A Tiny Istanbul

Todays city tour of Berlin was absolutely exhausting...but I am chock full of Berlin tidbits! I was oblivious to the fact that the building in front of our hotel was in fact a Nazi bunker, the building with the amazing golden dome was a synagogue, or that women of a 'horizontal profession' tend to stick in packs. The tour guide was fun, although I felt a little shafted that my legs are so short and we had to run up all of those stairs. My laziness aside, I loved going to the Turkish restaurant and listening to our tour guides views, politically, of the Turks in Germany. it is amying how everything, in one way or another, always seems to be related to WWII. I felt some of my heart break when I heard that many amazing works of art were destroyed during the war, and that the remains of Troy were stolen by the Russians.

Professor Wassers lecture on Vierchov was very entertaining. Considering Im of the 'bleeding heart' variety, I loved the fact that he socialized medicine, brazenly critized the governments inattention towards typhus in Poland, and instated sewage systems in the state. What made this lecture even more awe inspiring was the fact that Vierchov himself gave a lecture in the room where we were in.

Going to the medical museum was certainly an experience. Although I was completely fasinated by the case studies on display, which included the glaucoma, psychosis, and crazy out of control infections, I felt quite differently when I went into the room with all the specimens. I suppose, although this might be an extremely old fashioned viewpoint, that seeing all those body parts on display was sort of dehumanizing to look at. I mentally had to say a prayer for all those pickled fetuses. I do think that Brandon had a point though when he told me that you need to be able to learn about diseases before you can help others by treating them. certainly something to think about. Making all sorts of ethical decisions is essential to medicine, and I had no idea how deeply ingrained my viewpoints are until I stood there and looked at a display that was made for the sake of science.

Going to visit the hotbed of the Turkish community, I had the most amazing lamb with something of a flour flat bread thing. I translated this into a tortilla-barbacoa, and I was good to go. The drink, Arayan, was certainly an experience. Most interesting. Our tour guide jokenly told us that we were entering Istanbul, and I found it kind of funny.