The final hours

Berlin has been a very interesting city, more steeped in recent history than any other place we've seen so far on this trip. The two days we've spent here have have sharply contrasted with one another in mood and tone.

Yesterday we spent the morning at the veterinary school in Berlin. Vet school in Germany is different, since they start right out of high school and go for 5.5 to 6 years. We split up according to our interests, which of course meant that I ended up in the small animal clinic. They gave us a tour, which I actually found a bit strange. The clinic was a bizarre mixture of very old and very modern technology... it was a very ugly hospital green color for most of the clinic, with old time radiators and everything still for heat. They also still don't have digital radiograph machines, which I found incredible considering that they are supposed to be a really great clinic. Even a lot of private clinics now have digital x-ray, so I just couldn't fathom that they still used films. I was even more confused when I found out that they have a CT scanner for imaging and a linear accelerator for cancer treatments and such. I was also a bit shocked that their main treatment rooms are actually all in one room, so multiple patients being seen by different doctors are all in the same room at the same time! They say it's easier to ask for help, and easier for students to go from patient to patient and learn, but as a client I would have issues with other people listening in on my private conversation with the vet. I was baffled by the setup of the clinic in general. After the tour, though, we got to pick a place to hang out for a few hours. Kat and I chose to watch surgery, which turned out to be the perfect decision! We watched three procedures, all of which were different and very cool. The first was an anal gland removal and castration, because they suspected anal gland tumors in this dog. I had never seen that surgery performed, as it isn't all that common in the States (the gland part, not the castration). Apparently it is fairly common here though, and the surgeon said it was fairly easy and routine. The second surgery was probably the most awesome. They were removing the spleen from a 9 year old Lab because it was cancerous. When they cut the poor thing open, ALL you could see was spleen! Very much abnormal, in case you don't know a whole lot about abdominal topography. When they finally got it out, the spleen was football sized with only a tiny bit of semi-normal looking tissue on either side and a HUGE mass of tumor in the middle. Hands down the coolest bit of surgery I've ever seen. I just wanted to weigh it and see how much lighter the poor dog would be after waking up! The surgeon for that procedure was very young, which was also interesting. The final surgery we didn't see in it's entirety, since we had to go get lunch. They were repairing a laryngeal paralysis, which is basically when the dog can't open it's vocal cords while breathing so they don't get as much air (and it makes a really cool sound that is sometimes called "roars"). The surgeon for that procedure found out we were Americans and explained the whole thing to us in English, which I thought was extremely considerate of her. What they do is stitch the laryngeal cartilages together and tack them to the side of the trachea (sort of, but I won't bore you with the details) on one side so that more air can get through. They only do one side, though, because otherwise the dog will get aspiration pneumonia. That was a close second for the coolest surgery I've ever seen, so it was a really good morning!

After lunch at the university cafeteria, we went on a Berlin by Bike tour with George. He was a fantastic guide, although the weather was a bit chilly for my liking and the wind was stiff. We saw a huge amount of the city, and between George, Dr. Wasser and Olaf we got a vast amount of information that normal tourists miss out on. I was especially moved by the site of the Berlin book burning. I thought it was really cool how they had a glass floor tile with an empty library below to commemorate the loss of knowledge and erasure of the people who had written the banned literature. We also saw the opera house, memorial for German soldiers, memorial for the Jews killed in WWII, Brandenburg Gate, Reightstag (Parliament building), and the line on the ground where the Berlin wall used to be. I've never been much of a history buff, but I still found it very interesting that there was so much sadness and oppression in the not-so-distant past. I guess I've always thought of WWII and the Cold War era as happening a really long time ago, but it wasn't at all. Realizing that I was actually born before the wall came down was fascinating to me. We finished up the day by eating Turkish fast food (very good if you've never had it). Kat and I shared a bottle of wine and went to bed.

