Off To A Great Start!

Well, the first week of the program is coming to an end and what a week it has been! 

Shannon and I met up with everyone at the Frankfurt airport on Sunday after our two-day excursion in Frankfurt. Sunday was a pretty easy day of travel on a nice train and then a short introductory meeting at AIB. Our program Mira, who is pretty awesome by the way, took us out to the local Bönsch brewery for an amazing dinner of all you can eat schnitzel! 

On Monday morning we were able to visit a local animal shelter and I was really surprised by how great it was. They kept the cats in large rooms together and also provided a covered outdoor area for the cats. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a shelter in the U.S. that had an indoor/outdoor setup for cats, so it was pretty great seeing that here. The shelter also had large outdoor areas for the dogs and had a large amount of small animals, such as rabbits and guinea pigs. Talking with the veterinarian and caretakers it seems like the shelter has similar protocols for vaccinating and adopting out animals as we do in the U.S., but it is cool that they don’t euthanise animals like we do. They even had animals that had been there for several years due to biting issues, but the shelter continued to care for them. 

Tuesday started off with a visit to a dairy outside of Bonn that houses the Center for Integrated Dairy Research. Our visit started off by hearing some research presentations from some of the graduate students at the Center and then continued with a tour of the dairy facilities. The dairy set-up was interesting since it was set up primarily for research purposes instead of a commercial operation. This means that the milking process is pretty inefficient, but it is easier for the researchers to collect their samples. We also were able to see their molecular genetics laboratory and see how they go about fertilising their embryos before transfer. All in all it was a pretty neat visit and I’m glad we got to go!

The group outside the CIDR, Gut Frankenforst, Germany

Dr. Wasser then took us to a German Post World War II History Museum, which was pretty stunning. Since he knows so much about German history we got a personal tour through the entire museum, which is great because there was just so much stuff. It took us over 3 hours to go through the museum and we skipped over a lot of things as well. Dr. Wasser was amazing at showing us how it was for a typical German after the war and it was eye opening to see how hard it was for most of the German citizens. There are three museums like this throughout Germany and I highly recommend a visit and get an audio guide if you can so that you don’t miss anything!

Wednesday was mainly cultural experiences with a trip to the Beethoven House museum and a walking tour of Bonn. I really enjoyed both of these experiences, especially the Beethoven House. I love classical music and it was awesome seeing where Beethoven was born and learn more about his life. After visiting, I haven’t been able to stop listening to Beethoven and all of his amazing music! The Bonn tour was amazing as well since Bonn was first established by the Romans there is plenty of history to be had! 

Münster Cathedral, Bonn, Germany

Thursday was the what I had been looking forward to the most because we got to work in private veterinary practices throughout Bonn. I was by myself with a small animal practitioner who had just opened his practice in January. He is still working on building up his client base and I have no doubt that he will succeed over the next few months. It was really interesting seeing how similar veterinary medicine is here compared to the United States. In fact, if they clients hadnt been speaking German I would have thought I was back home. The vaccination protocol, physical exam, and many of the questions the clients asked were practically identical to how we practice in the States. 

The veterinary practice where I shadowed

On Friday we took a day trip to Cologne and got to see the Cologne Cathedral and take another tour of the city. The cathedral was probably my favourite part of the day and is the most impressive building I have ever seen!  I really like Cologne and wished we could have spent more time exploring the city. Next time I come to Germany I’m going to be sure to spend several more days here.

Cologne Cathedral

The afternoon consisted of a visit to the zoo and we were able to get a behind the scenes tour of the elephant exhibit. This was pretty interesting since the zoo had just finished treating an infection of cowpox in their elephant herd, so we got to see a lot of the techniques that were used to care of the animals. We even got to feed an elephant, which was awesome! 

This week has been full of activities and I am exhausted! I have really loved meeting all of the people here in Germany and experiencing some German culture. For the weekend, some of us went off to Belgium and Lille to see a few more countries while we are here. Hopefully we are rested enough to tackle the second week!

Tschüss!