My Moat is Your Ocean

I always thought three weeks was longer. I always thought that Europe was bigger. These past three weeks I traveled to all of the places most people only get to dream about. Or at least most people I know. I am overwhelmed with awe and gratitude for those who have provided me the opportunity to do this. I've always been more fond of journeys than destinations, and the same rings true for these travels. The best memories of my life have been in a car driving to see family or in a bus going to some tournament or another. Even with all of the incredible destinations I visited, I still enjoyed the journeys. Cars and buses are conversation boxes on wheels, and conversations are my favorite.

The first week, I got to share a bus with fellow pre-med students and two very awesome doctors. My school here in Denmark organizes "study tours" in which they organize field visits tailored to your program. Being in the Medical Practice program we of course visited hospitals. I rarely hang out with pre-med kids at home, so it was nice getting a chance to connect with my potential med school classmates. They understand my academic life unlike most of my friends. They understand the desire to sacrifice so much time in the hopes of making a big difference later. It was nice to hear that they are scared and have doubts just like me about choosing to become a doctor. We talked tired to encourage one another. When it was time to get off of the bus, our first destination was Poznan, Poland.

Poland, Poland, Poland. By far the sketchiest place I have ever been. Poland was the first time that I have ever had exactly zero hold on the language. I have studied spanish for some years, and have dabbled in french, german, and now danish. Never polish. Its scary not knowing a single word in a country in which you are staying. I cannot imagine the guts it takes to immigrate to a foreign country without knowing the language. I felt arrogant trying to speak english and expecting them to understand. I am in THEIR country. I should try to communicate in their language. Poznan was a strange place. It looked just like every other european city. Cobblestones and statues. There was a Burberry store and big malls. Yet everything seemed to be on the verge of chaos, as if at any moment the whole place could erupt in disorder. I saw mothers holding half-dead children begging for money outside of these trendy shops. It really upset me. Apparently the water here was undrinkable, so I just imagined these mothers being forced to give it to their children and their children becoming sick because of it. Denmark has made me more and more socialist because I couldn't help thinking that the goverment should get a handle on this...at the very least provide suitable drinking water. In the hospital we learned that they are attempting to follow the Danish healthcare model, but in my opinion they are failing terribly.

We visited a pediatricians office and shadowed a GI specialist there. We saw a baby girl who had not been able to keep food down for quite some time. She was extremely tiny and her gaunt little eyes broke my heart. My sadness turned to rage, however, when I watched the doctor pass around a cathedar to all of the students in the room and then shove it up the baby's nose and down her throat, to test the pH of her esophogus. I understand that the nasal cavaty is not sterile, but seriously 15 people should not contaminate something going into a very sick baby's body. Not to mention, I don't know much about this field but I think that this test would be completely useless. If she is constantly vomiting than it seems apparent that her esophogus would be more acidic.

After this very traumatic experience, my dislike for Poland was further provoked. My leader only gave me one ticket to get back to the hotel using the Tram, so I assumed it only took one ticket. While sitting there thinking of that poor little girl, a man in plain clothes comes up to me speaking Polish. I have my ticket in my hand and he takes it from me. I tell him I only speak english and he begins to add numbers on my ticket. He takes out a paper "tram police" badge and instructs me and a couple of my classmates to get off of the tram. Apparenty in poland you have validate new tickets every fifteen minutes on the tram, even if there has been no stops. This non-english speaking man proceeds to write me and my classmates a ticket and demands a 100 polish zlote. Here is the miracle. I am cheap and was not going to take out any polish money, but let my friends talk me into taking out exactly 100 zlote! Apparently I would have gone into a nice and terrifying polish jail cell if I wouldn't have had the money.

That is pretty much everything interesting about Poland. I'm glad I went there, but I don't think I'll be rushing back anytime soon. Unless of course it is on some sort of Doctor exchange because goodness knows they need a hand. From Poznan we trekked on over to Berlin. Berlin might be the most amazing city I have ever visited. Seeing the Berlin wall has always been on the top of my wish list and I finally got to do that. Every where you look in the city you can see the effects of WWII. You can see where bombs destroyed everything and things have been rebuilt. You can see the chasm between communism and democracy embedded in every building. While we were there we visited the Charite teaching hospital. Pretty much we talked all about policy and government control...rather dull topics if you ask me. It seems the German healthcare system is quite ridiculous. Basically there you pay insurance PLUS the full cost of your healthcare services. Whack, right? Anywho...after this we visited a Medical history museum. This was actually pretty cool, and bizzarre. There were over 500 perserved specimins. Things like tumors, skeletons, even fetuses preserved for over 75 years. The fetuses were really terrible to look at. To end the day we had a mini anatomy lab where they showed us a cadaver. Had I not done 6 weeks of cadaver anatomy this summer I would've found this more interesting...but I just wanted to leave and see more of Berlin!

The most interesting experience I had in Berlin was a meal at the Unsicht Bar....or blind restaurant. Here, all of the waiters are blind. You start your eating experience by sitting in a dimly lit room choosing either beef, chicken, or vegetarian. That is all you know about your meal...the rest remains a mystery. After your selection, a waiter comes out and introduces him or herself to you. My waitress's name was Sevem. She was probably about 4'6" and quite adorable. She asked each of our names, as this is how she would identify us later, by our names and the sound of our voice. From here, Sevem lined us up and led us into a very dark room. When I say very dark, I mean completely pitch black. The darkest dark you can imagine. I am not so fond of the dark...so it made me a little jumpy. Sevem walked incredibly fast, as this was her element. We struggled to keep up and Sevem had to re gather us a few times. Finally we arrived at our table and had to grapple for our chairs. Upon sitting, my m any apprehensions began to settle. I became familiar with my place setting and those around me. Conversation became vital and very strange. If a person does not talk in this setting, they do not exist. I usually don't talk much so I just ceased to exist for most of the conversation. Then the food arrived. I started out trying to be civilized. I used my fork and knife, blindly stabbing and cutting mysterous foods on my plate. I have quite a few texture issues and must eat everything one at a time, so really this was a large ordeal for me. At one point I ate what I thought was an eyeball and nearly had a heart attack. A quiet heart attack though, because I didn't want to scare my fellow tablemates. They tried to include as many different textures as possible with this meal, so you were always thrown off gaurd. At the end of the meal, Sevem collected us again and led us out of the darkness. How glad I was. They then allowed us to look at a menu to see what we had been eating. My eyeball was apparently beet niocci. Disgusting. Bleh. You definitely eat at this restaurant for the experience and not the food. I'm so glad I got to experience this. And in Berlin of all places.

The next day we visited the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. I was quite obsessed with WWII and Hitler when I was younger so this place was wildly interesting to me. Jesse Owens win here defied everything Hitler built his empire on. How amazing. And now we've got Obama as a president. I wish Hitler would've lived to see this day. We got to go up into the VIP lounges and sit where Hitler might have sat. Gross. But really neat to see. Our last Berlin visit was to a concentration camp. As can be expected, it was deeply haunting. What surprised me was the vastness of it. Sachsenhausen is not even one of the biggest camps, but there were just huge wide open spaces. It was cold and grey when we visited, so it felt even more haunting. I really hope we have learned our lesson. I hope Berlin is preserved forever.

(Will continue later)