Honestly, where do I even begin with all that I have learned just within the past week's lectures? From how and where the human brain processes sound to Leonardo da Vinci was a super good-looking guy in his prime to the health benefits and history of saunas. This past week was a wild ride just as the week before it. Prior to the Nazi euthanasia programs lecture I had read a bit about it in the book I was assigned to read this past spring semester for my Genetics course, She Has Her Mother's Laugh. In the first half of the book, Galton and several other racists scientists are mentioned along with their negative impacts on human lives and on science. What these "scientists" and "doctors" did was monstrous and most of the efforts to purify the human blood through Eugenics were begun back home in our very own United States of America. These scientists did not consider socioeconomic status as a factor that influences a person's intelligence and degree of education. If you were poor, it's simply because you were feeble-minded, and you should absolutely not be allowed to procreate whatsoever. Of course, the Nazis twisted this belief to fit their own diabolical agendas. There was still a lot of content I had never been aware of before; I thought I had known basically all there is to know about the Holocaust and the demise of millions of people, but I didn't. The monstrosity of the Nazi regime knew no bounds.
So far, the HoM courses have allowed me immense insight regarding numerous historical medical figures, especially women, that I should either admire and somewhat replicate or scorn and completely avoid replication. A lot can be learned from the recorded actions and beliefs of the humans of the past. Many of their medical methods seem completely barbaric or silly to us modern humans, but they were viewed as absolutely necessary and potentially remedied or cured a person's illness. I also had absolutely no idea that so many Catholic saints were involved in the field of medicine and consequently revered for their contributions. I knew of Hildegard of Bingen, because I chose to make her the subject of a project in the 7th grade. I don't remember how I discovered her, probably from a list of famous historical women or something. The lecture regarding her still educated me about many of her other notable contributions.
Excursions/Weekend Vacays:
On Monday I visited Koblenz with the program. In Koblenz we visited the theater and the large fortress there. I had never toured a theater prior to the excursion. I was surprised by how small the theater was, but based on the most recent Neuro of Music class, the reasoning behind this was due to the size of the stage and how sound would travel from the performances to the audience. The theater was also basically a maze. I lost my sense of direction in that place. I’m sure the employees have no problem transporting props and materials around and getting themselves around, but every room we visited seemed to be down a set of stairs then up a set of stairs then to the right and left and left and right and some other direction I couldn’t process. Somehow we ended up in the basement where the restrooms were. One of the tour guides let me have one of the souvenir Theater Koblenz bags for free, adding to my ridiculously rapidly growing souvenir canvas bag collection. What intrigued me the most about the visit to the theater was of course the costume room; the large collection of clothes and shoes was overloading my senses and was completely beckoning me to shuffle through every article of clothing for style inspiration and design ideas. “My eyes were the size of saucers,” is an old phrase that I feel very much pertains to that situation. Our visit to the fort turned out sorta fruitful but not as fruitful as Dr. Waltz was planning. The whisper chamber we were supposed to visit was closed to the public, because it was being prepared for a performance or something. We spent the rest of the time there taking tons of photos with the incredible view of Koblenz in the background. I’m pretty sure somewhere around a hundred pics were taken at that one site by me alone. And of course, I snagged a souvenir pin and sticker and a had to sprint my slow little legs on over to the group that had walked a few hundred feet away.
The excursion to Cologne consisted of being given a tour by the most hilarious lady on this planet; I want to be her when I grow up/grow old. Basically everything she said had me going, “PAHAHA!” What an incredibly spunky and quick-witted little lady she was. I finally got to see some Roman ruins in a place that I least expected them, the northeastern part of Germany. Before then, and before the HoM lectures I had been given by Dr. Wasser, I had never considered the vast expansiveness of the Roman Empire and all of its colonies. Sadly, our group couldn’t enter the small Roman artifact museum by the Cologne cathedral due to it being renovated (if I remember correct). We toured the city for a bit, plopped our butts down in the lobby of an art museum that I really would have loved to tour, and then visited a perfume museum. I was pretty surprised and disappointed to discover that their perfumes didn’t smell all that great. The lunch that the group had at a German restaurant near the HBF was also a peculiar experience within itself. I decided to try a plate with a very long German name that pretty much included smoked salmon, potato patties, a dense slice of bread, and a sour cream and onion type of spread. I didn’t know how to eat it so I decided to just slap pieces of salmon onto pieces of potato patties along with the spread; the whole combo tasted pretty good. I asked one of our coordinators, Brian, if I was eating the dish correctly, and I wasn’t. Apparently, you’re supposed to dip pieces of salmon into the spread. I tried that, and the mushy texture didn’t sit well with my gag reflex.
Paris was a whole other story, a mainly disappointing and short story. Right and left people tried scamming the four of us who traveled there, a few of them succeeded just a bit. I was pretty impressed with the hostel we stayed at, St. Christopher’s Inn. It was fairly clean, well-managed, and had a whole club attached that alternated as a breakfast area in the mornings. Our group went to the club on the Friday night that we arrived to Paris. We ordered a large, group alcoholic drink and did one set of cough syrup-tasting shots. Even though the club wasn’t too far from our room, causing us to hear the music playing until the early hours of the morning, most of us fell asleep pretty instantaneously and stayed asleep. For the whole weekend, I must’ve gotten only 8 hours of sleep. Surprisingly, I function better on 4-5 hours of sleep than I do on a full 7 or 8. The rave was pretty incredible. I danced my little legs off for a little over an hour. Even though we arrived at around 8:30, our group was in line at a food truck for an hour or so. The four of us and a couple of other French-speaking Americans battled a couple of guys who were trying to cut in line from the left side. We though fast and those standing on the left of the line (who were in line) turned their backs towards the would-be cheaters so they could not insert themselves where they didn’t belong. We left at 11:30, an hour early, to catch an earlier train home and to retrieve my beloved sticker-covered water bottle. Too bad the French are selfish and inconsiderate and decided to throw my whole metal water bottle away. They really don’t like Americans. In the train station, a person in our group got shoved through the train gates by the angry, impatient, selfish, and inconsiderate mob of French rave attendees. The passes that were also acquired for us by a very sketchy but aggressive guy were not round trip metro tickets; luckily, 3 tickets back to Paris only costed us 10 euros. Overall, the landmarks of Paris are great (the 1/10th of The Louvre we saw, the remnants of Notre Dame, and the Eiffel Tower were breathtaking sights to see) the people of Paris very plainly suck. Not at all sure that I’d visit ever again.
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