Driftin' In The Wind

Vienna was an interesting time. By far, the best time there was going to the Zoo! (OF COURSE). THEY HAD PANDAS! It was a great day!! I felt so rushed at the zoo, but then the baby giraffe came up to me and I pet him on the nose, so it made my entire life meaning full in that one moment.
We also went to a church that had amazing sculptures, and a ton of bones in the catacombs, it was cool.
Over all, Austria and Vienna was an interesting place, and they had some good food too!

surgery, alaaf!

AIB:

Observing surgeries last week will definitely be one of the first things think when I look back on this trip. The first one I sat in on, a guy had punched through a glass window while sleep walking and they were basically just removing glass from his arm and stitching him up. Going in they told me no major arteries had been cut so there wouldn't be a lot of blood. There was a lot of blood. One of the people performing the surgery said she was still a student at the university of bonn and found surgery very boring but was required to do it. There were also two other medical student watching and complaining about how they had to be there. I just nodded as the dudes pulled back arm skin was a bit distracting. It gave me a view into what I'd never seen before and thats pretty cool. After getting pumped up by that, I went to the second surgery. A woman was in a car accident and needed to get her back realigned with metal bars the surgeons would insert. There were only surgeons this time, no students. And an anesthesiologist was there too of course. I got to talk to him for a bit. We talked about Texas at first. He kept asking me why Americas health care system is the way it is. I tried sharing the little insight I had on the subject but it probably didn't help much. He seemed pretty upset about it. But he did praise America for containing the worlds best place to live by far, Florida (lulz). Then I listened to him go on a  rant about how surgeons are always the heroes and get all the respect but anesthesiologists are more important. At this point the surgeons kept looking over at our conversation insulting them and speaking to themselves in German. I panicked and awkwardly left as the they were just finishing up. The last surgery was by far the best (in terms of observing that is, the patient was way worse off). It was a coronary bypass surgery meaning I got to see a live beating heart stop beating then start up again. And it was nice because they also have to harvest a vein from the leg to graft to the coronary artery to bypass the blockage so it was basically a two surgeries for one deal. It was pretty surreal watching them violently (I really pictured them being super gentle about everything but nope) cut open the sternum and peel back the pericardium to uncover a beating heart. I enjoyed it.

Personal:

We had a lot to study for this week but carnival is quickly approaching so there's a lot to soon look forward to as well. I've already been randomly seeing people in costumes for the last two weeks or so and my host parents showed me some pictures of themselves in clown costumes from previous years so I'm expected a lot of people to be at this parade and word on the street is there's a lot of free candy thrown out to the masses as well. I usually don't like dressing up in costumes but this seems more fun than Halloween. This Argentinian guy I met last week thought Texas was part of Mexico so I decided to get a sombrero and poncho for my costume. Alaaf.

Vienna

AIB:
Thanks to AIB’s great planning, the Vienna trip was a very fun and relaxing break from our usual class weeks. Looking back, the Freud house stood out to me the most. The tour was very interesting as it is always nice to have additional background information from a guide. We then received even more knowledge on Freud from Wasser’s post tour lecture which turned out to be much more in depth and easy to get into. Although many of Freud’s ideas were pretty out there, he ended up having a huge impact on our modern culture and the field of psycology so I am really glad we got to make that visit. That said, my interests still definitely lay more in hard sciences so the Josephinum and the Narrenturm were also really cool to see. The two almost seem to run together with their realist models. I was slightly worried about being able to handle the sights of all the skin diseases n the Narrenturm but it ended up being very interesting with the help of our tour guide and was not nearly as hard to look at as the pregnancy section of the Josephinum. Other highlights include attending an amazing sounding string quartet and hearing Dr. Wasser sing “I Like Big Butts” (unfortunately not at the same time though).
 

Personal:
There was also a good amount of free time for us to explore Vienna. During this period, I got to visit the albertina art museum. It was annoying though when we walked in, we immediately got denied from some "VIP" type section so I still feel slightly ripped off. But we still got to see some really nice looking paintings. [insert pictures here]. Many were too abstract for me to analyze but the ones I liked best I snuck pictures of. Vienna was a pretty artsy looking city in general. Lots of nice statues and buildings anywhere you wander. Even the subway stations all had some kind of subtle cool design on the ceiling or walls. (Subway pic). The food was pretty expensive at the places we went (other than trusty ole dönner) but the schnitzel and Mac and Cheese -esque dish I had for lunch tasted amazing. Possible because AIB paid for them and free food always tastes better. A few of us also went to this independent movie theater there, Topkino. Not everyone enjoyed it as the movie wasn't exactly what everyone was expecting but I thought it was really funny and was happy to go. 

