Berlin!

I have liked all the cities I have gone to so far, both during the day and during the night, but I would have to say that nothing beats Berlin. At first, I did not know what to expect. I imagined Berlin as that industrialized city where people are just running around worried about not being late to their jobs. At the same time I kept hearing stories about how Berlin was the place to be for people my age in order to party all night long. I guess the hardest thing was to simply imagine how a city that was divided by a wall and was a place of horror for many was now a place where people lived happily and had lots of fun.

During our ride to Berlin, I did nothing but sleep since I had stayed up until 4am the day before. I was so excited about Berlin that I couldn`t stop talking about it with my friends back in Texas. Before I knew it, there was only two hours and a half before meeting everyone. I decided to sleep for an hour, being afraid I was not going to be able to wake up, but my excitement didn`t even allowed me to sleep. After seven hours of sitting down, we finally arrived at our destination. With the great Berlin bear welcoming us, the bus ride turned from a long, tiring journey into a city tour of what is now the capital of Germany. We saw many touristic points such as Alex, a famous tower, and a famous shopping street before reaching our hotel. Once in the hotel, some friends and I decided to get some food since we had not eaten since we left at 6:30 am. I knew we were going to have a dinner in the afternoon paid by the school, so I only got myself a small plate of sour soup with chicken. After eating, the moment I was most afraid of was about to start. We were having a bike tour around Berlin, but since I did not have a decent childhood like everyone else, I did not know how to ride a bike. To my fortune, I was not alone on this one. Kristin, one of the AIB coordinators, had the best idea ever. While everyone else would ride the bike around the city, those who did not know how to ride a bike were going to have a hop-on-hop-off bus tour instead! In reality it was only me and my friend Jessica, but I feel better if I say those since it feels like there were more people without a childhood. Even though we didn’t get to enjoy the breeze around Berlin, I have to say we ended up winning. Since our tour finished first, we enjoyed an amazing coffee while waiting for everyone else. The next thing that night was the dinner. There were so many good things in the menu, but in the end Kristen and I decided to order a plate for two that had chicken, steak, bacon, tater tots, and broccoli with mushrooms among other things. Besides our plate, I also finished Paula´s food and tried some of Dr. Wasser´s. All that food made me so sleepy, but the night did not end there. A couple of friends and I went to a bar to see the Manchester City vs. Manchester United game. Unfortunately, the game was over when we got there, but in order to not waste our trip to the bar, we decided to stay and have a couple of beers. There, I met Diego, a native from Mexico City with who I bonded right away. We exchanged some of our experiences in Europe before he invited us to some club. We decided to go, but at the end, Diego disappeared and we never saw him again. Boy, did I miss that man! We also met Matt, a Germany native who talked really good English and with whom I shared many opinions about the education systems. After talking with Matt for a couple of hours and getting tired of waiting for Diego to show up, we decided to go back to our hotel instead since we had to wake up early the next day.

The next day was not as intense as the first day. We had a tour through the Charite Museum, in which we saw many things that would be seen in old hospitals followed by a lecture by Dr. Wasser. After the tour and lecture, Paula, Miko and I decided to go grab something to eat and then go to the East Side Gallery. I have to say those people who made all the paintings are excellent artists! There were so many paintings to admire, but unfortunately we did not have a lot of time. The highlight of the day came later, when we met with some medical students at the medical school. They started with a brief overview of the medical school system and ended strong showing us some of the equipment they use in order to demonstrate how certain patients feel and to practice certain techniques. I was able to practice my traching skills, something I have only done with animals. It took me a while to successfully put the tracheal tube in the model, but with patience and relying on what I have learned as a veterinarian technician, I was able to succeed in my first try. The difference with animals is that the human mouth does not open as wide as the mouth of an animal. This is the main reason why I had a hard time localizing the vocal cords. Another difference, which should actually make it easier for humans, is that in the veterinary world we do not use a laryngoscope. Even though the laryngoscope is supposed to help you, it was actually making it harder for me because it kept blocking the hole that lead to the trachea. The other simulation I enjoyed was the one that showed us what it feels to have jiggery hands, such as patients with cerebral palsy or Parkinson’s disease get. This simulation basically ran a current in the back of your hand that caused your hand to have involuntary spasms. Even though we were able to experiment how this unwanted movements would affect us in daily tasks such as drinking or writing, I believe it didn’t really showed us the actual feeling of having shaky hands. Running a current through our hand was actually causing our hand to cramp after a while. This shifted our attention from concentrating in our movement to worrying about the pain. This does not happen with patients who suffer from this type of disorders, therefore they only have to worry about trying to control their movements. To end the day, Jessica, Stephanie and I decided to go eat to Hard Rock Café. I decided to practice my German skills by ordering in German and the waitress understood me, something that made me really happy. After eating, we went back to the hotel and just relaxed for a couple of hours talking and laughing before going back to bed.

