Auf weidersehen, goodbye! (written on 6/6/09)

So long, farewell, Auf Weidersehen, goodbye!Just like the Von Trap family would sing, I hate to go and leave this pretty sight. This whole experience has been amazing. I was interested in the talk Dr. Wasser had given during orientation explaining the program, but had done nothing about registering for the program. Good thing I happened to work PetFare with Allison, who convinced me I should definately go. It's really been a great life experience! I'm sitting at my gate, waiting to leave Berlin for Houston and it's a bit sad.

I'd love to stay a few more days in Europe. I'm not sure i'm ready for it to be all over! This past week, we got a behind-the-scenes tour of the Berlin zoo! It was probably one of my favorite activities for the entire trip. I mean, who wouldn't get excited about hand feeding rhinos and hippos! We got to tour the hospital, which was strangely placed on the 2nd floor. I mean, what if the tiger they sedated to treat woke up and they were stuck in the elevator! ahhhh! We learned about how certain animals were medicaly trained so the Vet could treat them. Trainers taught the elephants and apes to show their hands or feet through a special gate, present their chest for auscultation, even turning around so the vet could take a temperature! how cool is that! could you imagine target training a chimpanzee so you could evaluate gait for a lameness exam? So cool. As an added bonus, it seemed like almost every animal had a baby so I got to fawn over the baby elephants, baby giraffes, baby hippos...it was too cute.

I got to pet a rhino!

That pill the Dr. is showing us is birth control for hippos.

We also got to do Berlin On Bike. That was really great because we got to see a few of the historic sites and learn a little history. Unfortunately, we started running out of time and didn't get to see quite as many things as I'd wish we'd had. I mean, Berlin has so many things and we really didn't get to spend enough time there or have enough free time to enjoy more than 1 or 2 sites in full.

Our B.O.B. guide at the "Berlin Wall"

Jessia looking through what would've been the west side of the Berlin Wall

The Brandernburg Gate

The visit to the FU clinics were really cool because I went to go see small animal surgeries and it was my first time to fully scrub in and watch inside of the room. I mean, besides helping out with a few dentals and smaller procedures, i'd never been in a surgery room for cool stuff like what we got to see: repairing a dog's fractured femoral head, a totally blown knee on a cat (pretty much every ligament was in bits when they opened up the joint capsule..it wasn't pretty), and fixing a growth plate on a puppy's femur. It was pretty awesome. I wish we'd gotten to take some pictures so i will remember it better.

For our free time in Berlin, we were able to go see the richstag/congress house and that was super pretty since the dome is made out of glass and you can pretty much see the entire city from the top. We also checked out Olaf's favorite discotech from his 20s when he lived in Berlin and unfortunately, it was a flop because it was closed on thursday and the bar wasn't anything to write home about. I also went to Checkpoint Charlie with Mis and Rachel. The museum was information overload city. I mean, every single nook and corner had text or pictures or sculptures. Half-way through I had to give up on reading everything and went through the rest of the museum looking and the ingenious contraptions people came up with to get through the 'death zone' and reading some of the stories of successful and sadly, some unsuccesful berlin wall hoppers.

At the Checkpoint Charlie Museum

Well, they're calling for us to board our plane now. Tschüs!