Week 3: Vienna Broke My Leg but Not My Spirit

The start to the Vienna excursion started off without a problem. I am terrible when it comes to packing for trips ahead of time and am always too excited to sleep so the night before we left, I planned on finishing laundry and packing. I finished packing at around 03:30 and since the taxi that was dispatched to pick me up was scheduled to arrive at 04:20, I skipped a nap and answered some emails. We arrived in Vienna to cold and snowy conditions which I should have taken as a sign of things to come.

            After checking into the hotel and fueling up on a delicious assortment of breakfast food items for the busy day ahead of us, we headed out for a city tour. The leader of the tour was unknown and we were all waiting in a city square for a while. Then a person wearing a plague doctor costume approached our group and introduced himself as Dr. Schnabel. After introducing himself to us and giving us some cloves to protect ourselves from the plague, we set off on a tour of Vienna. For the next three hours, Dr. Schnabel showed us around Vienna, providing incredible insight into the history of Vienna and its buildings. Along the way we would occasionally stop to take more preventative measures against “the plague”. The high that day was around -5ºC and it was pretty windy. By the end of the tour, I was freezing even though I was wearing multiple layers and all my winter gear.

We split off into smaller groups after the tour for lunch before we reconvened for a tour of Michaelerkirche and the catacombs. The church is right next to Hofburg Palace and there were a bunch of cafés all around that area. A small group of us went to a café that was located in part of the palace. We had about 3 hours to kill before we needed to be at the church but we were all so cold that we stayed in the café for about 2 hours trying to warm ourselves up. It started to snow as we were getting ready to leave which provided a great atmosphere to take pictures. We played in the snow for a long time and took a ton of pictures. It was time to meet at the church but since we are such a big group, we had to split into two groups. The first group went into the church for the tour while the rest of us waited outside. I was once again freezing but it had at least stopped snowing. After what felt like an hour the first group emerged from the church and my group headed inside. There was no relief from the cold inside but it did feel one or two degrees warmer. My toes had frozen once again so I spent the entirety of the tour waddling like a penguin. Michaelerkirche is one of the oldest churches in Vienna and one of the few buildings that showcases the Romanesque style. Michaelerkirche is one of the oldest churches still in use in Vienna. For being so old, the inside of the church was still in good shape and is still in use today. Our tour guide took us down to the basement where the catacombs were located. It was amazing being able to see coffins and skeletons that were hundreds of years old and see how well preserved they were. On one side of the wall was a pile about 5 feet high of just femur bones. There was another pile of a mixture of different bones against the opposite wall. Knowing these bones were once a person was incredibly mind-blowing and somber. The detailing on the caskets was still visible and the artwork was done with such precision and the colors were still pretty vibrant considering how old it was. The tour guide finished showing us all the caskets and some really well preserved full skeletons and some old family crypts. We went back upstairs and saw some really old murals on the walls and then the tour ended.

Enjoying the snow

The first group met us outside and together we walked to the Goulashmuseum for our group dinner. Goulash is a soup or stew with meat and vegetables and a staple in Vienna. Different kinds of meat can be used according to the menu at the restaurant such as beef, veal, horse, chicken, or pork. We were a group of about 30 people and had to squeeze into a room of the restaurant. I was one of the last people to get inside so I found one of the last remaining seats and sat down. I noticed the seat was wobbly but I had had a seat like that before and figured it’d be okay. I was terribly wrong. As I was scooching the chair closer to the table, the bottom of the chair just fell out from under me! By this point I had been awake for over 36 hours so it took a while for me to process everything. I just kind of sat there with my butt hanging through the chair trying to figure out what had just happened and how I was going to get out of it when Nathan, who was sitting next to me, reached over and lifted me out of the chair as if I was a doll. Everyone at the table was laughing including me even though I was pretty embarrassed. A waitress came over with a new chair fairly quickly and I apologized profusely. Things settled down temporarily and we munched on bread and drank wine while we waited for our food to come out. I had ordered Kesselgulasch vom Rindsfilet mit Kartoffel or beef filet goulash with potato and it was served in this copper pot. When served, the pot was hung from a three-legged metal stand that had a small tealight candle at the bottom. The waitress for our table had to place several stands in front of people who had ordered the same thing and I was one of the last people to have their stands set down. The waitress was in a hurry so when she placed the stand she didn’t notice one of the legs was hanging off the table. She let go of the top and before I knew it, the stand tilted forward and the lit candle fell onto my leg. Again it took a long time to process that there was a lit candle on my lap due to the lack of sleep so I kind of just stared at it for a while. Nathan reacted first and was about to swat the candle off my lap when I finally reached down and picked up the candle. Thankfully only a little bit of wax had gotten onto my sweater and I hadn’t started a fire in the restaurant so I’d call that a success. The rest of the meal went smoothly and I had a great time! The food was delicious, as was the wine, and the company was superb. After the meal we all took the subway back to the hotel and day 1 in Vienna was complete.