Today was a sadder day than yesterday, but no less interesting. In the morning we visited Sachsenhaussen, which was a concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin. Although it wasn't considered an "extermination camp", there were plenty of terrible things going on there. It was a model camp, which meant that SS soldiers trained there on how to run other concentration camps, and visiting dignitaries were allowed to tour the facilities as if it were just another place to see and hear about. It was very disturbing to me that anyone would WANT to see something like that, let alone learn from it and take that information back to use in other places. Ironically, the police in Berlin today still train in the building that the SS soldiers trained in and are required to do work patrolling the site while visitors are walking through. The entrance gate said something like, "Work will set you free", which was just one example of how the Nazis twisted language so badly. After all, work would set them free in a manner of speaking, since the prisoners were worked to their death. Our guide talked a lot about the different commandos that the prisoners were assigned to, and each was more miserable than the last. Some were forced to test new Nazi boot designs by running 20+ miles a day in poorly fitting boots. Others were forced to dissect the bodies of the prisoners who died, and there were many other equally horrible tasks. We walked through the infirmary, where a variety of experiments were carried out on prisoners. They even experimented on children, which was the most disturbing of all to me. We ended by visiting the extermination building, where there was a small gas chamber and crematoria. That's where I finally lost it; I wasn't the only one with tears running down by the time we finished.

After that we took the train back to the center of Berlin to finish our tour of the city. We got to go into one of the guard towers that stood in the death strip of the Berlin wall. The building was preserved thanks to one man, who's brother was one of the first to be shot and killed attempting to escape from East Berlin when the wall was erected. That guy himself gave us the tour, which I thought was incredible. He is an old man now, and speaks German, but thanks to George, Dr. Wasser and Olaf we were able to listen to him and get an adequate translation of everything he said. I am constantly amazed at the efforts of people to save pieces of the past so we can learn from them. It was the same way with the Anne Frank house being preserved by her father. These people must realize just how important it is and how much of a larger purpose they are serving, because otherwise how could you live with the constant reminder of lost loved ones? I thought it was very generous of him to agree to show us around.

We ended by walking to the remains of the Berlin wall. I wasn't really very impressed by it until we walked around to the back, Eastern side where a section with the death strip was preserved. The wall wasn't high, but the space between the two walls was also riddled with danger. I had never really understood the significance of the Berlin wall, or how long all of that went on, until I saw the memorials and all of that today. I also didn't realize how truly close together WWII and the communist separation of East and West were chronologically. Germany, or at least large parts of it, spent a lot of the 1900s suffering under one tyrant or another.

After visiting the wall we decided to spend a little time at the Pergamon museum, which is an ancient cultures museum. Admission is free on Thursday nights, which was even better! They have the Pergamon altar, as well as the Istar gate on display. Everything was just so huge, and I have always been fascinated with ancient cultures, more so than recent history. All I could think to myself the entire time we were wandering through the museum was, "Why don't we build really gorgeous amazing things anymore?". Seriously though, I feel like modern buildings lack the sense of grandeur and character so common in ancient works. Everything now is focused on mass production and making cookie cutter images of everything from houses to goods, and I just crave the uniqueness and small imperfections that made ancient structures so amazing. People truly thought about what looked fantastic back then, and also used their buildings and statues to honor important elements of their beliefs and daily life. I wish we had retained something of that ideology. Probably my favorite exhibit that we saw was the Ishtar gate and ceremonial pathway to approach it. I could just see myself walking along that road at the height of it's time, staring at the beautiful, brightly colored stones and marveling at how everything had been created.

Tomorrow is our last day of the trip, and we are going to the Wildlife Research center, as well as the zoo. I hope it will be an upbeat end to the trip. Berlin has been amazing, and very educational, but also the saddest city we've seen. I have never felt so deeply moved or close to history as I did here. It is definitely something I won't forget, even if most of the time I felt that it would be inappropriate to take pictures. Somehow I think the images will come with me in my head regardless.