We traveled to Aachen on Thursday. Aachen has a lot in common with my home city of Bonn: even though we didn't travel much out of the city center, they seemed to cover the same amount of surface area on this planet, they both had a pedestrian only Platz, and they both have a decently sized outdoor market in the middle of said pedestrian only Platz. We started off the morning visiting a small Biomedical Engineering company, Helmholtz Institut Aachen - Department of Cardiovascular Engineering, on the outskirts of the town. We were given a lecture by one of the lead engineers for creating synthetic heart valves. He had spent 5 years studying in New York and his English was outstanding. He told us all about how they created the heart valves, their completely artificial heart, their heart and lung support devices for supplying the body with oxygen and nutrients when the heart is not beating during an open heart surgery, and some of the ways that they simulate and test all of their products. We then toured their labs and got to see a 4 ft x 4 ft x 7 ft heart simulator that they put their valves into and it would mimic the pressures and fluid dynamics of the heart. They also showed us the total artificial heart being tested, so we got to watch it pump and move clear fluid through the "vasculature" around it. At each of the experiments, nerdy looking guys and one or two girls in white lab coats sat around computers, staring at tables and graphs streaming across the screen. After we finished our tour, I was told by some of the Biomedical Science students that I would fit in well at this place. I didn't even bother arguing, I knew it was true.
Once we finished up at the Helmholtz Institut, we went to the city center of Aachen. In the center of the city there is a beautiful Cathedral, built for the great king Charlemagne. But before we went inside, we had 4 hours of free time for lunch and aimless wandering. I grabbed a bratwurst at the Market Platz and then started wandering. In my wanderings I found 2 interesting places, an antique shop and a wine shop. The wine shop was a place where you could buy olive oil, basalmic vinegar, wine, and even vodka mixed with blood orange juice. Each of these products and many more were placed in a jar of sorts on the wall with a spout coming out of it. You purchased the liquids by the 100 mL. A European antique shop is nothing like you would find in America, everything inside is expensive. There were diamond rings, pipes carved in the shape of a horses head, and even a 1600 euro candle holder, nothing there was under a hundred euros so we promptly left.
We then toured the Cathedral and the Cathedral's Treasury which was a beautiful part of our trip to Aachen. Our tour guide Pierre literally knew everything there was to know about the cathedral, he had an answer to all of our questions. The treasury was full of gold covered statues and crosses and the Cathedral had been refurbished every hundred years until the 1800's where they finally tried to put it back to the way it had been in the time of Charlemagne, but so little was left from his time that nobody knew what it was supposed to look like. So they went around to other churches from the same time and stole ideas from them and put them all together for the final look that it had on the inside today.
When we returned home to Bonn, Robert and I went to the Hofgarten to join up with the Bonn Ultimate Frisbee team, the "Bonnsais". We got there an hour late due to our excursion but our friend Josh Seal, also from the TAMU Ultimate Frisbee team, was already there. Since we were late, we got to skip all the drills and exercises and go straight into scrimmaging. On the first point, I went deep for a long pass from one of the Germans named Jan. He had a very strong arm and so it soared over my head into the end zone, but it was also a high pass, which meant I might have just enough time to reach it. I sprinted all out but soon realized that I was not going to make it. I hear 2 people screaming behind me, "LAY OUT!" Could I catch the disc if I dove for it? Outstretch my arms and leap into the air, sacrificing my body for one moment of glory? As all of this went through my head, I leaned more and more forward, preparing myself for the dive...
But then my mind realized that the disc was still too far away, even if I were to dive for it. But I already was too far bent over. So instead of the glorious dive that I had in mind, I just fall, face first, into the dirt patch in front of me. I didn't feel like an all star but everyone else was pretty impressed that I even went as far as to fall in an attempt to catch the disc. So I gained some respect for the little bit of pride that I lost in that moment.
We went on to win the game 9-2, most possibly because me and Seal were on the same team and Ultimate Frisbee is a very small sport in Germany and is just starting to gain interest in the college crowd. It was so much fun to get to play a structured game of ultimate with the team here in Bonn and I plan to keep going to their practices and to play in a tournament with them at the end of the semester.
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