Week 3: Snow and Spain

What a busy and exciting weeks it's been. So much has happened over the last seven days that it feels like forever ago. The weekdays were filled with a frantic push to get all of my schoolwork done before the weekend. I was able to complete everything in time, which I was very happy about, yet I still feel like I have a lot of work to do to fully understand all the material we are learning, particularly in physiology and circuits. On Thursday we went to the Anesthesiology museum, which was one of the most hot buildings I've ever been in in my life, but there were definitely some cool stuff in there, particularly the iron lung. I imagine that there aren't many of those floating around anymore, and it is very interesting to see how ventilators used to work.

It snowed in Bonn this week! I haven't seen this much snow since I went to Boston during the winter when I was 8, and it's completely different to live in the snow rather than visit it. I think I am starting to get used to the cold, although I definitely was not good at walking on all the slippery sidewalks around Bonn. The Hofgarten was beautiful covered in snow, and a giant snowman was made with the help of many of us.

Now the part of this week that was truly crazy and different. With five other people, I went to Madrid, Spain! We had a smooth flight into the city, and then proceeded to spend the next three and a half hours taking public transportation in an attempt to get to our hotel. I think we could have walked there about as fast as it took. Definitely made me appreciate German transit a lot. But once we got going, the city was absolutely amazing and different. As someone who barely speaks any Spanish, I was very appreciative to have someone who spoke the language coming along with us, because I would have been completely lost otherwise.

On our first night we got to visit the modern art museum, where we saw a lot of cool stuff, although I felt that I couldn't fully appreciate, since everything was in Spanish. I got a glass of wine from the hip bar right in the museum. The next day we spent the day wandering around the city, exploring what we could. We visited the Prado museum, an excellent and massive art museum with thousands of portraits, landscapes, and sculptures. Even in three hours we didn't even get through half of the first floor of the museum. Then we took in the sights of the many plazas around the city, which were full of tourists and locals milling around. We stopped at a restaurant and got paellas and tapas, a true Spanish dinner.

The next day, we went into town and got brunch at a cute place that had amazing empanadas, which seemed to be all savory in Spain. Then we wandered around a massive flea market that had pretty much anything you could think of. There was all sorts of live music, instruments, clothes, and records for sale. I bought a small wooden saxophone as a keepsake. We then walked to the Retiro Park, and strolled to the center of the park where the Crystal Palace is. Even in winter the park was incredibly scenic and full of life. There were always sights, sounds, and smells everywhere we were.

After the park we made the trek all the way to the Royal Palace, which is the largest palace in all of Europe, and seemed to me the most ornate place I'd ever been in. There was gold and paintings everywhere, they had Stradivarius violins, and every ceiling had a detailed fresco. We then went to the Temple of Debod, an ancient Egyptian temple that was transplanted from Egypt to Madrid, and enjoyed the sunset there. Finally, we capped off the trip by going to a Real Madrid CF fútbol match, and seeing them win handily. Spain was absolutely amazing, and I already want to go back to explore more of the country. But now I have a week in Vienna with the rest of my class, which will be a whole new adventure!