Dusselawesome

On Sunday I made a day trip to Dusseldorf to see all that there was to be seen. Our train left at 9:01 in the morning and we arrived in D-town around 10:00. We had planned to attend an English speaking protestant church at 11:00 and so we walked to the area that the church was in and got breakfast nearby so that we could ensure that we would be on time. We showed up a few minutes late of course, and apparently we ended up in the wrong place because it was a German speaking catholic church. Oh well, still got to worship, and that is all that counts! After that, we headed towards some ruins that are located along the Rhine. On the way we passed an awesome looking beer garden and since we are Germany, we had to stop and get a beer. It tasted great and the setting overlooking the Rhine was excellent. After we finished the beer, we walked down to the ruins and walked all around them to see all that there was to be seen, some of which you can see in the picture below.

After we saw enough of the ruins, we headed back to the central train station so that we could find our way to the exotic and classic car museum. About an hour or so later we found ourselves standing infornt of a big round building with a bunch of sweet looking cars sitting in many of the windows. We walked around inside for awhile and saw plenty of cars ranging from classic Jaguars all the way up to brand new Fararris.

Once we had our fill of the car museum/dealership (yes, you could buy them), we walk-trammed back to the main city to fill our stomachs. We found an Irish pub in the Aldstadt and ate there while watching a soccer game which we had zero stake in, but still enjoyed. When we could no longer stomach anymore food or beer, we returned to the main station to head back to Bonn. On the tram, a DB employee asked to see our ticket, and when I showed it to him, he told us it was not validated (We thought day-passes didn't have to be validated) and that we would have to pay a 40 Euro fine. I figured I should ask him if the same was true about our train ticket so we took that out and asked, and he handed us back the  40 Euros and said that our train ticket worked for all transportation in Dusseldorf, so that was a lucky break! Because of that little mishap, we had to wait an extra hour for our train home, but oh well, it was still a great day in the end!

#ScrubSelfies

We had some pretty cool program events this last week. We went to the Anesthesia Museum and got to see some of the old equipment that doctors and surgeons used to anesthetize patients. My favorite part of the museum was actually not an anesthetic but the Iron lung machine. Since my paternal grandfather had polio and my father had tetanus when he was very young, it was possible that at some point each was hooked up to an iron lung similar to what we saw. I never met my grandfather and my father doesn’t remember very much of his tetanus experience, I can’t say for sure if they used an iron lung but it seems likely. My favorite program part this past week though was observing surgeries. I saw 2 ½ surgeries. The first was a cleaning of a man’s foot that was nearly lost it in a heavy equipment accident. It was pretty routine until he woke up three fourths of the way through the surgery. He didn’t feel anything but it was sort of stressful, at least for me. They were able to get him re-sedated and the rest of the surgery went without a hitch. The second surgery was of a woman who was getting her axillary lymph nodes removed because her cancer (breast I think) had begun to metastasize so they decided to remove them as a precaution. It was a really interesting surgery and the surgeon tried to include us as much as possible in the surgery so he took care to show us interesting things and tell us about what he was doing. It was fairly hard to see though, so I didn’t get to see as much as I would have liked. The last half of a surgery I watched was of the same woman who this time was getting the lymph nodes under the right half of her jaw removed. This surgery was done by a surgeon who was much less interactive so it was not as interesting as the first done on her. It was also even harder to see what was happening since there were more people surrounding the patient and making sure that nothing went wrong during the surgery. 

Snowboarding in the Alps

This weekend was awesome sauce!!!!!! I finally got to go snowboarding in the Austrian Alps, the thing I was looking forward to the most. The snow was so beautiful and we were so lucky because it started snowing as we were driving up the mountain on Friday evening!!! Perfect timing :) This was the largest ski resort I have ever been to, covering a total of five mountains. So many trails to explore. Unfortunately I learned that snowboarding in the Alps is very different from America, so the first day took some getting used to the new terrain... Meaning that I fell quite a lot. I eventually got the hang of it and then it was super fun, even if I did slide down the hill on my backside every so often. The best weekend trip ever!!!!!

