The Last Week

Last Thursday was our last day in Bonn. We had a couple of interesting lectures from Dr. Wasser and played lots of Ping-Pong which is always fun. That afternoon we went to an art exhibit that turned out to be a history lecture from a University of Bonn professor. The people he lectured about did have portraits in the room, which were a little weird because the people were painted orange or blue or other crazy unnatural colors. Maybe one day I’ll understand art. That evening we had our last night at Rhinelust; I’m going to miss that place and its Dunkle Schneider Weisse.  Most of all, I’m going to miss all the good times we had there. I won’t really miss the tacos though.

            On Friday we got up bright and early to train to Berlin. That day we took a bike tour around the city, I was pretty exhausted but it was still really cool. We got to see a lot of cool sites like where the book burnings took place, the Berlin wall, the memorial for the Jews who died in the Holocaust, and the Brandenburg Gate. Unfortunately, the gate was blocked by an oriental music concert. We also saw the place where Hitler committed suicide. Today it is just a parking lot, easily overlooked. On Saturday we went to Sachsenhausen, which was a concentration camp near Berlin. We got to see the barracks, the medical facilities, the prison within the concentration camp, and station Z, where the executions took place. It was a great experience to see it because we’ve learned so much about concentration camps in school. It was very sad and hard to believe that people could do those horrible things to other people. It was very surprising that they thought they were doing the right thing. I couldn’t believe that most doctors were eager to participate as well. The next day we went to the medical school learning center. It was a place for the medical students to study or practice some of their basic skills using simulators. We got to try a couple of the simulators, like listening to the heartbeat and breathing of a mannequin. Then we went to the medical school’s museum. It was a really cool museum, and our tour guide gave us extremely vivid descriptions of medical operations. One operation he described was how they would remove a man’s kidney stone from the bladder; it was painful to listen to. Apparently our tour guide holds the record for making the most people faint in one day (5 people), he was very proud. After the tour, Dr. Wasser gave us a lecture on Rudolf Virschow in Virschow’s lecture hall at the Charité. On Monday (our last day) we got a tour inside the Reichstag, which is the parliament building. It was a really cool building that had a mixture of modern and old architecture. I liked how they left some graffiti and bullet holes from when the Prussians occupied the building. The tour ended in the dome on top of the Reichstag. That afternoon we visited the Otto Bock Institute, which is a company that makes prosthetics. I really enjoyed the tour, they had a lot of cool interactive stuff we could do. That night we had our last group dinner. It was very bitter sweet, I had a great time, but I was also very sad that the program was over. It had to end sometime, and I’m glad it ended with us all belly dancing in the middle of a restaurant.

            Today was departure day. It’s been such a sad day, most of us left early this morning, but I’m traveling around Europe for another ten days. I already miss everyone. This program definitely exceeded my expectations, and I’m so blessed to have had this opportunity. I’m so thankful I had such an awesome group of Ags to experience it with.