After the non-stop walking the last five days, I have earned one day of rest. The Museum of Anesthesiology was a nice change of pace from the excitement of Amsterdam.
Very unfortunately, the Museum of Anesthesiology was quite soporific. The exhibits didn’t put any of the history in context for me, as most of the information was presented as “This is what was done here and at this time” but never answered any “why” questions. The too-few times when the museum touched on the human side of the story were the most interesting points, which is unfortunate since the tour guide was a living legend in the field. For instance, he had been the first doctor to save a patient using a certain machine that was one display. In fairness, there were several biographical portraits on the walls about important players in the history of anesthesia, but they were all in German.
The trip to Köln next day packed in more than enough excitement to make up for it. I had glimpsed the Dom from the train last week, but I was unprepared for how massive it is. I just sort of figured that after the Munster in Bonn I would be like, “Cathedrals? Pfft. I’ve seen cathedrals. They bore me now,” but seeing the Dom was an incredibly moving experience because I couldn’t help but imagine the thousands of people over the centuries who made it their life’s work crafting the enormous building, or the hundreds of thousands of worshippers who had, over the last few hundred years, knelt and prayed in joy or in thankfulness or in sorrow where I was standing. I’m not religious, but every lovingly-crafted detail of the Dom, from the stonework to the stained glass, vibrated with a rich and very human history.
After touring that temple to the loftiest planes of human creativity and ingenuity, we visited a monument to the ugliness of which people are capable. The El-De House is a memorial and museum about Köln’s darkest moments during the Nazi era. The unassuming grey building had been the headquarters of the SS with its basement serving as a prison and torture chamber. All paper records from that time had been destroyed by the Nazis, leaving only the testimony of survivors and the defiant scrawls on the wall of the cells as evidence of the atrocities committed there. No one knows the number of Jews or political prisoners that had been confined to that underground prison, and no one knows how many were tortured and murdered.
You have to wonder why the guards let the prisoners keep their pencils, their knives, or any other implements they used to scratch their stories on the yellow-grey walls. Some victims obviously intended their messages to embolden their fellow captives (Viva la France), or to express their anger at the “Fascist Assholes.” Maybe the Gestapo saw the lists of names and dates, attempted memorials to the murdered cellmates, as a tool to demoralize and squash the hope of the incarcerated.
The darkness of the El-De House was dispersed over the rest of the afternoon. Köln is a lively and beautiful city, which made the few hours I got separated from the group and completely lost rather pleasant. While I’m not a huge shopper, I did manage to part with €2.90 for one of those loopy neck scarves that all the Germans who know what’s up seem to be wearing. All I need is a pair of jeggings and I’ll blend right in. While the weather got cold and drizzly, the guide to take us to the top of the Dom never materialized, and our group acquired a creepy stalker who looked like Billy Corgan in a Charlie Brown shirt, the evening was a satisfying blur of ice cream and gorgeous scenery.
The next morning, I got to wake up bright and early and do my least favorite thing in the world—watch human bodies get cut up. The patient had barely been scrubbed when my vision started tunneling and the room became too hot. I’m Her Majesty the High Queen of Queasiness sometimes, and I was holding court that morning like I haven’t since I took Meats Honors class my freshman year. I start to lose my peripheral vision, and the rest blotches to purple. My hearing fades and my stomach drops to the floor.
I would have liked to stay and watch the surgery, but I know when I can handle something and when I can’t. Luckily, I didn’t have to sit around and feel sorry for myself the rest of the day because that night we got to watch some serious fuβball. The US women’s team was taking on the French team in Mönchengladbach. I’m generally don’t like sports and it took me the entire first half to figure out that America was wearing white—not red and blue, but it the energy in the stadium was awesome. I didn’t get painted up for the game, but I did get to stay warm, so it was a fair trade.
The morning after the game was wonderful. I overslept my alarm and forgot my wallet so I had neither money for lunch nor my public transportation pass. I felt like a complete criminal riding the tram—I couldn’t help but give everyone who looked vaguely like an authority figure the side eye just in case they were a conductor ready to throw me in scary German prison for using public transportation without a ticket.
In the lectures we are finally shifting more towards medical history, as opposed to history history, and this afternoon we got to see some gorgeous exotic plants. Now I just need to stress out a bit more about the unnavigable transportation situation that will hopefully get me to Paris tomorrow…
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