Vienna I

I don’t always wake up at 4 AM but when I do…
I don’t remember much about the
drive to the Cologne/Bonn Airport or the flight to Austria, but as soon as we
made it into the city of Vienna I knew it was worth the early departure time. Though I was still yawning at the time, our first
walk through the city while we learned about some of the medical history of the
places we visited would have in itself left a big impression on me. I’m not a well-traveled person by any stretch
of the imagination. That being said,
Vienna is probably the most beautiful city I have ever seen. Now when I imagine
the best cities in Europe the buildings there will always come to mind. Lunch was after that and we got our fill to
say the least. In fact, I’m pretty sure I didn’t feel hunger at any point during
this trip and probably will need some time to deal with the withdrawal from
returning to normal portion sizes. Next,
we made our way to the Museum of Vienna and took a tour through the development
of the city and its surrounding area. I
thought it was a nice touch that there were multiple models of the city to show
its progression due to the events that the guide described to us. After this we pushed on to St. Stephan’s Cathedral,
which obviously is an impressive building, but the Catacombs beneath were even
cooler in my opinion. Seeing remains
like the stack of bones down there was just awesome and I’m sure there are haunted
houses modeled after the whole setup. For
dinner we visited a traditional Viennese restaurant and I got my first taste of
Wiener schnitzel (two of them) and was not disappointed with the part that I
could finish. It was a sweet ending to a
long day.
The
next morning we made the trek over to Vienna Medical School to attend a lecture
from Professor März about
the medical school, the school system in the country, and process of going into
the medical field in Europe. Some facts such as that there is no cost for medical
school make me wish I was going to school here instead of in America, but there
are a lot of differences between the two I’d have to consider. Apparently,
after secondary education in Europe one would immediately have to decide
whether or not to attend medical school and begin the six year program and then
have six years of graduate medical education. I don’t like the idea of having a
specialized education at such an early stage, or having to make major life altering
decisions like what career to pursue at the age of 18, but I can see the advantages
to the system. The fact that medical training in any of the EU countries is
recognized by all the others is also a great benefit of doing one’s schooling
here. Next, we went to the Narrenturm to see a very interesting collection of
wax figures, and preserved remains of severely diseased human body parts. As
luck would have it, lunch was shortly after and then we made it to the
Josefinum to see its famous, extensive collection of wax models made in the 18th
century that were used for medical teaching. Soon after that I was off to find
some dress shoes for the evening, as we were to see the Weiner Symphoniker

perform. I wasn’t sure if I could handle a two hour concert after another long
day on short sleep, but it was an incredible show and I really enjoyed it.

Now
that sounds like a great trip already, but we were just getting started…