Our weekend trip to Brussels was fraught with difficulties in the beginning, but once we got to the correct area of the city we had a great time. We visited the Grand-Place, which is a square containing the town hall and the Maison du Roi. The Maison du Roi is actually a museum depicting the history of Brussels. We visited the Belgium Beer Museum, went to the Neuhaus chocolate store, and the Cathederal St. Michel et Ste Gudule. Our wanderings around the city also took us to the Palais Royal de Bruxelles, which was beautiful and had parks and a great view of the city nearby. I took French for 5 years so it was really exciting for me to finally put that knowledge to good use! I got to order all my meals in French. We ended the day back in the Grand Place, and had a delicious quiche dinner while listening the the outdoor jazz festival that was going on a few feet away.
The next morning, we took a train to Lille, France. I absolutely loved this town. The weather was perfect for our visit. We had brunch in their town square and got to enjoy a parade of marching bands! There was everything from a bugle corps to a drum line. We spent a very relaxing day just wandering around the city. They had a town "flea market" type area in what used to be where their stock exchange took place. It was here that we discovered that this was the birthplace of Louis Pasteur. For a group of veterinary students, this was very exciting news! Everyone we met in this town defied the stereotype that the French tend to have. People were more than willing to go out of their way to help us out. We ran across someone in the park with his dog, so, naturally we asked to pet it. This led to him showing us all over town. It was neat because a couple of us spoke some
French and he only spoke a little English, and we had to figure out how to communicate. It was so
much fun and he introduced us to a bakery with the best eclairs and showed us to the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille. We spent the rest of the day wandering around the museum and taking a nap in the park nearby before returning to Brussels.
Monday morning found us taking the train to Hannover, Germany where we visited the zoo and took a self guided tour of the city. The zoo tour was my favorite of the zoo tours we have had so far. Our guide told us lots of good information about the animals and then gave us time at the end to look at what we wanted on our own. The Hannover city tour was pretty fun, we followed a painted red line around the city and stopped at specific points to read more about the history. My favorite stop was the town hall. It was gorgeous, and the view from the top of the tower was fantastic.
On Tuesday we went to Hannover's vet school to look at their cattle clinic. It was interesting because, due a lot in part to government funding, they are willing and able to do a lot more for cattle than we typically do in the U.S. They put a lot of time and effort into making them better, they will even pick clients cows up for free and take them to the clinic! This system makes owners mor inclined to get healthcare for their cows and gives students cases to learn from. In the afternoon we went to a stallion testing center. They primarily test Hannovarians, along with Oldenburgs and other Warmbloods. They evaluate at the stallion's sperm as well as put the horse through a 70 day riding test. The horses as well as the facilities were top of the line.
On Wednesday we traveled to Berlin and did a bike tour of the city. I loved it! Even though several of us almost got run over due to not understanding how traffic works here, it was a great way to see more of the city in a short amount of time. We were able to see so many important landmarks such as Checkpoint Charlie and Bebelplatz (one of the sites of the Nazi book burnings). It was awesome to see the things I've learned about in history classes over the years come to life.
The next day we visited a horse clinic in Bad Saarow. This clinic is a reproduction clinic as well as a training facility. We got to observe rectal ultrasounds on mares to see what stage of their heat cycle they were in. We were also given a tour of their training facilities and got to see all the mares with their foals out in the pasture. After our tour we went on a little hike through the woods to eat at a restaurant on the lake. I tried the German dish of white asparagus, it was so good!
On Friday we went to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen. It was an overwhelming experience. Our tour guide took us to each building and described what happened in each one. We went inside the barracks, prison, kitchens, hospital, and station zed (gas chamber and crematorium). This camp had around 20,000 people pass through its gates, including Joseph Stalin's son. They did a lot of medical testing there, including hepatitis and gangrene. They also had prisoners test out shoes for the army by having them walk miles and miles each day over different surfaces. The feeling I had in the camp is one that I have trouble putting into words, other than it is astounding that people could do that to one another. The SS came up with ways to make killing less psychologically damaging to themselves, which led to them calling people in for "medical exams" and shooting them from a secret room so they wouldn't have to look at the prisoner. What was also shocking is that a neighborhood is a few feet away from the camp, so outsiders had to at least have some knowledge of what was going on. Later in the afternoon we went on a tour of the Bundestag, or German Parliament Building.
Saturday morning bright and early we headed off to Prague! This city definitely exceeded my expectations. Our host was incredibly helpful and armed us with maps and pointed us In the right direction. The weekend consisted mostly just wandering around and drinking in all of the sites. The city was full of bright cheerful colors. We got to see the Charles Bridge, the Prague castle, and cathedral. I finished up the weekend listening to Dvořák, Vivaldi, and Mozart in a concert hall right next to the Vltava River.
1 comment:
Holstein calves are the cutest things ever!!
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