The next day we headed to the Narrenturm, the Madhouse Tower. It’s the oldest building on continental Europe used for the accommodation of mental patients. It no longer houses patients and now functions as the Federal Pathologic-Anatomical Museum. It contains hundreds of moulages, which are castings of body parts in wax or paraffin, wet preparations, dry preparations, and medical devices. The moulages depict every sort of disfigurement and disease you could imagine and all were painted at the time of their creation so the detail is very vivid. There were some extraordinarily vivid ones depicting some pretty intense diseases. The tour was fascinating and led by a very knowledgeable medical student. It had snowed the night before so after the tour we had an awesome snowball fight right in front of the museum. After some group pictures, the group split up into multiple smaller groups since we had the rest of the day to ourselves.  My small group went to lunch and then a small group of us went shopping for some shoes to wear to a musical concert that was planned for the next day. We went back to the hotel to drop off our bags and get ready for our night plans. A large group of us had planned to go ice skating at an ice rink in front of city hall called Wiener Eistraum. The rink was large and gorgeous because there were lights everywhere and the city hall was a beautiful backdrop. If I only knew the adventure I was in store for.......

Our snowball fight

First off, I had never ice skated in my life. I had never even rollerbladed before. But I’ve always been up for trying new things and what better place to try ice skating for the first time than abroad in a beautiful location? We only had an hour to skate but I was so excited. The others were naturals but I stuck to the wall so I could hold onto it. I had been aiming to only fall less than 5 times but I fell for the first time right away. Every time I fell, I was able to catch myself on the wall or more like slam myself into the wall to stop my movement. I had made it to another part of the rink where everyone was when I came to a gap in the wall. The gap was probably 20 feet wide but it was still intimidating to think about crossing it without having a wall to catch myself if I started falling. People were cheering me on so I pushed off the wall and started to glide in the general direction of the far wall. I had gotten about halfway across when my left foot started to slip and slide. I tried to overcorrect with my right skate when all of the sudden my right foot bent upwards towards my leg. I felt and heard a loud pop and I fell backwards. My head hit the ice but it wasn’t too bad because I had managed to spread the impact throughout the rest of my body. My foot felt weird, as if it was disconnected from the rest of my leg at the ankle and it hurt a lot but it was manageable. Deep down I knew something was broken but I pushed that thought away and focused and tried to push the pain away. A lot of the group had circled me and were asking me if I was okay. I told them I was fine and to give me some room. I was still in the middle of the ice and needed to get to the wall but I couldn’t stand. I remember vaguely people in the group discussing how to move me when I started dragging myself towards the wall using my elbows to move my body since my right leg was useless and I had no grip with my left leg because of the skate. Some people dragged me the rest of the way until I was sitting against the wall. Two workers from the ice rink had come over by this point and asked me if I was able to stand on my own. I couldn’t so they grabbed me by each one of my arms so that I was hanging between them with my back facing the floor and me looking up towards the sky with my feet extending behind them. We proceeded in this awkward position and the two guys tried distracting me by asking me if I wanted to get married or have a dog. I told them I wanted a dog and before our conversation could continue, we had made it to the gate. They helped me stand up and then left. I propped myself up against the wall while favoring my right leg. 

