Vienna and Stuff

Vienna:

On Tuesday morning (if you consider 4:45 AM to be morning yet...I don't) we met up to go to the airport and fly to Austria. Our first plane broke and we had a bit of a layover, but they compensated us with a food voucher so I was happy. We unfortunately missed our appointment for the city tour, but we got to explore a bit before our tour of the catacombs. Vienna is a very beautiful place, and the catacombs were kind of creepy and a little sad. I've never been that close to a human skull before. And I've never seen such a large pile of bones. I'm gonna call it the Leaning Tower of Femurs. Actually that might be disrespectful. But the guide was cracking jokes left and right so I should be fine. We had a group dinner that night at a traditional Viennese restaurant. I loved the schnitzel and the desserts and the fact that I wasn't paying for any of it.

Wednesday morning we went to the Spanish Riding School and watched them practice. It was basically the fanciest rodeo I've ever been to, but not that exciting. I have some ideas for them to spice it up that involve jumping through rings of fire and having the horses do a coordinated dance to Beyonce. After that, we had our postponed tour of the city with Dr. Plague Mask (I forgot what he called himself), which was really fun despite the weather. We got to take medieval medicines and learned a good deal about the history of medicine in Vienna. Then we had some free time, which I used to visit one of the art museums. Monet and Picasso were the main attractions.

On Thursday, we went to the Josephinum and looked at their collection of anatomical wax models that medical students used to learn from in the 1700's. They were surprisingly accurate and it was super interesting. I wish the tour had been a little longer. That night we got in our fancy clothes and went to a string quartet concert in a really pretty church. They played Mozart and Beethoven and it was one of my favorite parts of the trip. Afterward we went to a fancy restaurant with fancy wine to match our fancy clothes and walked along the river a bit.

Friday was our last day in Vienna. We started the day in the grossest way possible and visited the Narrenturm, or Fool's Tower, which was the first psychiatric hospital and is now a pathological-anatomical museum. There were some pretty creepy but also very interesting things in there, like skeletons of conjoined twins, various body parts in jars, and a room of skulls. After that we broke for lunch and then went to the museum of natural history, which had a ton of cool rocks and dinosaurs. Then we came home.

Other Stuff:

This week is what we've affectionately been referring to as Hell Week. It's full of tests and project presentations and is the reason I'm getting this post out of the way early. Hopefully I get to travel next weekend to recover. I guess there wasn't that much other stuff...just studying. Wish me luck!