Wound Conference, Case Report, Freitag Bier, Interlaken Adventures,

Dear loyal blog followers, now that I've been informed that there is at least one of you out there (Danny you know who you are), I'm going to go over a few of the few exciting things that have been going on. After the Roma weekend, I worked on finishing up some book/article stuff. On Friday and I worked Lauchli's chronic wound/ulcer conference which was very interesting, however it further instilled in me how much I don't like chronic wounds and ulcers...I guess the idea of dead rotting flesh on a person that is still alive (or even not alive for that matter) is just not that appealing to this intern. I got to sit in on many lectures about the cutting edge of the field which was, as the Germans would say, "lernreich" (learning rich). I also got to run around the auditorium with a microphone, like those production assistants on Oprah and Maury (which ever you prefer), so that people could ask questions/argue with each other; this was very fun. Of course the typical conference bonuses also applied: multiple coffee breaks with free treats, free hot lunch, kilos worth of creams (except this time they were for incontinence, I learned what that meant this weekend), bandages, lip balm, measuring tapes, stockings (yes like pantihoes), and pens (my goal is to never ever have to buy a pen after this trip). On top of this I made 100 CHF cash, which was nice. Friday night I had Freitag Bier with the research crew and some of Keith's mathy friends; this was of course lovely, and afterwards we went to dinner at a cool Pakistani place. Saturday night I went to dinner at the VB's which was lovely. The whole family schooled me in pingpong on the new table and we had very heated debates about yoga. The next week I wrote a case report for Dr. Waldo (I swear to you put this guy in a red striped shirt and into a book and no one would be able to find him) about pitted keratolysis. We have the first dermatoscopy picture of it and we're submitting it for publication! I continued working on the book stuff and planned my research project with Keith a bit. I ordered the antibody that I will need for my immunohistochemistry stains, and I can't wait to get started this week! I will be looking at the expression of a certain gene in melanoma and confirming that it is regulated by another gene and seeing if it's level of expression has a significant correlation with patient survival times. Friday after work I went to Freitag Bier again (if this is not clear this is a Friday tradition because most of us work some on the weekend and this is a nice little bonding/downtime within the quagmire of derm-science that is F Stock) and afterwards went to the Paki place again. After this I caught a train to Interlaken, checked into Balmer's Herberage (read little USA) and met up with Molly and Courtney. I was shocked and mildly (ok highly) irritated by some of the behavior of some (most) of the Americans in this hostel. Not to say this was not a super fun/friendly hostel, it was! The staff was great, the facilities were great, the activities offered were great, but the sorority/frat girls/boys who decided that playing loud obnoxious drinking games and wearing hoop earings and designer "sexy clothes" was appropriate for the backpackers hostel in a town known for outdoor adventures, e.g. canyoning, hiking, rock climbing, ice climbing, rafting, sky diving, bungee jumping...etc. Get the picture? The earthy, crunchy granola, hippy side of Ms. Lockwood was not pleased. Friday we slept though most of the maddness, but on Saturday....well I'll come to that later. Friday morning, Molly, Courtney, and I woke up, ate a FREE breakfast at Balmers, and met our guide to go canyoning. We drove to the canyoning headquarters, got dressed in wetsuits/jackets, booties, helmets, and lifejackets and loaded into the van. It was a short ride to the canyon, at which point we proceeded to hike for twenty minutes or so to the canyon. We hiked in the river downstream for a little ways before we came to the spot where we repelled down into the canyon and after that there was only one way out: the bottom. Canyoning was amazing! Jumping off waterfalls, hiking in the river, sliding down miniwaterslides etc. Pictures to come perhaps. After that we walked through downtown (where a nice man gave us free truffle samples) on our way to the lake. We got lost along the way and ended up in a barn. There were cows in the barn and goats in the yard. It was very sweet and I bought some Alpkaese from the nice owner man (his name was Balmer hehe). We hung out at the lake for a while. It was gorgeous: mountains right into the water...my favorite! After that sat in the hostel in a semi-vegetative state and Courtney and Molly had a complimentary hard candy eating contest. Courtney won. We wanted to buy stickers, but they didn't have any so what were we supposed to do? We stole the three magnets that were holding up some ads. So if you see our wanted posters around Interlaken it's for Grand Theft Magnet. We justified this by equating them to hotel soaps...as they weren't for sale....I'm not sure this justification holds up but oh well; they're cute. After our crime commiting, we had our 10 euro special which we were very excited about: cheeseburger ("the best in europe"), fries, salad, beer. We hung out into the evening with some of the friends we met canyoning, we ate someone's half bag of potato chips that was left on a table (maybe Interlaken just makes people go clepto...I have no idea). Of course the drinking game loud maddness was still going on which we were not happy about, because we were trying to have conversations like civilized humans. To get these greek system hoodlooms/scalliwags/ (insert fave word for obnoxious little shits here) to shut up I decided to ring the very enormous cow bell (think beach ball-sized) that was hanging right above my head. The thing is is that it worked! They temporarily shut up. Unfortunately though, one of the staff came in and said (yelled) "PLEASE DON'T RING THAT BELL IT'S LOUD ENOUGH IN HERE ALREADY!" What this cute Irish boy didn't understand was that were on the same team. Too bad. I accidently rang it again while trying to get photo documentation of my new noise control method, but he didn't yell at us then. This morning I woke up and waited to meet my guide for ice climbing. This guy was awesome. His name was Hanu and he was a born and raised Interlaken-Swiss mountain man. He owns this company that runs rock climbing, ice climbing, heli skiing, glacier trekking, and he guides it all! We walked down to his headquarters, paid and got set up with our gear: boots, crampons, packs, picks, ropes, leg thingies, helmets etc. I must note Hanu's grasp of english cursing idioms and the creative liberties he took with these were awesome. He'd say things like "cool bananas" and "this sandwich isn't shit, it's absolute shit!" and "look guys," as he gestured to a poster of a little boy in a crevasse, "little shits can do it, so big...i mean well you guys can do it" and "Bucking Feutiful" all while making crude references and saying "trust me baby" as he lowered us into the crevasses. This guy was the man. If you ever get a chance to go to Interlaken, ice climbing is a must do and Hanu from Alpine Guides is the guy to go with. So after we drove the hour up to the Stein Glacier we hiked about half an hour or so from the base up to the ice. We then parked it and ate our picnic lunches while Hanu set up everything. There were hundreds of people out on the glacier. According to Hanu they were doing mountaineering courses, self rescue education, other safety courses etc. Worth noting is that the weather was beautiful! not a cloud in the sky, sunny and warm! I wore a tank top all the way until we sat down and ate lunch. After lunch we started climbing. We'd repel down into the crevasse, it was beautiful down there, and then climb up. It was very hard though, and by the top you were huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf. In the crevasse water would run down the sides and everything was blue, it was gorgeous. Even the rivers of run off from the glaciers was milky baby blue. This is from the air bubbles in the ice and the way they throw the light (just like the sky). We kept going like this for a while, down into the crevasse climb out, down into the crevasse climb out, until we were all pooped out and out muscles were squealing. Then we hiked down. The views on and around the glacier were incredible. Jagged, young, mountains, some just walls of rock jutting up from the valley, covered in green mosses, trees below tree line, and the occasional marmot (we saw one on the hike down). Words cannot describe the epic beauty of that nature. I felt like I was in a Patagonia add or in National Geographic or something. Then I took the train back to Zueri and now I'm in bed and tired...really tired....and I will be sore tomorrow so it is sleep time.

