Germany from America. This visit was somewhat refreshing to me, since I want to be an OB/GYN in the future and have become more accustomed than my peers to discussing these kinds of sensitive issues. The exhibit that sticks out the most in my mind is the art project detailing individuals with their clothes on and also with their clothes off. This was a great representation of how we are all made in the same image, yet we cannot jump to conclusions about each other based only on our outward appearances. In other words, we are all the same but we are all different. It was also interesting for me to see the advertisement and education concerning the AIDS epidemic as it was affecting the homosexual community throughout the later part of the 20^th century. I find this important since the homosexual community was targeted in these advertisements to improve health habits within this particular population, and it worked! Now that we have seen an improvement in AIDS rates among the gay population, as physicians, we must give attention to the population of young underprivileged minority women in which AIDS has the greatest impact today. This will require not only different advertisement techniques but also an evolved physician understanding of the social implications of AIDS. Again, this is especially important to me as a future OB/GYN.