An endless amount of sausage and potatoes

Oh man do I have a lot of catching up to do. I'm going to preface this post by saying it's going to be a long one. I suggest taking frequent breaks--get up, walk around, maybe even get a snack. Do whatever it takes to get through it. However, if you get bored halfway through and give up, no hard feelings. Good luck!

So on Sunday I met my Human Health and Disease class at the airport to embark on what DIS calls a Long Study Tour. They emphasize that Europe is our classroom and we can learn more by getting out and experiencing things so every class goes somewhere in Europe to supplement what we've been learning here in Denmark. So after a nice 40 minute plane ride we landed in Berlin and the sun was shining--something I hadn't seen in a very long time. I knew then and there that this was going to be a fabulous week. We spent the afternoon exploring the city via the 1970's-esque metro and tracking down a tasty bratwurst which I ordered in nearly flawless German and then when asked if I wanted ketchup replied "Nej, tak" (Danish for no thanks) Oops!

Our first real day in Berlin began with a visit to the Berliner Dom, the Lutheran version of the Duomo. It was gorgeous inside and out. Then we went to the DDR museum and learned all about life in East Berlin during the communist era. My favorite fun facts: Potty breaks were scheduled into kindergarten classes that consisted of the entire class sitting on bench toilet and no one was allowed to leave until the last kid was finished. Also, nudism was considered to be a form of protest and was therefore fairly common.
If you were at all covered up at a public beach you were definitely the odd man out.

Little German kids sitting on the bench pottyAfter we had a better grasp of a communist lifestyle we went to visit the German parliament building, the Reichstag. This is where we had the most amazing lunch ever paired with an amazing view of Berlin. The dome structure on top is where the restaurant was. You could walk all the way up to the top and from there you could basically see all of Berlin.

The whole group at Reichstag

And to end our busy day we went on a bike tour of Berlin. This was the coolest way to see the city and I learned so much! We saw all the major sites:

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Portion of the Berlin wall that is still standing

Reminder of the largest book burning that happened in Germany. If you look closely you can see the empty bookshelves.

The church on the right was on the right of a large square. It was built by French immigrants and considered to be the most beautiful church in Germany for a while. Well of course the Germans couldn't have their most beautiful church be French so they built the church on the left in the same square but on the left side (below). It is almost exactly the same but is 4 cm taller. Germany-1, France-0.



















Humboldt University where Einstein was a professor

TV tower built by East Berlin to show off communist power. Unfortunately their plan backfired because a huge cross appears when the sun hits the tower and the West saw it as a sign from God to keep fighting for freedom. But now it is the pride of all of German because it's taller than the Eiffel tower and the Germans love beating the French.

The Brandenburg Gate

And the most important Berlin site of all..... the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his baby off a balcony

Dinner was as typically German as you can get and consisted of potato soup, sausage, sauerkraut and of course, beer. And after dinner we went to the Jewish Museum which documented the history of German Jews. It was really interesting because it was the only time I learned about Jews in Germany and it didn't completely focus on the Holocaust.

Day number two was more academically focused and began with a trip to the gross anatomy lab at a medical school in Berlin. After the professor pointed some things out, we got to explore the cadaver lab for ourselves. It was so cool! The bodies were already expertly dissected so we got to see and feel pretty much everything with no work whatsoever. It was awesome. Then we went to the Museum of Medical History on the same campus and saw some pretty old school medical tools/techniques. The Checkpoint Charlie museum was the next stop on the schedule. It documented the resistance to communism in general but had a large focus on how people sneaked out of East Berlin and into West Berlin. There were cars, suitcases, oil drums and speakers that had been modified to conceal a person. Many people tunneled over. One person made a zip line and got his whole family across. My personal favorite was the man who dressed up as a cow and grazed his way across the border. He is my hero. That night we went to a Vegas meets Cirque du Soleil type show called Qi (pronounce key). It was thoroughly entertaining and including ice skating, a swimming pool, trapeze artists, singing, dancing and ridiculously strong men lifting each other.

Day three started with a tour to a medical research center where we saw the Operating Room of the Future and a 7 Tesla MRI machine. 7 Tesla is more than twice the normal amount of magnetic field used for MRI. If you got close enough you could feel all the metal on you being pulled to the machine. I felt it in the buckles on my boots, the snaps on my bra and even in my retainer. It was a very strange feeling but really interesting to experience. After this we were done with Berlin and it was time to catch our train to Poznań, Poland.

In the morning of Day Four we shadowed a obstetrician and quickly learned that the rules in Poland are a little different than the US. We started by asking the patient questions but then were thrown into a more hands on experience. I personally palpitated a pregnant woman's stomach while other kids in my class took her pulse, blood pressure and found the fetal heartbeat. Again, so cool! After this we had a walking tour of Poznań and learned a little history.

Parish Church--Impressive inside and out, then you find out the marble, gold and dome are all fake. Hard to say if their trickery makes it more or less impressive...

Inside the fake church.
Market square with the town hall in the middle

Monument honoring specific Poznani resistance events to the Soviet control, the first and largest occurring in 1956.

Saint Marc's Palace built by the Prussians in 1910

Monument celebrating the Polish students who cracked the Nazi code. They were math students in Poznan.

Front of the Town Hall

After our tour of Poznan we got a tour of Lech Brewery.
It was really interesting to see the production line and learn about the whole beer making process. The next morning we shadowed a pediatrician. This was less hands on than the obstetrician but still very interesting. Unfortunately for me this meant the end of study tour but luckily for you (I'm impressed you're still reading) it means the end of this blog!