Saturday 5/28

I was so excited to see Katrin at the train station after our long train ride on monday! It was so comforting to see a familiar face and stay in one city for a few days after moving around a lot the past week. I got to see her apartment and finally understood the lofted bed that she told me about. I even had my own room! On Tuesday, we toured the horse clinic and the teaching farm. I was really impressed with the horse clinic. It was awesome! Each area of specialty had it's own little stable and they had some really impressive medicine and technology. The farm was interesting because we learned a lot about how farms have to be run completely differently because of all the strict animal rights laws like no cages for chickens. I definitely don't agree with a lot if the policies because I think they are too extreme.... and I really surprised myself. I mean I'm a vegetarian and I love animals, but I heard about how they loose money producing eggs and chickens end up killing eachother. The thought, "passing laws that kills an industry is just stupid" passed though my head. I guess I'm more of a terrible capitalist American than I like to admit to myself after all. I mean I don't like the chickens to be in a tiny cage where they can move, but there should be a way to find a happy medium where money can still be made. On Wednesday, we went to the vet school's cattle clinic and a private stallion testing center. The cattle clinic was not as new and fancy as the horse clinic, but still very cool. I got to palpate a cow for the first time (a very weird feeling) and got to feel the ovaries! It made me feel like a really vet student, which was nice since this last semester completely whipped my ass. The stallion testing center was the best part of the day though. The horses were absolutely gorgeous. They were the kind of horses I've dreamed of riding. It was amazing to see how these guys (and girls) were able to handle and rode them. I didn't
know anyone rode stallions outside of racing. Very cool. On Thursday, we went to a private veterinary museum and a Wasserschloss (castle with a moat). To be honest, history isn't my thing for the most part, so a lot of the muesum wasn't very interesting to me. The wet specimens were pretty cool though. The place also had an old water mill that still work and that I found really interesting. Odd I know. The place also had a bunch of animals, which makes me super happy. They had a Bernese mountain dog that I really wanted to steal and was really awesome. I went out with Katrin that night, which was interesting. We went to a couple parties, but the vet school one was absolutely crazy!
Next time someone tells me that Americans party too hard and are crazy, I am going to say, "False! German vet students are!" On Friday, we left for Norderney. I was sad to say goodbye to Katrin. I managed to leave my cellphone and not realize it till I was on the train too. Epic fail. We ended up not doing the mud walk, which I must admit I was not sad about. The weather was nasty and cold. I really enjoyed the tour we took instead, even though I lost sensation to my legs because we all thought we needed to wear shorts. Live and learn I guess haha. I was pleasantly surprised how much i really enjoyed the tour. We saw tiny shrimp and creepy mud worms. I put on a blindfold and try to walk towards a pole to simulate what it would be like to try to navigate though fog. I actually did surprisingly well and so did Rachel! Bill and Catherine would apparently be screwed though because they both ended up
walking towards water haha. We all mastered the penguin huddle method of staying warm while waiting for the bus and started singing... I'm sure we looked like complete nut cases! Afterwards, we rinsed off at the hostel and went to dinner. The place we went to dinner at was really relaxing. I had fresh salmon with tortolleni, a glass of Merlot, and a pumpkin seed and ice-cream dessert. Amazing! Best meal I've had so far. Today, we went on a bike tour lead by the same guide that lead our tour yesterday. It was a lot of fun to see all the birds, lighthouse and different areas of the island. We had lunch of the hostel, which kind of sucked because they didn't have vegetarian option. It was the first time that it has happened on the trip and we figured something out, so I really can't complain. The rest of the day we spent going to the seal center and whale museum. The German word for seal is seehund (sea dog), which I thought is a very accurate name. We saw them fed and looked at different things around the museum. The whale museum was interesting because they had a complete sperm whale skeleton from one that had beached after getting lost and the tide went down. It was amazing. We all went into vet nerd mode and started noticing the anatomical differences between it skeleton and land mammals. It was pretty funny and once again made me start to feel like a real vet student again. I'm on the train at the moment and we had an interesting encounter with some characters on the train. I'm really starting to appreciate the no open containers in public law in the states haha.