On the program coordinated event side of things, Monday morning we got to go to the University clinic and observe surgeries. It was a very interesting experience and I was very grateful to attend it. I now know why I don't want to be a surgeon though... very interesting but not for me. I'll stick to designing things that will make the jobs of surgeons easier. I got to see a tumor removal and two hip replacements. The first surgery was the most interesting for me because we could see the entire body cavity open. The surgeons made a large incision across the abdomen right under the ribs. We got to see the small intestines and the stomach as the surgeons reached the pancreas. The next day we got to see the museum of anesthesia which was also very interesting but I definitely preferred to observe the surgeries. I enjoyed seeing the original tools that were used in the beginning days of anesthesia and surgery. Going to this museum and seeing the surgeries made me very grateful that I am in good health and live in the 21st century.
All together this was a very enjoyable weekend!!!!

Karneval is Coming

Personal

After a relaxing time in Vienna, this past week was quite stressful. Along with our normal workload, we had a physiology exam. I enjoy physiology, but the tests are always difficult and demand thorough understanding of the concepts. I feel that I studied well however, especially considering the distractions of being in a foreign and fascinating setting. I have had an opportunity to enjoy the class more this semester since I don't have 6 other classes to worry about.

I managed to add another transportation mishap to my growing list this week. Fortunately, it did not last the magic duration of 2 1/2 hours this time, though I did actually have to be somewhere. I accidentally set my alarm an hour late one morning and while I woke up after my first alarm, I quickly realized that I had very little time to get to class. I skipped a shower and rushed out the door. In an attempt to take the fastest route to the AIB, I took an unfamiliar bus. On the way, the green country scenery calmed me down...until I remembered that there isn't any country scenery in downtown Bonn. After staring at the map for a few minutes, I concluded that I had taken the right bus going the wrong way. I finally got off after some internal debate, and I was in luck. I was at a train station, and before I even had a chance to look at the schedule, my bus slid up, headed toward the hauptbahnhof. I ended up passing my normal train stop about an hour after I had left, so I would have been in a similar position even if I'd taken time for breakfast and a shower. While I arrived extremely late, I did eventually make it to the AIB.

On Sunday, I went to Duesseldorf. We attended what we thought was a Protestant English-speaking service but it turned out to be Catholic and German. Regardless, I still got a spiritual experience out of it because of the beautiful architecture and interior of the church. We then traveled to a place on the outskirts of the city where we sat down at a pleasant biergarten and then walked along the Rhein to some ruins. We went to a vintage car museum that was actually just a vintage car dealership, so we got to see a lot of expensive luxury cars and motorcycles for free. At this point, it was too late to visit any museums, so we had dinner at an acclaimed Irish pub called O'Reilly's. The day was overall pleasant and relaxing.


Program

To start out the week, we visited the Bonn Uniklinik to observe surgeries. I have observed surgeries that my dad has performed, but neither of the ones I had seen previously were very invasive. On Monday, I saw a surgery performed on a man who was infertile as a result of cancer. The surgeons were taking early semen samples directly from the seminiferous tubules. The second surgery was 7 hours long, so we did not view the entire operation. If I'm not mistaken, the man had a problem with his prostate, so the surgeons basically cut through his entire abdomen. Weirdly enough, I passed out during the first surgery, which was much less invasive, almost as soon as we walked in. I don't think the surgery itself was what caused it, but I did feel that the masks were cutting off my air. I was perfectly fine afterwards, but it took me some time to fully recover.

On Tuesday, we visited the Museum for the History of Anaesthesia at which each of our teams for the Ottobock project gave a short presentation on a specific subject related to the museum. My team presented on artificial respiration. The presentations were a good way to get everyone involved in what we were learning at the museum.

AIB hosted a Karneval warm-up on Wednesday night, during which everyone was encouraged to dress up. I unfortunately do not have a costume yet, so I felt very out of place, though I did have my face painted. We learned one of the main songs of Karneval, as well as some of the phrases that are important to know. The night was very fun and relaxing in the midst of a hectic week. I'm now on the search for a good costume and I'm getting nervous that I won't be able to find one.

