Music, Mozart, and Medicine

Post for July 24th.
Oh, Vienna. The city felt so clean and quaint because of the stark, white buildings and the large, detailed statues in every direction. My favorite style of art includes the statues of the greek and roman time periods and seeing Vienna so nicely decorated with them was unbelievable. I cannot imagine getting up every morning to start my day and seeing such beautiful works of art as I make my way to school. My favorite was the statue of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, in front of the Parliament because she is my absolute favorite goddess of greek mythology.

Vienna was so rich in musical culture and I was glad that our program activities for the week focused on that part of the city. The Mozart concert was one of my favorite cultural experiences thus far. I have never been to anything like it before and I really enjoyed the sophisticated atmosphere and the music of Mozart's Greatest Hits. The conductor made the concert much more entertaining with his ability to instruct the entire audience to clap along without saying a single word!

On Thursday we visited the Josephinum, which was like a medical wax museum with models of the human body used for teaching. The exhibit reminded me of Body Worlds, which I love, so I enjoyed that very much. It was just amazing how the models were simply that and not real bodies because of the accuracies and the great detail of them all. Although medicine has advanced greatly, it was unbelievable to think that many of the tools and techniques that we use today were discovered so long ago and have only been modified and not necessarily changed completely.

My favorite part of Vienna by far was the trip on Friday to the Medical University. I found the skills lab with Anna to be one of the most interesting and helpful things that we have done. My first reaction was that I did not want to attempt anything because I am definitely not well equipped to be successful at any of the medical skills that we were there to practice. However, I was brave enough to try and ended up enjoying all that I was able to learn. I learned how to do stitches, draw blood, and insert a catheter. My favorite was drawing blood because I was able to get it on my first try!

Although not part of the program activities, karaoke night was Tuesday because of the convenience of the bar across the street from the hotel. All I can say is that I am definitely coming out of my shell thanks to all of the wonderful friends I have made on this trip because I sang a song all by myself! I have never done anything like that before because of how shy and reserved I am but it was fun! I love everyone on this trip.

Even though Vienna was super hot without air conditioning, I enjoyed my time spent there.

Cheers,

Brittany