The Final Week

Our sixth and last week in the program had begun. Monday the 26^th of June was our last day in Bonn. We visited the anesthesia museum in town on this last day and had a tour given to us by Dr. Wasser himself on the history and development of modern anesthesia. I found it very fitting to visit this museum after having shadowed a team of anesthesiologists the week before at the hospital. Afterwards, we went home and started packing for our final trip to Berlin and said our goodbyes to our host families. It was an odd feeling knowing we would not be coming back to Bonn or to our host families again. I think most of us would agree this city became a sort of second home for all of us and coming back to it after our weekend travels was always a great feeling.

Early Tuesday morning we took off on a train to Berlin. The whole ride was approximately five or so hours, which happened to be quite convenient for all of us since it gave us a lot of time to work on our papers for our neurophysiology of music class. Upon arrival, we walked over to our hotel for check-in, then headed over to Alexanderplatz where we went on a bike tour once again. Thankfully, no one fell off their bikes or ran into poles this time around. We were split into two groups, half us going with tour guide Ryan and the other with Sion. My group was the one led by Ryan and I must say he did an excellent job with the tour. We visited several sites around the city, including the very famous Berlin wall memorial, and received plenty of knowledge about the history behind each site, much of which related back to the world wars.

Wednesday was perhaps one of the most intriguing days that week. We visited the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial and Museum. The place was enormous and breathtaking to say the least. Walking through it knowing the horrific events that took place there and realizing there were countless other camps like it around not only Germany but its surrounding countries as well was just eerie and difficult to believe. Our tour was guided by Ryan, who once again did an excellent job presenting the historical significance of this site. The entire tour lasted about three hours, and like I said earlier the place was gigantic so there was no way we could visit every part of it unfortunately. After the tour, it was time for our group lunch, what everyone has highly anticipating all week. Group lunches and dinners are always fun because for one thing, the food is always great, and, we get to sit together as a whole group and convene which we don’t get to do all that often. The theme of this restaurant was potatoes. Every dish was either primarily potato-based or had some sort of potato aspect to it, which none of us had any complaints about. Needless to say the food was very satisfying and we all had a great time there. The rest of the day was free time which some of us used to do work while others went shopping and some just walked around the city and hung out.

The following day was another for which many of us were very excited for. The majority of the group bought tickets for the Blink 182 concert playing that Thursday night in Berlin. However, before getting into that, there were a few excursions we went on earlier that day with Dr. Wasser. After breakfast at the hotel, we went to the Alchemy fair exhibition at the Kulturforum. This place was very interesting, it displayed a lot of ancient theory and artifacts used for the practice of alchemy. There were also many paintings and other forms of creative art that were really impressive. We then went over to the Otto Bock Science Center for prosthetics and received a tour from one of the guides there. This place was one of my favorites as I’ve always been interested in prosthetic technology. There was some talk about prosthetic limbs becoming so advanced that people would consider losing their arms or legs on purpose to get superior prosthetic replacements. The thought of such thing, although somewhat scary, is extremely intriguing and surely exciting as well. This was our last excursion for the day so after the Otto Bock center all we had left was the highly anticipated Blink 182 concert. Needless to say the concert was amazing and filled with nostalgia just as we were all hoping for.

Friday was our last day in the program, sadly, and we kicked it off with a Rudolf Virchow lecture by Dr. Wasser after breakfast. We then went to the Charite Museum of Medical History and had a very enjoyable tour there were we saw much of the early thought and practice of medicine from the 1800s and learned about the way doctors were trained back then. There were countless specimens available for us to look at, all with many different types of diseases and terminal conditions, much of which I had never seen or heard of before. This museum was one of my favorite from this trip likely due to how good of a job our tour guide did presenting all the information and stories to us. We also had a small tour and question and answer session with a sixth year medical student of the medical school there and got to play around with some patient models and simulations which was fun. Finally, the farewell group dinner at the Kasbah took place around 7pm. The Kasbah is a Moroccan restaurant and although the food was different from anything I’d tried before, it was very good. This quickly became a very emotional night for everyone as we started to realize it would be our last meal together on the program and that we would all part ways (at least for some time) the following morning. We all shared laughs, some shed tears, and the whole place was full of love and friendship. I will miss everyone in this program, all the excursions, the trips, the adventures, the meals, and all of the moments of confusion (which there were many of). I’m looking forward to meeting up with all the new friends made during this time back in College Station where I’m sure we’ll continue to have a great time together and continuously grow from each other.