Day 10 & 11

Location: Berlin, Deutschland

Another exciting two days in Berlin. Much too be seen, much to be learned.

We began Wednesday by going to the Deutsches Historisches Museum. I was super excited for this one because it covered ALL of German history including my favorite era - the turn of the 20th Century. Before we got to that portion of the museum though, we had to traverse through an earlier 2000 years. I felt like we had to rush through with our limited schedule and were only able to hit the highlights. But WOW those were some highlights! Artifacts from the campaigns of Herman the German; a portrait of Charlemange; a copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence in German; the hat, saber, and spurs of Napolean; the German Constitution from the 1848 Revolution; a statue of Otto von Bismark; banners from the Reunification rallies; and many artifacts from World War I. All of which I found facinating. We concluded the day at the small Rober Koch Institute. Here, we learned about Robert Koch, a famed pathologist. As I am interested in pathology myself, I found the museum quite facinating. Still, hidden away in one corner was one of the most facinating objects in the building - an original mosaic of Byzantine Emperess Theodora. The evening was spent doing laundry (nothing really exciting there).

The next morning, I woke up thinking I had overslept but actually beat most people to breakfast. For the morning, we went to the Concentration Camp Sachsenhausen in Berlin. At this camp, where some of the original barricks still stand, we were shown exhibits about the horrid and perverse scientific experiments that were administered onto the inmates led by the woman who had completed most of the research. It was moving and thought provoking to see how low the ethics of science had fallen under the Nazis. We were then taken through some points of the camp including the execution building where a memorial had been set up. On one end, there was a statue of two people carrying a third. I don't particularly know why, but I felt something when I saw this. The statue itself was probably not as much during the summer, but in winter, when it was covered in snow, I seemed to feel the struggle and desperation of the prisoners. After a quick lunch at the Hauptbahnhof, we went back to the Charite Museum to tour their specimen and hospital history exhibits. Another wonderful collection of artifacts, though some were quite grotesque. At one point, our tour guide, Tom, was discussing some of the old tools and procedures used during difficult births. I was at one side just nodding along. Why? I had done every one of the procedues on cattle while when I worked in the vet hospital in Clarendon. The day was rounded out with a lecture by Dr. Wasser about Rudolf Virchow, a famed German doctor, given in Virchow's old lecture room of the Charite.

This weekend, we are going to visit the Otto Bock facilities and then I will be going to Hamburg.