A-Achen: the little town

The Aachen Rathaus (Town Hall)

We took a day off a few weeks ago, and visited Aachen, I nice little town only an hour east of Bonn. We visited the Imperial Cathedral, or the Royal Church of St. Mary along with the treasury of the relics held in the Aachen Dom.

A history of heart valves
Some designed by Helmholtz at the bottom of the display

But before that, we visited the Helmholtz Institut of Cardiovascular Engineering! An amazing place of research and cutting edge technology in the field of heart valves and pumps.

With devices that inspired some thoughts behind our semester long project in our Physiology course, and practical applications of Computer Science (Labview and MATlab), Helmholtz is a good idea of what it means to study biomedical engineering and what research is.

Guys laughing, wearing jeans and t shirts, and watching an artificial left ventricle pump viscous fluid for hours upon hours. Just casually working with sophisticated equipment and intelligent people, some very cool things going on in this field.

After that, we went to the town of Aachen, famous for their Printen, a type of ginger bread (and I took away a huge chocolate covered gingerbread bunny). I also rediscovered my love for bratwurst. At the market in town, I ate two bratwurst mit brotchen (cooked sausage with bread), imagine a hotdog, except with a delicious hotdog and a delicious bun.

It's hard to tell, but on the left and right are images of
yellow bombs falling onto the city of Aachen.

In the treasury were relics such as Emperor Charlemagne's tomb and a map of New Jerusalem on a cross. In the Cathedral is the throne of Jesus Christ's second coming, and the remains of Charlemagne. This Cathedral is named the Imperial Cathedral, as it was the site of German Coronation for 42 monarchs for 600 years. Even despite it's history, it was yet another site of destruction from WWII, memorialized in the replacement stained glass in the choir hall.

It's a jaguar. Or a puma. Just on a statue.
I had to have a photo with it.

Also I found out that this is the town of statues. Around every corner and in every platz (square) there was a new statue. My favorite was one that had adjustable hinges! the most popular one in town.

All in all, a very fun little town. It had a quaint feel that made me feel like I was in the Germany that you hear about in the movies! As opposed to the Germany you hear about from my blogs, hah! I'm still holding onto my chocolate gingerbread bunny, maybe some of y'all will get a piece!