Blog Post Pertinent to AIB Shenanigans

So this past week, we had the fine opportunity to observe surgery at the medical hospital in Bonn. The students broke up into pairs and were randomly assigned to a surgical room. I somehow ended up getting to see Urological procedures which, I guess out of all the things I could have ended up seeing, was probably the least interesting sounding, but I still managed to learn a lot and definitely had a good time. The anesthesiologist that I was paired with had plenty to share with us about the process, or art, of anesthetizing the patients and making sure they were in a deep enough sleep to not feel pain, or move, but also not a deep enough sleep that it would take them a long time to wake up after the procedure. All of this anesthetic information proved to be a great segue into our activity the next day, which was visiting the museum for the history of anesthesia. The most interesting exhibit at the museum, in my opinion at least, was the iron lung. This might have been because that is what I was responsible for giving a presentation on, or it might have just been because it was really cool beans. Either way, I had a great time learning about it both before and during our visit to the museum.

Karneval Warm up and TRIPLE RAINBOWS!!

This week was pretty cool, observing a surgery, going to a museum, hanging out with friends, and studying for our tests. However, my favorite program led thing by far was the Karneval warm up.

When my friend Kelsey and I arrived (she was a sheriff and I was a tiger), the party was just getting started. There were so many different costumes; fish, animals, Charlies angels, clowns, anything that you could think of was there. It was just like Halloween but in February. In fact, that's a very good comparison for Karnival from what I've gathered. People dress up in costumes and party, drink beer, sing songs, and get candy. I think last year there were 150 tons or more in candy given out...just in the Bonn-Cologne area. Yeah, that's a lot. And it's a nonstop party from Thursday to Monday so that when Lent comes on Wednesday, you've gotten everything out of your system. We were given a brief into to Karnival and even got to sing one of the more popular songs called Viva Colonia...which is now stuck in my head by the way. It was a lot of fun, and after the presentation (with a lot of confetti and candy being thrown at us) we ate and drank some more while socializing. At one point, a song came on and I don't know who started it, but a conga line started that eventually pulled everyone in. By the time that we were all a part of it, the line snaked around the entire room. It was quite a lot of fun, and I made some new friends during the party.

 

  Everyone had fun dressing up...even those who didn't!

 Charlies Angels (AKA: our program coordinators)

 Lots of fun with everyone

  Look at this conga line! It's even longer than seen

Out of just the personal stuff, it wasn't the socializing or hanging out with friends this time (I know, it's shocking!) It was actually the triple rainbow I saw on the way home one day. Yes, you heard right, a triple rainbow. On the way home, Kelsey and I saw it was raining, but that there was a rainbow in the sky. Not just a faint rainbow, but a full-on ground to ground complete rainbow. Then we did a double take. It was a double rainbow! I even took pictures! There was a fainter rainbow above the more vibrant one, and Kelsey and I were mocking the double rainbow "what does it mean?!" video. Then we took a closer look. Beneath the vibrant lower rainbow were the dim last few colors (YGBV) of a third rainbow. it wasn't complete, but we were looking at a triple rainbow! By this point, Kelsey and I were really freaking out until we couldn't see it any more. You can't really see it in the picture because the colors were dim, and my camera isn't the best in the world, but it was there, and it was beautiful.

 If you can see, there's a fainter line above the lower rainbow. 

And a bit of color below the lower one (right below, almost covered)

 The dichotomy on either side of the rainbow is pretty cool

There is one thing that almost beat out the rainbow in my personal category, which was the falling chair incident. In the middle of our mini meeting about our design project, I noticed that I was slowly sliding down below the level of the table, and that something was insistently pushing against my foot. I moved my foot, and all of a sudden my seat tilted slowly enough that it was comical and that all who were looking thought I was just doing something weird, but fast enough that it stunned me. It wasn't until I was on the floor and my chair was on it's side that people realized something was wrong. Turns out my chair had broken on one side right where the legs connected with the seat and that insistent push against my foot was the legs trying to fold under the seat. I looked around and everyone was laughing because the inevitable slowness of what had just happened made it ridiculous to watch, and I'm sure my bewildered expression just made it that much more funny. I gave the broken chair to my teacher and sat in the one next to it. Hopefully it won't break this time. The reason it was almost my favorite personal was twofold; first was the fact that this week was rather tame in terms of goings-on, and second was just the hilarity of my inevitable slow fall and the reactions of everybody in the room that made it so funny.

