Biosciences Bonn: Hungary for more enmodes

IT’S CRUNCH TIME!! enmodes, enmodes, and more enmodes! The school week started on Tuesday, and our final medical device presentations were this Thursday. The entirety of Tuesday and Wednesday, from 9AM to 11PM were dedicated purely to enmodes. We had to rehearse our presentations to our professors repeatedly until all of the minor errors were gotten rid of. In addition, our group didn’t have a finalized device yet. We still had to complete mathematical calculations involving thermodynamics in order prove the feasibility of our device. Well, none of us had taken a thermodynamics course before, and this was not a matter of just plugging in numbers (we all thought it was simple in the beginning). That took up the entirety of Tuesday, and still, there was no success with determining feasibility. On top of this, we still had several new assignments that were due throughout the week for both our differential equations course and our systems/signals course. Kyle and I both stayed up all night (in addition to the all-nighter from the night before) to finish the math assignments; Wednesday came around, and we continued grinding. The calculations didn’t get finalized until about 7PM that night. All of the groups’ presentations were coming along very nicely. Many were very close to being finished; just minor kinks needed to be fixed. We finished that night around 11:45; Kyle and I made it home around 12:45. We quickly got into bed to get as much rest as possible in order to do well on the presentation tomorrow. RING RING RING I checked the time, and it was 7:30. We needed to be at the Hofgarten at 7:10. GREAT. I guess there was just too much sleep deprivation this week (and probably the entire semester). In either case, this sucked. We caught the 8:45 train to get to Aachen around 10:30. The professors were nice enough to stall for us in order to allow for us to make it to the presentations. We made it just as the first group started their presentations. Kyle and I both went, and we killed it. The CEO of the company really liked our device idea; he didn’t seem to think that there were any flaws with it. Afterwards, we were informed that we would have to be penalized for showing up late to the presentations. “Today wasn’t the day to choose to sleep in” said one of the professors. Yeah, I guess we should’ve chosen another day. In either case, whether or not we killed the presentation, life really didn’t make much sense to me anymore. Why work so hard for something, why be the pivotal factor in a group project to help make it great, why do so much more than your role requires to in order to achieve perfection? And to be rewarded with penalties. Yeah, we slept in because of the lack of sleep we had all week, but think about this. What made us get less than ample amounts of sleep? The desire to be more and impress the world. The desire to make a better device with minimal flaws to save lives. Maybe I should have just called it a night at 10PM, gone to bed, and hoped for the project to perfect itself. Maybe. Whatever though; it’s just one of those things I don’t think I’ll ever understand. Life’s just not fair, especially to those who do more. I’ll touch on this more in my final reflection blog. It’s definitely one of the biggest things that I’ve learned this semester. Kyle and I stayed up all night again to knock out assignments for classes again. Friday was tiring, but many of the classes were the last ones that we would have all semester. It was truly a bittersweet moment; school had been so stressful that to be this close to the end was nice. All that was left was exam week next week. But being this close meant that our time abroad was close to an end. Half of me was ready and the other half, not so much. After class, Kyle, Amran, and I immediately booked it to the Hauptbahnhof to catch the SB60 bus to the Cologne/Bonn Airport. It was our last free weekend of the semester, and we were headed to Budapest, Hungary. Many people said that we were crazy for going the week before exam week, and yeah, we probably were. However, we’re only studying abroad in Europe this semester. Personally, I would regret to sacrifice a weekend because of school. In all seriousness, I wasn’t going to sleep at all next week until my last final, so whether or not I went to Budapest, it would still be hell. I did bring homework with me to work on for whenever I found free time (primarily on the plane and at night). We landed in Budapest at 9PM; I got off the plane and happiness filled me. I had been looking forward to this for so long, and after such a rough week, I was ready to get away from it all for a little. The Hungarian language was very, very different than English or German. We had no idea what any of it meant at all. They also used the Forint, the Hungarian currency, instead of Euros, so we had to convert our Euros to that. Similar to the Czech Republic, it was a 1 Euro to 315 Forints