People kept coming to ask me if I was okay and each time I would tell them that I was fine and that they should finish skating. I only had to wait about 15 minutes till the park closed and during that time I just watched the other skaters and tried to move my foot. As I waited for everyone to turn in their skates, I managed to hobble over to some steps and sit down. Clare brought my shoes to me and helped Stephenie take off my skates. My right ankle was the size of a grapefruit and was super tender. I couldn’t move it without it hurting but I kept on insisting that I just needed to go back to the hotel and ice and elevate my foot. We started talking about calling a cab to take me back to the hotel when Stephenie called Dr. Wasser and told him what had happened even though I told her not to. She was wise in not listening to what I was saying. Two of the boys let me put my arms around them as I started hopping towards the entrance. It was an awkward movement since the boys were taller than me when Kenneth stopped them, bent down, and literally threw me over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He had almost made it to the street when a person working in the Red Cross tent called Kenneth over so they could look at my leg. The Red Cross guys examined my foot while we chatted and suggested I go to the hospital and gave me a referral to present to the emergency room attendant. Kenneth carried me back out and a cab was waiting. Stephenie got into the front seat since she was carrying all the papers the Red Cross guys had given her with my information, I slide into the back, and Nathan, a TA, got in the back too. Every little bump in the road resulted in intense discomfort so Nathan held my leg up in his hands to reduce the jolts which helped a lot. Once we arrived at the hospital, Nathan went inside to look for a wheelchair and Dr. Wasser and Kristin, one of our AIB coordinator’s, arrived. 

Once we got to the emergency room, Kristin began talking to the guy at the desk and brought papers over to me to fill out. Once that was done the wait began. It wasn’t too long before they called me in. I spoke to the doctors and told them what had happened and they sent me back out into the waiting room to wait for x-rays. I got called in a little later and for the first time that night a tear came out of my eye when the x-ray technician roughly adjusted my foot for the x-ray because it hurt so much. After the x-rays it was back to the waiting room. The doctor called me in not too long afterwards, Dr. Wasser and Kristin came along, and he delivered the bad news. Not only had I broken my fibula, but there was a chance I was going to need surgery because the fibula had been pushed out of the ankle joint and without surgery it wouldn’t heal correctly. I had been holding onto hope that it wasn’t broken but strangely enough when the doctor delivered the news I felt fine. It was a bummer but I wasn’t devastated either. We went back to the waiting room and I started asking Dr. Wasser the logistics of having surgery here in Germany and the likelihood of staying in the program. Our discussion was cut short when a nursing student came out to inject me with an anticoagulant and then I was called back in so that my leg could be put in a cast. After changing out of my jeans and into hospital pants, three nurses began applying layers of plaster on my leg and for a second time a tear escaped my eye because my foot had to be pushed into a 90º angle for the cast to work. As I watched them apply the cast, I kept thinking that it was different from other casts I’ve had. They used plaster for the whole cast and didn’t put the usual fiberglass coat on top of it. Then they made a cut through the entire length of the cast from top to bottom so that there was a big slit in the front. It came all the way up my knee and it was pretty heavy and chunky. When I got back to the waiting room, we had some last words with the doctor, I got a pair of crutches, and then the five of us headed back to the hotel in two separate taxis. When I was finally in my room, I called my mom to tell her what had happened. She thankfully didn’t freak out and asked if I was in pain and what was going to happen now. I told her I was fine and that I fully intended on staying in the program. By the time I hung up with my mom, it was close to two in the morning and I went to bed.