And that's it for the week. I've been having a ton of fun on this trip and I can't wait for the craziness that is Karneval.
Erin Z

Relaxing Weekend at Home

This Friday we went to Köln for Matt’s birthday. I found out about a party put on “by the youth, for the youth” on Friday during carnival in Cologne which I am going to go to. On Saturday I went to a friend’s host home to Skype a group of our friends back home. It was great to get to talk to see them all again, but the lag was so bad that it made it difficult to have a conversation. This morning my host family went to a sports center to play badminton and soccer. It was nice to get to do something a little athletic for once, since I’ve mostly just been eating tons of bread and riding the tram everywhere. The personal side of this week was pretty uneventful but it was very relaxing, which was a nice change.

A Relaxing Weekend

Outside of AIB activities, this week was pretty quiet. We had a lot of work to catch up on since we missed a week of school for Vienna plus we had our first physiology test on Friday, so I spent most of my time during the week working. On Friday evening a group of us went to Cologne to celebrate one of the guy’s birthdays, which was nice after having a tough week of school. Saturday was spent relaxing, working on some work, and catching up with my family and friends. I really enjoyed talking to everyone and I miss them a ton! Today I finally got to play soccer! My host dad took Tessa, our host sister, and I to the gym and I got to play soccer with my host dad and some of his friends. It was so fun, I’ve been dying to play since I have gotten to Germany! Besides that, I have been hanging out with the other bioscience kids and working on more homework. This coming weekend should be filled with a lot more stories since its Karneval weekend, so stay tuned!

AIB Fun Stuff

Every week since starting this blog I have said that a certain activity has been my ‘favorite thing so far’ and this week is no different! We started off the school week by going to observe a surgery at the Uniklinik in Bonn. I had high hopes for this particular trip, and it was actually one of the main selling points for me when I was deciding on whether to come on this study abroad trip. I am glad to report that it met all my expectations and more! We all met at the bus stop in the morning to ride together to the Uniklinik. Once we got there, we met one of the doctors who explained everything we needed to know for the day and then we went to change into our scrubs. We then walked out onto the ‘clean side’ to meet up with the doctor who took small groups of us to the various surgery rooms. I really wanted to observe a cardiac surgery since we had just learned about the cardiovascular system in class, so I was pumped when I got picked to watch an open heart surgery. My excitement faded a tad when I found out that the patient was 3 months old and this was her second heart surgery, but thankfully the surgery went perfectly! The surgery was so interesting to watch; the only time I could be taken away from it was when I had to move out of the way for the anesthesiologist. I loved interacting with the doctors and being able to see the cardiovascular system at work was truly amazing! Observing the surgery is definitely something I am adding to my ‘favorite thing so far’ list!

            Another fun activity this week was the Karneval Warm Up Party with all the other AIB students. We got to dress up in our Karneval costumes and learn about the do’s and don’ts for Karneval. At the end of the party, we learned and attempted to sing one of the most popular songs for Karneval called “Viva Colonia”. This party definitely got me super excited for Karneval, which starts Thursday of this week! I can’t wait!

Observe a surgery, then get back in time for tea

The highlight of this week was definitely going to the Uniklinik and observing surgery. I observed three surgeries on young children. One was to move the urethra and the other two were inserting a long-term catheter under the skin of leukemia patients. The surgeries were a little bit hard to watch. The room had to be kept especially warm since they were operating on children, and I started feeling a little faint during the first surgery. The best part was getting to talk to the Anesthesiologist. His job was really interesting to learn about, and I also loved seeing him interact with the kids. Some of them started out upset about going into surgery, but he made it less scary by letting them play games on his iPhone while he set everything up or by pretending they were in a spaceship. The surgeries were interesting, but the ones for leukemia just made me really sad.

            On Tuesday we went to the museum of anesthesiology. The exhibits were interesting and I really liked that we got a tour from someone who actually contributed to the history. I also really enjoyed getting to hear all the students present about one part of the museum.

            On Wednesday we had a Karnival warm-up party. I was planning not to go because I had a lot of studying to do, but I was glad I made time. I am in Germany and I want to get the most out of it. We learned some of the traditions of Karnival and what to say, and then we learned the song Viva Colonia! It was a lot of fun to spend time with all the AIB groups and I wish we could do more stuff all together. I am so excited for Karnival!