Berlin Excursion

Last week we all visited Berlin for an academic excursion.  I went straight from Prague where I spent the weekend before and had a bit of trouble on the way.  I left my purse (which contained my IDs, credit cards, cash, phones, and camera) on the train and it left again before I could get it.  I lucked out though because I ended up being able to pick it up later that night because a nice man had turned it in to DB.  Our first day in Berlin though was spent on a bike tour the city where we rode past all of the major tourist sites.  Afterwards we were all starved and went to the Brauhaus Lemke for a delicious German meal. 

Day 2 began with a trip to the Charite Museum for the History of Medicine where we saw a lot more diseased organs that have been preserved for years and Dr. Wasser gave us a lecture on the founder's history.  We then had a free afternoon where we got some currywurst (which Berlin is famous for), then walked along the mile long segment of the East Side Gallery.  This is the largest remaining segment of the Berlin Wall and is painted the entire way with graffiti.  Afterwards we visited with some medical students in Berlin where they showed us some of their training devices.  One of these devices included an aging suit where the person wearing it experiences what it's like to be old where it's hard to move, see, and hear.  Another device was a pair of gloves that imitate what it's like to have Parkinson's where your hands shake uncontrollably.  However, the last device was my personal favorite where we could try to intubate a dummy (which I did successfully on my first try!).  After playtime was over I ended the day shopping at a (HUGE) local mall where I ate my second döner in two days (Berlin is also supposed to have the best döners).

 

Our third day began with a trip to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp located near Berlin.  It was was originally designed to be a work camp for criminals but thousands of people still suffered and died there.  The tour of course had a different feel from any of the others we have been on this semester but I fell the visit was necessary and educational because it is important to learn from that past so that it doesn't repeat itself.  Later in the day we visited the German Bundestag, the German Parliament building, where we toured the building and in the end got to go up in the huge glass dome that tops the building.  We then went as a group to a Moroccan restaurant that had delicious food and fun live music.

Our last day in Berlin began with a trip to the Natural History Museum.  It was one of the best that I have been to and contained the world's largest dinosaur skeleton along with thousands of preserved species.  We walked through the museum for a few hours and ogled at the various exhibits before our next stop, the Berlin Zoo.  It's been a long time since I've been to a zoo so I enjoyed looking at all of the animals and took wayyyyy too many pictures.

On Friday we left Berlin for Duderstadt, the headquarters for the prosthetics company Ottobock.  There we learned about their different products and how they worked as well as toured their production and distribution center.  Learning about their devices as well as touring their facilities was my favorite part of the excursion and I now may be interested in working with prosthetics in the future.