Two Weeks In

We're two weeks into the program now, with our first set of excursions having taken place this second week in Vienna, Austria. We arrived by plane on Tuesday the 30th of May, and proceeded to get settled at the Deutschmeister hotel (which was very nice by the way). Immediately after that we went on our first excursion into town with "Dr. Schnabel", where we got a tour of some of the highlights and history of the central area of Vienna. We then visited Sigmund Freud's house and had a tour of the place, as well as a lecture on Freud and his work. We ended the day with a nice dinner at the "Gulasch Museum" where I had one of the best meals I've had since our arrival to Germany. I also tried horse meat for the first time after some hesitation, which turned out to be unfortunately delicious.

The remainder of our week in Vienna consisted of site visits and tours of the medical history museum in the "Josephinum", the "Haus der Musik" (House of Music), the "Kapuzinergruft" (Capuchin Crypt), the Federal Pathological Anatomical Museum of "Narrenturm", and the "Naturhistorisches Museum" (Natural History Museum) of Vienna. We also attended a beautifully performed classical music concert at St. Anne's Church. These excursions were full of amazing and intriguing stories and events dating back to hundreds of years ago (and even thousands in the case of the Natural History Museum). I personally found the visits to the Josephinum and Narrenturm particularly interesting since they showed a lot of the misconceptions people had regarding medicine and disease not too long ago, putting into perspective how quickly new discoveries and improvements are being made in health care. I was also able to see how much they had right, despite limitations in technology, which was quite amazing.

A group of us ended the week with a trip to Prague in the Czech Republic, where we spent our second free weekend. We left Vienna on Friday evening so by the time we arrived to Prague that night we were all so tired that we just went straight to bed. The following day however, we took advantage of our free time and visited the gallery of art which contained amazing works from artists like Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol, then went over to the Prague Castle and checked out some of the various buildings and history there, including that of medieval times which I really enjoyed. We ended the day with a nice dinner and a great view of the river, and then a visit to the "Ice Pub" after that, which is bar completely made out of ice, including the cups, in which you get to be under a -4oC temperature for 15 minutes and have a free drink. Finally, on Sunday which was our last day in Prague, we headed to town for brunch and then visited the chocolate museum there, were they showed us a bit of the history of chocolate, as well as how different types of chocolate are made. The best part of course being the free samples of chocolate we were given throughout the tour. We then walked around town for a bit before heading over to the airport for our flight back to Bonn. It is now Monday morning and we have officially completed our second week in the History of Medicine program!