This week has been crazy busy, but also a whole lot of fun. On Monday, we spent the morning at the Charite Hospital in the medical training center for doctors. I thought that both of our tour guides were really great, and it was very interesting to learn about the differences between German and American medical training. I still can’t believe that it’s practically free for them to go to college when it costs so much here in America. I feel like that would encourage a lot more students to attend university, so I wonder if it’s a lot harder for them to get accepted. Another thing that surprised me a lot was the fact that one of our guides (I think her name was Chrissy) said that all of the universities in Germany were considered about equal as far as prestige goes. She said that some were more difficult to get into than others because of class size, but in the end, a diploma from one university would mean about the same as a diploma from the rest. This is definitely not true about schools in the U.S. One thing that I forgot to ask about when we were there but that I wondered about later was how old the medical students are when they start training. Do they have to earn an undergraduate degree before they start the “N-shaped” program they were telling us about?
The training dummies that they were using at the hospital were really awesome, and probably a pretty great practice tool. They looked super realistic, and I would definitely be less nervous to perform a procedure on a live patient if I had practiced it on a dummy a hundred times already
I really enjoyed the city tour of Berlin that we took later that day. My favorite parts were the Brandenburg Gate (which looked really different in the daylight) and the memorial for the Jewish Holocaust victims. Even though it was a pretty abstract concept, I think that the concrete blocks were pretty impressive, especially once you got to the center of the memorial. It made me think of a bunch of skyscrapers in a city laid out with perpendicular streets. From the outside, you can’t tell how tall the blocks get in the middle, and especially with the snow covering the ground and making every direction look the same, it was easy to lose yourself among the rows.
Visiting the Otto Bock facility in the afternoon was awesome too. The whole building felt really futuristic, like we had stepped into a spaceship from a sci-fi movie. I think that my favorite prosthetic they had on display was the implant for patients with drop foot that sensed when the person was taking a step and provided and electrical impulse to help stimulate the muscle to flex. That was a really impressive combination of technology and the stuff we’ve been learning in physiology.
Yesterday was also a very jam-packed day. We took a trip to Dresden, which is probably my favorite city that we’ve visited so far. The massive cathedral there was amazing, and especially the exterior walls where you could see the dark bricks from the original structure incorporated into the new building. I was really happy that the sun came out when we were outside because it made the little square we were in look so cool. I also liked walking down to see the Elba River and the super old buildings that lined its banks. Lunch in Dresden was also really fun, and I’m still laughing at the face Michael made when Nils dropped his Aggie ring in his glass. The Hygiene Museum was also very, very interesting and fun. I loved how interactive it was and hot it was enjoyable even for people who didn’t speak German.
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