    

My awesome x-ray showing the crack in my fibula

When morning came, I didn’t feel rested at all. I had spent the entire night trying to adjust my body without moving my leg since every movement resulted in a sharp pain. Moving around was also awkward because I had never used crutches before and I couldn’t put any weight on my bad leg. My jeans didn’t fit over the cast so I put on my paper thin hospital pants, a sweater, and my left shoe but thankfully, at breakfast, Nathan brought a pair of his sweatpants and let me borrow them. Our first stop of the day was the Medical History Museum in the Josephinum. Instead of traveling with the group, Kristin and I took a taxi to the building to make things easier for me. The Josephinum contains a large collection of anatomical wax models which were incredibly detailed. Our guide also told us how the medical museum came to be and some stories behind the wax models. After touring the rooms, it was time for our group lunch at a restaurant called Universitätsbräuhaus. It was fairly close by but because I was so bad on the crutches, Kristin and I took a taxi to it. It wasn’t easily accessible to cars so when the taxi dropped us off, the restaurant was still about 150 meters away. It should’ve been easy to crutch there but I had to keep stopping to wipe my hands and adjust my grip as well as give my sore body a break. I was doing so bad that Kristin ran ahead to get some boys to come out and help. While she was gone I continued trying to crutch towards the door and had made a little bit of progress before Kenneth and Nathan met up with me. Kenneth once again threw me over his shoulders and carried me to the restaurant while Nathan brought up the rear with my crutches. Lunch was fantastic, it was the first time I had ever had schnitzel and the company was great. After lunch, we were scheduled to have a lecture, given by Dr. Wasser, at the Freud House. It was also fairly close by so we all set off, including me. 

They saw how slow I was going so Dr. Wasser suggested the boys in the group take turns carrying me. I was really embarrassed and guilty for causing this much trouble within the group and felt like the boys were essentially being forced to carry me. But they all did it with grace and not one complaint. Nathan, James, Michael, Kyle, Dr. Wasser, Kenneth, and Madeleine all took turns carrying me, either by piggyback ride or two people teaming up to form a basket with their arms and me in the middle. We must have been such an odd sight to the people of Vienna, a large group of people walking but in the midst of that group a girl being carried with a gigantic white cast on her right leg. I also crutched for short intervals of time and after what seemed like a long time, we arrived at the Freud House. I made it up a short flight of stairs and into the room where the lecture was going to take place. I sank into a very comfortable couch towards the back and Madeleine and Michael sat on either side of me. The rest of the group sat towards the front and the lecture commenced. It was a superb lecture about Freud and his life and what made it even better was that we were learning about Freud in the actual building that was his former office and apartment. After the lecture the group went upstairs to take a tour of Freud’s office and apartment but I stayed downstairs because I didn’t want to make anyone feel obligated to help and/or carry me up the stairs. I told Clare to take pictures for me and tell me all about it. And I vowed to myself I’d make it back there one day to see everything and not just the room downstairs. Afterwards, another taxi was called and I went back to the hotel to rest a bit since we had scheduled free time. I sat downstairs in the lobby waiting for my roommates to arrive since they had the key to get into the room. A few minutes later, Clare, Chelsea, Cerci, and Stephenie entered and they surprised me with a massive water bottle, flowers, chocolate, and these really good hazelnut wafers! I almost cried because I was overwhelmed at how sweet everyone was being to me. We had to be ready by 18:30 for a quartet concert at St. Anne’s Church so there was only about 2 hours to get ready. The next daunting task I had to face was taking a shower. 

My cast wasn’t supposed to get wet and since I couldn’t put weight on it I had to find a hotel room with a tub instead of a walk-in shower. Thankfully Cerci, Chelsea, and Michelle were across the hall from our room and they had a tub. It was a very slow process removing clothes and getting into the tub while making sure my leg stayed outside of it. The shower itself was interesting to say the least and once I was done I started looking around the room and trying to see what I could use as leverage to lift myself out of the tub. It wasn’t possible without help so I had to call Clare, Stephenie, Cerci, and Chelsea to help me.  They were all complete angels about it and I will forever be indebted to them for helping me out. After getting dressed, Stephenie did my hair and we all went downstairs to the lobby where everyone was gathered. A taxi dropped me, Madeleine, and Cerci off about a street away from the church since that area wasn’t accessible to cars either and we began the slow trek towards the door. Madeleine and Cerci were amazingly patient with how slow I was going and kept me distracted with conversation which was nice. Once inside the church, I got a front row seat and the concert began. The quartet played a mixture of Bach and Mozart and it was beautifully done. After the concert, Clare and I went back to the hotel in a cab while the others went out to dinner. We watched CNN in our room until the others arrived bearing the gift of pizza for us. We all sat around and talked for a couple hours before we all went to bed.

