Goodnight, sleep tight, and don't let the bed bugs bite ;-)

Well, another week has flown by. After a relaxed weekend in Interlaken, I was ready for our group excursion to Vienna. Monday we had a history of medicine lecture and our pre-departure meeting. After class, I went to buy a few light weight clothing items for the hot weather in Vienna and then went to the taco bar with Emily, Sam and Jackson. I spent the rest of the night packing and having dinner with my host family. We got a very early start to the day on Tuesday with a 3:20 AM wakeup call to begin our journey to Vienna. Once we arrived, we dropped off our bags and then went to meet Dr. Schnabel for a city tour. Along the way we ate some herbs and drank the urine of a young healthy boy to protect ourselves from the plague. This tour was fun and a great way to get to see the city. Tuesday evening we had a group dinner at the Goulash Museum. I ordered the beef goulash and it was sooo tasty. Paired with a glass of white wine, it was a perfect meal after a long day.

 We were all pretty tired after being awake for so many hours, so we went to the hotel and slept right after dinner. I slept from 10 PM to 8 AM… a whole 10 hours!! It was amazing, and the air conditioning was the cherry on top. On Wednesday morning we visited the drogistenmuseum. Something I found very interesting was that pharmacies of the past were not strictly for medicinal drugs, but for all kinds of chemical preparations used for many different purposes. For example, we learned that the chemicals used for developing photographs was sold in pharmacies. This sounds very similar to pharmacies today! After leaving the museum, we had a free afternoon. We went to walk around the Naschmarkt and had lunch. After exploring for a bit, we went back to the hotel to rest and refresh before going to get schnitzel for dinner. The schnitzel was very tasty, but the portion sizes were gigantic! I wish we would’ve known beforehand so we would’ve shared instead of each ordering our own plates. After dinner we went to the Prater amusement park.  We rode a few rides and had tons of fun. On Thursday we visited the Freud museum, which was really interesting. I’ve always thought psychology was interesting so learning about the work Freud did was very enjoyable. Thursday evening was the concert. The church was really beautiful and the music was nice, and it was fun to see everyone dressed up. After the concert a few of us went to a local night club and had lots of fun. Unfortunately, we didn’t check the late night train schedule, so when we got to the train station at the end of the night we realized the trains had already stopped running. Naturally, we had to snap a photo. We ended up getting a taxi and everything worked out just fine.

 Friday, Dr. Wasser took us to do some tai chi at stadtpark. The weather was not as hot as the previous days and the park was really pretty. While we were doing tai chi, we noticed some school age children on the other side of the park imitating us. It was really cute and quite funny. After our visit to the park, we toured the House of Music. I really enjoyed learning some of the history of music, especially since it’s such a big part of Vienna’s culture.

 After finishing our activities Friday, Emily and I headed to the train station to travel to Munich. We arrived pretty late, so we went straight to our hotel and went to sleep that night. Saturday morning we visited the Residence museum, which is a museum in the palace complex that housed rulers of Bavaria throughout history. We got to see lots of historical artifacts and even the bedrooms of old kings and queens. In the afternoon we went to the Dachau concentration camp memorial site. This trip was difficult and brought out a lot of emotions, but I’m really glad we got the chance to go. It’s important that we continue to remember and talk about the tragedies that happened so we ensure they never happen again. When we got back into town, we went to the famous Hofbrauhaus for some beer and pretzels. After spending some time there, we did a little bit of souvenir shopping and then headed back to our hotel. 

Sunday morning we enjoyed a nice breakfast and then went to the train station. Everything was going smoothly on the trip home until we reached the Frankfurt airport stop. Here we were informed that the AC had stopped working on two of the cars so they had to be evacuated. Of course, no one wanted to evacuate the train so the process took a very long time. By the time the two cars had been vacated, the entire aisle in our car was filled with people and their luggage. This made for quite an uncomfortable ride, but we made it home ok. When I finally made it back to Bonn, I had a nice dinner with my host family and got to bed early.

This morning, I was on the way to class when I looked down to notice a few bites on my arm. I had noticed them a couple days earlier, but didn’t think much of it. For some reason, my first thought this morning… BED BUGS. I started googling and then consulted Dr. Wasser. I’ve been advised to proceed by washing alllll of my clothes and bedding and disinfecting my luggage items. WOOHOOOO! I guess this is just another part of the hero’s journey. Lesson learned: always check the bed, even if you’re in a “nice” hotel. Well, until next week!