July 15-18

Well now it is time to see the animal side of medicine, to be honest at first I was a little hesitant because I didn't think there was much of a connection. When we arrived at the small animal clinic I thought we had made a wrong turn somewhere because the facility was nicer than some human hospitals I have visited (except that instead of beds the animals would get cages). Then came the time to tour the horse clinic and it was just amazing to me how many luxuries the horses get while in the hospital. The air conditioned barn was the cherry on top, it had a special spongy surface that was comfortable for the horses and it looked nicer than some houses. The surgery area was pretty much the same as human ones (except that you can't really cart a horse around on a bed and everything was about 5x bigger). We also got to see a horse getting neutered and the same sterile techniques that are used in human medicine were used for the horse, except I did notice that the surgeons wore boots and the observers scrubs did not have sleeves which I found a little odd.
The next adventure was visiting the cow clinic which in my opinion was a little underwhelming coming from the horse clinic. It just did not feel as clean and as modern as the horse clinic, but then again cows are bred as food sources and not pets. Another thing the tour guide made sure to emphasize was that since the buildings are guarded historically, nothing can be changed or upgraded. Now on to everyone in the group's favorite part of the trip, the rectal palpation. Well, we first had to give the cow an epidural and I somewhat foolishly volunteered and had to put the needle in the cow's back. The nice woman explained exactly how to do it and me, being me, thought I knew how to do it and just jabbed the needle in there and then the woman said ok, now lets check for a vacuum. She then proceeds to move the needle around a bit and says, hmm that isn't right and next thing we know the needle is filling up with blood and she pulls the needle out and blood comes gushing out like Old faithful. I apparently hit a small artery and the cow had to be shot, no I'm just kidding, they just stopped the bleeding and continued on. Next we learned about the IVF in cattle and that was interesting because it revolutionized the cattle industry. Then our train to Bonn was next and we were off to Interloken for the long weekend.

We got to Switzerland the next morning and had to take like 15 types of transportation to get to the beautiful Mountain Hostel in Grimmelwald. We met some people from Rice there and exchanged things we planned to do while in Europe. The next day was filled with canyoning where I was branded with the picture that is at the beginning of the post. Then we went on a beautiful hike up to "dance floor" but couldn't make it to the top becaue we didn't think we had the time (it turns out we did) and then we hopped on a train to Austria and had my first couchette experience.