The past few weeks have been super busy so this is probably
going to be a long post.
We reached Berlin in the afternoon
and once we dropped our stuff off at the hotel, we left to go on a bike tour of
the city which is a decision I am very happy about. Eric, our guide, had a very
thick Scottish accent which added to his great story telling skills. We rode
around Berlin, seeing the main sights: Berlin Cathedral, the Holocaust Memorial,
and Museum Island, part of the Berlin Wall, Humboldt University, Checkpoint
Charlie, and the Brandenburg gate. The next day we took a trip to Dresden.
Dresden wall heavily damaged during
WWII and had major rebuilding to complete but they came through to put together
one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. When we got there, we had a
guided walking tour of the city and ate lunch at a very German restaurant. Next
we went to the Hygiene museum (which as Dr. Wasser stressed was not a museum on
how to floss). This museum was a science/biology museum that was amazing. There
were 6 or 7 large rooms, each with a different theme (e.g. birth/death, human
anatomy, perception/memory/learning movement etc.) and very cool exhibits to
play around with.
After spending some time there we
went back to Berlin, only to leave the next morning for Sachsenhausen, a
concentration camp. This trip was very sobering, because I saw firsthand where
the atrocities committed by the Nazis occurred. We had our Eric again to guide
us through the camp and he set the scene for what the Jews, gypsies and other
oppressed groups endured. We went back to Berlin and had the rest of the day to
ourselves so me and a group of friends decided to walk around the city and go
back to some of the sights we had seen on the bike tour but passed by too fast.
We also went to the East Side Gallery which is about 1 km of the Berlin Wall
that the city commissioned artists to paint. After this we went to the Hofbräuhaus
in Berlin and I feel like I became more German just sitting there. The next day
we went to the Charite Teaching Hospital and we learned about the curriculum of
some of the medical students in berlin and then got to play around with many
things to learn, like a very lifelike baby doll and reflex hammers. We then
went to Ottobok which was definitely one of the highlights of the trip for me,
because I want to work with prosthetics/orthopedics in my career. We were led
around their facility and got to see some of the prosthetics that they had come
up with and then we got to go up to the “rehab loft” where they had other cool
stuff. Our last day in Berlin, we visited a Stazi prison Hohenschönhausen which
was very interesting. The people running the prison and interrogations had very
odd but effective ideas on how to control and gain information from their
prisoners. Following this, the group split up and some of us went to take a bus
to Prague.
Prague is currently tied for first
in my mental lists of favorite places I have visited on this trip (along with
Lisbon and Munich) and I am so glad that I made the decision to go there.
Prague was definitely the most photogenic city I have visited. Everywhere you
turned, you would see amazing buildings and scenery. Also the Easter market was
going on while we were there which added to the experience although the language
was a lot like Hungarian (completely undiscernible). The first day in Prague, we walked across the
Charles Bridge and saw the astronomical clock which was a very complex time
keeping device that even had the name that you had depending on your birthday.
We then took a walking tour with a very enthusiastic very cockney guide who
E-NUN-CIATED very well named Dave. Dave took us around the city, showing us
famous places, like a concert hall where Mozart received a 30 minute standing
ovation, the old town hall, an odd statue of an odd man (Franz Kafka), and
other landmarks, namely the Jewish quarter. In world war two, Prague was spared
from bombing and other damage by Hitler himself because he thought the city was
so beautiful and he wanted to save it for himself, and also create the “Museum
of an Extinct Race” after the war. The special treatment for the city did not
translate to its Jewish inhabitants. On the tour we walked by (but didn’t go
in) the Jewish cemetery. It looked rather small and the ground was elevated to
about the height of the fence surrounding it. Dave told us that there were 20,000
people buried there (which I couldn’t believe) and continued to tell us that
this was the only cemetery where the Jews could be buried in that time and when
they ran out of land thee government refused to give them more, and gave them
more soil, which they then had to pile on top of the existing graves and bury
their dead in that. This trip definitely gave me more insight as to how life
would have been back then for the Jews with Sachsenhausen and the Jewish
quarter. After the tour we went to a gallery that had art from Salvador Dali
and Andy Warhol which was pretty nice but the art was very strange. We also
visited the John Lennon wall which was a cool experience. The next morning I
met up with one of my friends from Abilene who is studying abroad in Leipzig
and we went to the top of the old town hall and had a very nice view of the
city. When I rejoined the Bonn group we walked around the city some more,
seeing the dancing building, and the Prague Castle and Cathedral. These days my
study abroad program has become traveling with some class sprinkled in instead
of the other way around. I came back from Prague, had 4 days of class and then
I was off again for Easter break.
For the break a small group of
friends and I went to Munich. Munich was also very beautiful, but in a
different way than Prague. The city had its amazing building of course, but
also was very scenic and had a lot of ‘nature’ around. After being in places
with a definite city feel (Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Barcelona, and Vienna etc.)
it was nice to see trees and rivers and large open grassy areas. To get to Munich
we took a night bus that arrived at about 8:30 am. After we got to the place we
were staying, we showered and then we were off to see the city. We saw the Hofgarten
and then went to a giant park and had lunch in the Chinese beer garden. We then
roamed around the enormous and stunning Nymphenburg Palace which had some of
the most magnificent gardens I had ever seen. Following that, we visited the
site of the 1972 Olympics, in Munich which was very well maintained and allowed
us to get a great view of Munich and the mountains outside the city. For dinner
we went to the original Hofbrauhaus which was a great experience. The people
singing, eating, and drinking, and the waiters walking around with 10+ liter
mugs of beer made it an unforgettable experience. The next morning we were off
to see one of my favorite parts of the trip: BMW World/Museum. I won’t go into
too much detail but some of the highlights were seeing the BMW i8, a Rolls
Royce, learning about the history of BMW and how they started as an airplane
engine company, and seeing the awesome new concept car from BMW. After spending
a few hours admiring the German Engineering (sorry that's the Audi motto) Ultimate Driving Machines, we walked around the city some
more and stumbled upon the “Fifth Avenue” of Munich. The street was lined with
very high end shops and sitting outside were very high end cars (including the
BMW i8 which we had just seen in the museum). We continued to revel in the
luxury when we visited the Residenz, the former palace of the Bavarian Royalty,
and finished up the day with another meal at another Brauhaus. In the morning
we got up early to get to Neuschwanstein Castle. This trip was definitely an
adventure. We arrived at the train station to find a puny two car train trying
to take the droves of tourists to the famous castles. After some running around
we finally got onto a train and then got on a bus. And then another train. And
then another bus. The entire time it seemed as if there was some natural
disaster occurring—people running and pushing to get onto the platforms just
trying to get to a mountain with a castle on it. Once we reached, however, I kind
of realized why, because it was breathtaking. The snowy landscape overlooking
the castles is something I hope I will never forget. Ok so I’m getting tired of
writing this and I doubt anyone even got this far so I am going to wrap this
up. Our last day in Munich we visited the Allianz Arena where Bayern Munich
plays, walked around the city some more, saw some people surfing in a river
while it was snowing and had dinner at a final Brauhaus. We got back Monday morning
and went straight to class, and then I had a pretty stressful week capped by a
Diffeq test on Thursday night.
The end.
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