Kind of a bittersweet feeling. I’m super pumped to be
heading to Berlin, but at the same time it’s my last day in Bonn, a place that
I’ve called home during these past few weeks, and it’s the last week of the
entire program as well.
The last day in Bonn was great, I ended the day at a local
winery with my host family and host “grandparents”. Me, Carter, Dae, and
Paisley had a wonderful last dinner underneath the hills filled with vineyards
outside of Bonn on the other side of the Rhine. I’m definitely going to miss my
host family after they so kindly made me one of the family for the summer. They
even gave me a book of Bonn to remember all the highlights of this cool little
city on the Rhine.
The next day we carried all of our luggage from the entire
trip (a huge pain hahah) to the train station and departed on our final
excursion to Berlin. Berlin was such an interesting city. It had such an
Austin/hip vibe to it as being such a modern city, combined with the extensive
amount of history from World War II and the Berlin Wall Era. Our opening city
bike tour guide showed us all the big sites from the Victory Gate to
Parliamentary building as well as remains of the Berlin Wall separating
East/West Berlin into two sectors. Sidenote: this bike tour was much more
successful with way fewer crashes than our Norderney experience. A couple of my
favorite history lessons learned from the tour were when we visited Hitler’s
old palace and bunker where he eventually killed himself, which in present day
is a hotel and parking lot. If just passing by, I would have had no idea the
things that happened right below my own two feet. Another thing I really
enjoyed were the stories about “East Berliners” as they were referred to in the
Communist sector of Berlin, attempting to escape over a progressively more
dangerous wall that was reinforced and expanded upon for years until it finally
came down in 1989. One thing that was really hard hitting was a spray painted
graffiti message on the West side of the wall that said “To Astrid: Maybe one
day we will be together again”. Dang I can’t even comprehend the hardships
faced by families split up and kept apart because of the wall.
Another thing that was really intense to see was the
Sachsenhausen concentration camp outside Berlin, one of the model camps for
future concentration and death camps spread across Europe. Being inside there,
something felt a little bit off. I felt a little bit uncomfortable standing and
taking pictures of a place where people were taken, because of
race/religion/difference, as prisoners and held in such terrible conditions and
forced to work to keep the Nazi campaign afloat. I don’t want to spend much
time on this, because it really is hard to write about as someone that hasn’t
felt anywhere near the pain that the people here had to endure. One thing that
was interesting though, when the camp was liberated, it was still used by the
Soviets as POW camp where similar mistreatment continued to happen. Which is crazy
to me. How was it still being for somewhat similar purposes after they fought
to liberate it?
We did some pretty interesting things in Berlin from a
medical perspective as well. We visited a German medical school as well as a
prosthetic leg/arm company in Berlin called “Autobock”. That was probably the
highlight of the city for me from a learning standpoint as a Biomedical
Engineer, learning a little behind the biomechanics, controls, and struggles
for each of these replacement legs and arms/hands. That combined with the
history of the company stemming from WWI where there was a very high need for
solutions for amputee patients.
Now on to some more fun things. On Thursday night a lot of
us went to a Blink 182 concert right outside of Berlin, that was a blast, wow.
I’m not much of a Blink fan but being there with all my new friends, whom I’ve
grown super close to over the past few weeks, just jamming out and singing
every song we knew was so much fun. And to make things even more interesting it
was pouring rain the whole night, so all of us were running around in ponchos
with umbrellas trying to stay dry, to no avail. That was probably the best
night we had here in Berlin.
The last day of the program, our going away dinner. I really
couldn’t believe how fast it went by that the last night all together was upon
us. Dinner was a blast and the food was amazing, Henning even gave us all
signed copies of his fire new album that I’m gonna be jamming the rest of the
summer. Looking back on that night, it’s sad that it’s all over, but with all
the experiences we’ve gone through together and the adventures through a
foreign country we’ve had, I can’t help but be excited to keep expanding on
these new relationships I’ve made and to see how I’ve grown from such an
enlightening experience.
That’s all folks. What a summer. I’m so thankful and glad
that I got the opportunity to study abroad with such good people by my side;
from my professors/directors, to all my new friends going through the program
with me, and all the people I met along the way from various different
countries.
Auf Wedersen, Deutschland. Hopefully I’ll be back someday.
I’ll be traveling to Spain and Italy after the program so
the adventure isn’t quite over yet. Tshcuss for now!
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