Wednesday was another intense day. It started with a trip to a concentration camp. I couldn’t believe how bad we humans were back then. How were we able to do such atrocious things and show no emotions about it? While I was walking around the concentration camp thinking about all this to myself, I started to look at our present. Now days, maybe we do not hear about thousands of people being held in prison and being massacred, but we still hear about people attacking other people simply because they do not share the same opinions and cultures. How different is our present world to the world horrified back then by the Nazis? Sad really is many years later, we keep being those horrible beings that God did not create us to be. It really pissed me off to think about how our world has not learned from the past, but is simply too stubborn to change into a more caring and loving place to live. When talking Stephanie about this, she told me that the only thing she could say was to worry about us and do what is the right thing, but isn’t that the problem to start with. All these people are only worrying about themselves, and they do not care how much pain they will bring to others with their actions. They believe they are doing the right thing when in reality, they are not. Things like these are the reason why sometimes I feel like becoming a teacher, and I am not referring to a college professor, but a high school teacher. I feel that being close to teenagers and teaching them things not only about school, but also extracurricular, is the key to a better future. After the concentration camp, we had some free time in which Miko, Paila, and I went to some famous shopping street. After a while, I was so tired that I decided to go back to the hotel in order to have strength for the tour of the Parliament House later. I will be honest, I thought the tour of the Parliament House was extremely boring, but this is only because I am someone who has a hard time finding excitement in politics. The only thing that kept me alive during this tour is knowing that afterwards, we were going to have another dinner payed by the AIB. This dinner was better than the one we had on Monday. I had eaten cuscus before, but nothing beats the one I had that night. The lamb sausages were the best. And what can I say about the appetizers. We had a something that was basically a chicken tart with cinnamon on it. I would of never thought that cinnamon goes well with chicken. To make our dinner more enjoyable, a guitar and base duo brighten our night with some music as we had fun eating and relaxing with friends. That night, I decided not to go out because I was really tired and we were going to meet really early the next day to check out from the hotel.

Thursday, our last day in Berlin but just as intense as the day before. After checking out, our first adventure was a tour of the museum of natural history. What I really enjoyed from this tour were all the wet specimens they showed us at the end. Not even in anatomy lab have I seen so many wet specimens in one place at the same time. I think it is really cool that scientists can grab one of this specimens and dissect it in order to study it. After having the tour, Stephanie, Allison and I decided to stay in order to finish looking at everything. Then, we decided to go eat before meeting with everyone for the highlight of the day: the zoo! I had heard so many good comments about the Berlin zoo that I was anxious to go experience it myself. My favorite part, just like a little kid, was the petting zoo. Me being an animal lover, I like to feel close to animals and whenever those baby sheep went up to me I felt as if they really wanted to me with me. Of course, the only reason they approached me was because they wanted food, but I still like to believe they went up to me just because they wanted to. After seeing everything in the zoo, everyone decided to go in to the aquarium. I like aquariums, don’t get me wrong, but I really wanted to go see the Olympic Stadium, place in where the Italian national soccer team became world cup champions in 2006, so I decided to leave the zoo and search for the stadium by myself. Since I exited the zoo at a different place than where we entered, I got a little lost at first, but that worked to my advantaged since while my search for an underground stop, I came across a mini carnival. After having some ice cream there, I decided to ask one of the people in a booth for directions. He did not know English, but we managed to understand each other with some hand signs. When I finally got to the underground stop, I looked at the time and noticed I only had thirty minutes before having to meet with everyone at the bus back at the Berlin central station in order to leave Berlin. In that moment, I knew I had two options. Option A, I could simply start heading to the central station and wait for everyone else there or option B, I could head to the stadium and risk the chance of being late. I understand it was a little irresponsible of me, but I decided to choose option B, why? Well, I don’t believe I will be going back to Berlin and not seeing the stadium was going to be something that I was going to regret for the rest of my life. I knew, or at least I was hoping, that my professors would understand. So there I was, rushing through human traffic and praying so the underground train could move faster. When I finally arrived at my train stop, I noticed I still had to walk a pretty good distance in order to get close to the stadium. I thought that if I would walk that distance, that would really be pushing it, so I decided to just take a picture from far away and just stand there appreciating the view. On my way back, I don’t know how I did it, but I made it back all the way to the central station with five minutes still left before 6pm, our meeting time. Even better, I made it there before other people.

Berlin was an excellent experience, one I will never forget. Besides having lots of fun, it allowed me to bond more with my classmates. I can say I am sad that this trip to Berlin was not earlier in the semester. Had it been that way, I think my semester would of turned out to be totally different.