Dr. Wasser lectured to us about several important people in medical history as we toured Vienna on Wednesday morning. We also got see the birthplace of Mozart. Lunch that day was amazing. I had veal schnitzel, lightly fried, and with a little lemon on top, it was perfect. Wednesday afternoon, we toured the city more and got to see St. Stephan’s cathedral and took a guided tour of the cathedral’s catacombs, which were awesome. We got to see the old part which had recently been restored and looked modern, and then got to see the “new” part, which is actually several hundred years old, and is the epitome of a creepy catacomb. Low lighting, low archways, thin corridors, and rooms literally filled with bones. In one of the rooms, the bones had been stacked like firewood to make room for more bones. I felt like I was on a movie set, and had to remind myself that this was actually real. Afterwards, we visited the Café Demel, one of Vienna’s famous bakeries, for cake and drinks.
Thursday morning we visited the Vienna medical school and were given a presentation about medical school systems in Vienna vs. the United States. Afterwards, we visited the Josephinum, a medical museum which houses one of the most impressive anatomical and obstetric wax figure collections in the world. It was amazing to see the detail that went into these models (which were from the 1700s). They looked incredibly life like, and the ones that had skin on them (which were used to showcase the internal organs) even had real hair implanted into them. The ones without skin were used to showcase the human musculature and cardiovascular systems. While not 100% accurate, these models served as a testimony to how dedicated the makers were to producing an accurate model that could be used for study by the medical students of the time.
For lunch that day, one of the Viennese medical students who was touring the Josephinum with us took us to a Pay-As-You-Wish restaurant. The food was mostly white rice and beef and chicken, and it was amazing. There was even a hippie section of the restaurant which had blankets all over it and you had to take your shoes off and sit on the blankets to eat. Obviously, I ate there.
That afternoon we visited the Pathologic Anatomy Museum. It contains one of the largest collections of organs in the world, some healthy, most are definitely not. We saw cysts that were literally the size of beach balls, all sorts of skin conditions, fractured skulls, and scoliosis (among other things). It was all very interesting, though some of it was pretty nasty.
That night we went to the operetta house in Vienna to see The Count from Luxembourg. It was a light-hearted comedic love story, and even though it was in German, it was still enjoyable to watch, and try to pick out phrases that we had learned. The music was also really good. Coming from a classical music background made the music even more enjoyable.
Friday morning we visited the famous “Spanische Hofreitschule,” the Spanish Riding School in Vienna which is home to the famous Lipizzaner stallions. It is the oldest riding school in the world, and is a significant part of Austria’s cultural heritage. The winter riding school building was incredible. It was completed in 1735, and when I walked in I felt like I had taken a few steps back in time. We got to sit down for a couple hours and watch as the riders trained their horses and were accompanied by waltz music. It was really neat, and also relaxing, which made for a nice break from our usual fast-paced mornings.
Friday afternoon, we visited the Sigmund Freud museum, which is located in his actual apartment where he lived and worked for the majority of his adult life. Dr. Wasser gave us an on-site lecture about Freud while we were in the museum, which I found to be very interesting. When most people think of Freud, they think of sex. This isn’t really all that wrong, but it was interesting to hear a more complete picture of who Freud was and where he got some of his ideas. I didn’t realize it before, but he actually led a more difficult life than I had imagined. After the lecture, we were given a short tour of the museum which included seeing some of his original furniture, sculpture collection, hat, and one of his ashtrays. Afterwards, we took a brief tour of the Wien Museum and learned about the history of Vienna.
Saturday was the best last day I could have asked for. After breakfast, we went to Vienna’s Natural History Museum. They had the typical history museum stuff: arrowheads, pottery, statues, dinosaur skeletons, and fossils. But what I really wanted to see was the Body Worlds exhibit. This wasn’t just a human Body Worlds though, this exhibit was almost exclusively devoted to showing animals. It was awesome. In the first room there were various display cases showing the nervous system of a cat, as well as various other organs from different animals. The second room was the small animal room which contained sheep, goats, and reindeer (there were others, but I can’t specifically remember them). The next room was for larger animals and the one human in the exhibit. This room contained a gorilla, a cow, and an ostrich, among others. The final room was for the two large animals in the exhibit: the elephant and the giraffe. The elephant had been expanded to allow for better viewing and the giraffe towered over everything else in the room. It was amazing to see the musculature on many of the animals, as well as their circulatory systems. It was also really neat because I knew what all of the organs were and what they did, so it was really neat to see how they are different and similar to human organs.
We had the afternoon off, so we did a little souvenir shopping and ate lunch at a wonderful Greek restaurant. The rest of the afternoon was spent packing and relaxing at the hotel and getting ready for our big farewell banquet at the 7 Stern Brau. The 7 Stern Brau was some of the best food we had on the trip. I had a pork skewer, apple strudel and the holiday beer which was quite good. That dinner is one I’ll remember for a long time. Afterwards, all of us got together in a circle right outside the restaurant and sang the Aggie War Hymn, which was another very memorable experience. Once back at the hotel, a few of us went outside to the courtyard to hang out and enjoy a cigar on the last night of the trip.
The next day we grabbed our bags, checked out of the hotel, returned our cell phones, hopped on a train, then a bus, then a plane to Frankfurt, and from there crossed the pond back to Houston. I’m back in the states now, but I know I won’t be here forever. I will definitely be going back.
No comments:
Post a Comment