Our last day in Vienna was an early start. A cab took me, Madeleine, and Clare to the Spanish Riding School to watch the morning practice of the Lipizzan horses and their riders. We arrived before the group did so we waited for them and had to work through a large crowd to get to the ticket counter. Once we were past the ticket man, I put my arms around Michael and Nathan and they helped me hop up a staircase. The morning practices started and I stayed there for the whole time until around 12:00 because they were just fascinating to watch. The building was fairly close by to a café and we were on our own for lunch so a group of us decided to go there. After lunch, which consisted of a nice hearty soup, we worked our way to a meeting point because we were all going to the Natural History Museum. I started crutching there ahead of time because I knew it was going to take a while and Michael and Cerci came with me. I hadn’t even gotten far before I saw the group across the street pass us. Cerci started playing motivational music, I’ll Make a Man Out of You from Mulan, and Michael would give me piggyback rides when I needed a break from crutching. We finally entered the general area where the museum was and were headed towards it when I saw Nathan racing towards us. I got on his back and he jogged towards the building, up the stairs, and through the doors. The museum had a wheelchair on hand which made things a hundred times easier for me and everyone else. Our tour guide was really nice and super knowledgeable. He took over navigating the wheelchair to get me to another floor of the museum and during that time we talked about his work and what had happened to my leg. 

The tour was over too quickly and it was time to head back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and get to the airport. I had originally planned to leave to Prague with a small group of friends after our time in Vienna was up but because I broke my leg, I was going back home to Bonn with Dr. Wasser, Kristin, and a small group of people from the program. Kristin was taking the subway back to the airport with the other group and Dr. Wasser came along in the taxi that took me to the airport. I fell asleep during that ride and before I knew it we were at the airport. The taxi driver was so nice and helped Dr. Wasser find the wheelchair Kristin had reserved for me and unload the bags. Kristin stayed with me to check the bags and go through security which was a new experience since I was in the wheelchair. Afterwards, we waited for boarding to start but since I was in the wheelchair I got the VIP treatment. A worker came along in one of those golf cart-like vehicles and took me and Kristin to a door. We waited for a little bit before we went down onto the tarmac and got into a van. The van then took us to a strange contraption that essentially worked as a lift but it was very roomy in there. Kristin and I were inside this thing for a small amount of time and then it raised us up and we were able to get into the plane from the door opposite of the door the other passengers were going to come through. They sat me down towards the front and a nice stewardess collected my crutches and stored them for me. The flight was pretty short and I had to wait for everyone to leave the plane before I could. I made my way down the stairs and there was another wheelchair waiting for me at the bottom. The Cologne airport worker driving the wheelchair was also very friendly and helped me get my bag from baggage claim and then took me outside to wait for the bus we were all going back on. By the time we got back to Bonn, it was around 23:00. Kristin drove me to my host parents’ house and Dr. Wasser came along. My host parents met us at the door and gave me these giant hugs which made me feel so much better. They spoke to Kristin and Dr. Wasser and then helped me get up the stairs to my room. The next day, Saturday, I mainly stayed in bed and did some homework and talked with my host parents.

Vienna was an incredible experience and even though I will always link it to breaking my leg, I have nothing but fond memories of it. It is a beautiful city and I broke my leg in one of the prettiest locations which was really cool. Vienna is also the city the showed me just how amazing the people on this program are. The fact that they came together to help me out still blows my mind and I will forever be grateful for all their help. I got to experience the healthcare system of Austria as well and now I’ll be seeing some of the German healthcare system in the weeks ahead which is going to give me a unique perspective and I am really eager to see and experience it all.

Sporting my awesome new cast and sitting in a cop car since some policemen let me while we waited for a taxi to take us to the hotel from the Natural History Museum.