DREI

I feel like I went through a time warp -- how is week two already over??  This week has been full of adventures.
Here is a short overview of my past week:
The AIB program coordinated a trip to Vienna, Austria which started on Tuesday (5/29) and lasted till Friday (6/2). On Friday, me and 20 other students used free time to travel to Prague, Czech Republic. On Sunday, we flew back home to Bonn.

Now to dive into the details...

Our flight from Bonn to Vienna arrived around noon on Tuesday. After hopping from train to train we settled into our hotel, and our coordinators led us on a tour of the neighboring areas. Dr. Wasser was a wonderful tour guide, detailing the history of each feature in the area as if he had lived in Vienna for a million years. After the thorough tour, we made our way to the house where Sigmund Freud lived. We saw his belongings, learned about his activities within the different rooms, and we even breathed in some of the cigar molecules that remained from the many cigars he smoked. Next, we met with Dr. Schnabel, a plague doctor (Dr. Wasser in costume) who received many strange looks from the people around us. Here's a picture of that:

Dr.Schnabel provided our tour group with a few "elixirs" to help cure us of our ailments and prevent the "Black Death."
The next day we went to the Josephinum (which was founded as a medical-surgical militia academy) and enjoyed the world-famous collection of human anatomy wax models. That was probably my favorite part of the Vienna program because there were wax models for literally every part of anatomy including babies and fetuses! We weren't allowed to take pictures, but here is a picture I found online of one of the more famous wax models:

http://www.josephinum.ac.at/uploads/tx_imagecycle/Untitled-318_02.jpg

And here is a picture of a random sculpture that I really liked in the Josephinum:

Another site visit I really enjoyed was the Federal Pathological Anatomical Museum, Narrenturm. Similar to the Josephinum there were many wax models, but these creations were used to model diseased specimen. Some of these models were not made of wax but were preserved tissue from actual diseased patients! There were birth deformities, skin deformities, skin infections, etc. I really felt like I needed a Hibiclens shower after walking around in there...

The last excursion I'll include in here was the Naturhistorisches Museum (natural history museum). It was like the Houston Museum of Natural Science but on steroids. It was so big and we only had time to explore a small portion of it. There was an ancient sculpture that I found particularly interesting. I don't remember the name, but I know it was 29,500 years old!! Here is a picture of that:

Also here is a low-quality video from the dinosaur section of the museum. This is a real dinosaur, not an extremely life-like Japanese robot....

As I explained earlier, on Friday 20 of us students traveled to Prague for the remainder of the weekend. It was definitely one of my favorite cities that we've traveled to so far. It was old, beautiful, and full of tourists (a good and bad thing). We ate some Trdelnik with ice cream, which is a Czech treat made of rolled dough and sugar. Here's a picture of that:

We also had the chance to take a quick (but exhausting) hike to the top of Petrin hill where we got to see a beautiful view of the city. Here's some pictures of that:

This was my favorite part of the trip by far; these pictures don't do justice to the stunning view! On the way down the hill we grabbed what we thought were smoothies but were actually just pureed fruits. Like this:

It was an interesting drink and was pleasantly refreshing, especially after that hike. Another exciting piece of Prague is the ice bar that all of the students went to. It was a bar in which EVERYTHING (tables, walls, chairs, glasses, etc.) was made of ice. People are only allowed entrance into the bar for 15 minutes unfortunately, so we didn't have much time to enjoy it. But here is a picture of that:

All in all, Prague exceeded my expectations and was a place I'll never forget. Although the people of Prague did not seem to like us, especially when we spoke English, I still like Prague and will definitely be returning some day. Now off to explore new places!!