Uniklinik and Berlin - Germany Week 10

              This past week was the first week back from Spring Break. It’s been quite a change. Not only was it difficult going from the warm(er) weather in southern Europe back to the freezing temperatures in Bonn, but it was also hard going from relaxing on a Croatian beach to sitting in a classroom. Now, I say it was warmer in the south, and by warmer I mean that it was in the 50s. I never would’ve thought that I would be saying that days in the 50s were warm, but when you’ve been living in Bonn that has barely seen a day that is not freezing, feelings change. When we got back, the first few days were below freezing and it even snowed one day. I was really excited about snow before coming here, but that morning I just groaned and put up with it. I have now decided that I am boycotting the cold. I refuse to wear my heavy coat anymore. I’d rather just be cold.

              On Wednesday, the BIMS students (BMEN went on Tuesday) took a trip to the Uniklinik, the teaching hospital for the medical school in Bonn, to observe surgeries. We changed into scrubs and put on their special shoes and headed to the ORs. As a group, we walked down this hall and the guy leading us would just open a door to an OR and instruct students to go in. It was very interesting. I have not shadowed any doctors in the States, so I did not know what to expect, but this was not it. I got into an OR and was met with something that I was not expecting. Turns out I had been assigned to urology, and I now know that I do not want to do urology. However, the anesthesiologist was explaining a lot and I found that really interesting. Being in the OR made me miss the times I was in the OR in the medical research facility I used to work at, where I also did a lot of anesthesiology. This experience has opened my mind to new option and now I have more things to try to figure out. I’ll get there eventually.

              On Friday, we went to The Horst-Stoeckel Museum of the History of Anesthesia. Having just been really interested in the anesthesiology in the Uniklinik a few days earlier, I really focused during this tour trying to work through my options and absorb everything. Dr. Stoeckel spent years collecting the things that filled the cabinets. It was so cool to walk through time focusing on anesthesia, from the masks that housed the sponges with drops of ether or chloroform on them to the collection of anesthesia machines. He even had an iron lung on display, allowing us to really look into a time that was so difficult for people as polio ran rampage through cities and nations.

  

Holocaust Memorial

            After the museum, we headed to Berlin in an RV with Darby’s family. I have never taken a family vacation in a camper like that, so it was sure to be a new experience. The drive to Berlin from Bonn is about 6 hours, and since we had left later than planned Friday, we didn’t make it all the way there. We stopped in Hannover to park overnight in a McDonald’s parking lot. Darby’s parents got up early Saturday morning to continue driving as the rest of us slept. Not super easy to sleep in a moving RV, but better than no sleep at all! We finally got to Potsdam, where the campsite to leave the RV was. We got situated and set out on public transportation to Berlin. We hit the highlights, like the Brandenberg Gate, the Holocaust Memorial, and Checkpoint Charlie. We saw some of the wall and followed the stones laid in the ground showing where the wall used to be. I enjoyed our time in Berlin, but I definitely feel like we didn’t even scratch the surface of what there is to see. I don’t even know if a weekend would be enough, so this is definitely a city that I want to return to and see more.

Sanssouci

              Sunday, we stayed in Potsdam and went to the Neues Palais and Sanssouci. These are two very large palaces that are in Potsdam. We did tours of both and they were beautiful with so many rooms. The decorations were lavish and it is hard to imagine how they built these palaces so long ago and lived in such splendor. In the afternoon, we headed back to Bonn. Traveling in an RV was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed this trip. I am looking forward to this coming weekend, where we will be taking the RV to Munich and other places in southern Germany. Auf Wiedersehen!