Back home in Bonn

This weekend was bittersweet. On the one hand, I'm glad to be back. Bonn now represents a kind of warm, quiet sanctuary for me. It represents home. On the other hand, and I don't say this lightly, Vienna is now my favorite city I have ever been to and I already miss it dearly. It was such a wonderful, perfectly proportioned mixture of history and science and food! In a strange way, I feel like I was surely supposed to have been born there. The week went by way too quickly and I know I will be going back as soon as possible this semester.

The Natural History museum was one of my favorites and I'll definitely be spending more time there when I go. As a pre-vet student, it's right up my alley. Really though, I look forward to revisiting all of the museums we went to as a group. I couldn't believe the level of detail and intricacy of the wax models at the Josephinum, and I found myself wishing (more than once) that I had had access to them last semester when I was taking anatomy! In the Narrenturm museum, I greatly enjoyed trying to guess what the pathology of different specimens were, without looking at the plaques that gave their explanations away. Recognizing pathology (even in humans) will be vastly important for me in my career. The Freud museum was great as well. Although I'm not a huge fan of Freud and many of his ideas are no longer accepted as fact within the scientific community, it's important to acknowledge that his contributions were instrumental in laying the foundations for modern psychology. I'd also like to take a closer look at the 'Women of Psychology' exhibit when I go back.

My host parents are currently on vacation in Munich and then Austria (not Vienna though, otherwise I'd have probably tried to go with them, hiding in a suitcase or something equally absurd if I had to). They won't be back until next Sunday. It's kind of strange being here all alone. But I am a creature of solitude, so I don't think it'll be so bad. Just strange. If anything, I'll get the experience of doing my own grocery shopping in a foreign country! ...And the fact that that honestly sounds like a bit of an adventure to me tells me that I am officially a grown-up.