ratio. JOY! We dropped all of our stuff off at the hostel and wandered throughout the city to look for dinner (yes, dinner at 11PM). We walked through their version of the College Station Northgate; of course, it was a lot larger but just as packed with people. Most of the places we walked into were only open for drinks, as expected. We finally found a bistro to eat at, which was not too bad at all. We each got a beer to go with our meal. I’m not too much of a beer guy, so I took a sip and just let it sit there. Just before we left, I offered my beer to Kyle, which was a mistake. He downed it all in a few seconds. OH GOSH…. Amran got a crepe on the way back for the equivalent of about 2 Euros. On the way back, we saw this one guy dragging another guy through the streets; at first glance, I thought that the guy was dead. BUT. He was alive, and well. Kinda. We think he was just super duper drunk. Hmmmm…sounds like someone we knew haha! We stopped at McDonald’s for more desserts and GUESS WHAT!?!?! This McDonald’s had a public soda machine, which meant FREE REFILLS!!! Of all the McDonald’s I had been to in Europe (and believe me, this semester, I’ve been to more than one should in their lifetime), this was the first one that I had ever seen that offered free refills! AHHHH. This was just great. Reminds of ‘Murica! We did a little bit of homework back at the hostel before calling it a night. The next morning, we crossed the Szénchenyi Chain Bridge to get to the Buda side of the city (Buda is west of the Danube, and Pest is east of the Danube). We made the trek uphill to Castle Hill to see Fisherman’s Bastion; sadly, a lot of it was under construction! We visited the Labyrinth of Buda Castle. It was quite a spooky place, but we decided to be adventurous! This labyrinth was 6 miles long, but only 1 mile was available to visitors. There were many life-like mannequins in this underground labyrinth system. In addition, there were many stories about the 15^th century imprisonment of its most famous prisoner, Vlad Tepes, better known as Count Dracula. It was a spooky place, but it was enjoyable! We hurried through the last few areas of the cave to make it to the caverns for our spelunking adventures! YES! SPELUNKING! I had no idea what to expect, but it was just like in those movies where you wonder to yourself...”why in the world would these people want to explore an abandoned cave!?” We crawled down a 15 foot ladder; I’m terribly afraid of heights and have never been too fond of ladders so that in itself was a challenge. Of course, I was the only one with that problem. Everyone else managed just fine. We really had to get out of our comfort zones for the next 3 hours; we climbed and crawled through holes that were only slightly larger than ourselves. Honestly, I don’t even know how I got through some of those holes. The only thing that was missing in this cave adventure was an underground lake for us to swim in! Afterwards, we headed back to the city and explored the Buda Castle! The views from above were fantastic, and like the rest of the city, it was filled with various, different monuments. We went back to the hostel to knock out some more homework before going out for the night; we had purchased tickets to a SPArty! This was a weekly event that happened every Saturday night at the Szénchenyi Thermal Baths. Basically, it’s a warm pool party! It was probably bad idea to go, but we had never been so why not! It was quite an odd event to attend. It was about 80% guys, and 4-5 guys each surrounded every girl there. Anyway, we left around 1:30 and found a McDonald’s before heading back to the hostel. This McDonald’s did NOT have a soda refill machine. Sad face. The next morning, we visited the Great Market Hall, the oldest and largest indoor market in Budapest; unfortunately, it was closed!! UGH. We crossed over to the Buda side of the city and checked out the Citadel before finally heading back to spend the rest of the day at the Szénchenyi Thermal Baths. The pools were not nearly as warm as it was the night before, but still, it was very relaxing. We also visited the dry saunas; Dr. Wasser would’ve been highly disappointed if we hadn’t haha! They’re his favorite things. Afterwards, we found the indoor thermal baths, which were a lot warmer and way more comfortable. We just sat and “siesta”-ed there for a bit and tried to escape reality. We loaded up on energy drinks (I know, they’re terrible for you) and headed back to the hostel. The plan was to stay up all night and catch up on homework until 3 in the morning so that we could catch the bus back to the airport. I was Pest that we had to leave, but soon enough, we were back in Bonn! I went home, took a shower, and grabbed my dirty clothes that needed to be washed before heading back to the AIB to finish classes for the semester and continue the grind. Budapest was undoubtedly one of my favorite cities this semester, and 10/10 would do again!

RIP bc of all-nighters