Chapter 6

This week had another holiday: Valentines! I noticed that many Germans don’t celebrate this holiday as much as Karneval or Ash Wednesday. It might be because of the energy used throughout the Karneval season. 

Instead of celebrating Valentines traditionally, my TA had a great idea to celebrate Galentines with all the female classmates involved in the Biosciences program. The pairs were selected randomly and we had a 10 euro budget. I tried to put a lot of quantity in it without sacrificing quality or time. It was super cute despite everyone’s schedules being packed, and the person who had me remembered a certain thing we did together at the beginning of the school year and got me figs as a salute to the short memory. 

On actual Valentines day, we had an excursion to the Bayer company in Leverkusen. There was a building designed for communication with the public and the place had recently been remodeled. They had a “research lab” to encourage and motivate youngsters to get involved with the scientific process. The representative told us the most complex lab was taking DNA out of strawberries and I remember when I was in 9th grade doing that exact same lab twice. There was an emphasis on bees as there was a bee statue, and many scientific tools such as pipettes and lab coats for the kids and the whole experience and idea was so cute I was about to tear up. They also had an auditorium or lecture hall that they used for meetings and the public. For the public, it involved movies and scientific demonstrations or magic shows, which was all very endearing. There was an area where you could put on a suit and it gives you the equivalent of an elderly human body, and I thought it built up a lot more empathy than what I originally had for the geriatric population. Next to is where many different kinds of packaging for medicine that Bayer made, so you could try to open the child proof bottles or boxes. There was a lot of high tech stations that we could play in, such as a booth where you could see your organs or bones and the touch screen was basically you touching the air — something out of a sci fi film. They had sonic chairs where you put on these huge sun glasses and were transported to a beehive and learned about pollination and concepts related to it. A photo booth was also built in the corner for all the fellow narcissists out there (aka me). A gorgeous Japanese garden with geese was in the back, but I feel like we barely went through it. The representative showed us the process, money, and time that went into bringing a product to the market and the data was staggering — but I can understand why. 

We had our German final on February 15. I didn’t realize that the German language classes was a survival version of it that involved being cut short. I asked my host mother for help, which really did help as I was confused on what noun matched with das/der and so on. The nouns that ended with “e” usually had “die” in front of it. Hopefully I did well. Later, my host mother bought me an A1 level german book so I can self teach myself further. 

Pharmacology is getting more difficult  and I definitely underestimated the weight of each quiz — each quiz has the power to bring me down a letter grade which is kind of nauseating. 

For the weekend, I went to Amsterdam. The airbnb I stayed at was a bit far and included breakfast. I got to see the Anne Frank house, as we preordered tickets in advance a couple of weeks ago and I felt it was not only humbling but also important to remember Anne’s legacy. I appreciated that the gift shop did not try to commercialize off of the tourist spot, and instead mainly sold Anne’s diary or photos and paper build ups of the house’s architecture. I could not imagine having to be quiet for multiple hours of the day, especially because the toilet and water pipes could have alerted to their presence and the wood floors were creaky and the sound insulation was bad and there was not much room for multiple people in such a small space. Additionally, holding it in is not good for kidneys. 

Later, we went on a boat cruise that went through the canals in which the captain pointed us local history, such as the architecture or where the governor lives and the economically important ports. The tulips in the flower market were beautiful and affordable — 50 tulips for 10 euros! I bought a bundle to bring back to my host family, especially because I kept coming back to the idea of how economical the bouquet is compared to what I would get in America. Next to the market was an outdoor flea market with tons of stalls. A lot of them had a bunch of clothes just thrown on the cement, so you would have to sift through it all like at a thrift shop. There were stalls with bike accessories, bike repair services, and the bicycles themselves. It was interesting to see that biking takes precedence over cars or pedestrians in this city. I bought a small 3 euro bee ring at the flea market and went along my way. We walked by a cheese museum, which was actually a cheese shop where the basement was learning about the industry. There was even a cheesy photo booth, but it was broken when we went. I did like the cheese, however. Next door, there was an art exhibit that could be seen through the window and it was a criticism of Brexit. I thought that was interesting.