XOXO from your back country blogger

Roma...and falling in love with Italy.

As I write this blog I am siting on a high-speed train from Rome to Milan reflecting on the unforgettable weekend I just experienced.

 

Friday I was planning on taking the night train from Zuerich to Rome, which was scheduled to leave at 21:23. Because I’m an idiot and cannot manage to add/subtract or wrap my head around the concept of military time, I showed up at Hauptbahnhof at quarter to ten thinking I had left myself plenty of time to find my platform, grab a bottle of water, and get comfy in my couchette. I pulled aside a train-looking man and asked him which platform this train was leaving from and he kindly told me “Es schon weg” ( it already left) I promptly began to cry. He talked me down and explained an alternative route to me which would get me into Rome an hour later and that made me stop crying. J I wrote Mandy an email including my new arrival time and hopped on the train to Chiasso. I had a minor layover there and after meeting a guy from Steamboat who handed me over to some policemen for protection, I made friends with some other young backpackers: two guys from Bombay, a guy from Singapore, and a guy from Newfoundland. They filled me in on canyoning in Interlaken, hangliding, skydiving, and all of the other adventury things one can do there. I took the train from Chiasso to Milan (on which an old Italian man, who set down newspapers before sitting on the train seats, commented on how big my feet were) jumped on the Metro to Milano Centrale and hopped a train to Roma. On the train I met a nice Egyptian guy who taught me some important Italian phrases and invited me to come visit him in Florence. After he left the train my cabin was infiltrated with Americans. For the record, after living in Switzerland for a month and a half and adjusting to the way things are there, the way people are there, it was a little weird spending a few hours with these ladies. I can see how we can seem a little…irritating to other people. One of the women spilled white wine on an Italian lady that was also in the cabin, they were making fun of the Italian accent/telling stories about all the problems they were having with it and gossiping about everyones’ business…I was a little embarrassed to be an American on that train ride. I also met a cute Italian guy on that train who told me “You are very beautiful.” He tried to convince me to come to Naples with him…I was tempted. I got off the train and went to the Nike store where Mandy and I were to meet, but as the train was significantly later than it was supposed to be she was of course not there and I needed to find some internet to get in touch with her. I talked to the guys at the Nike store who had told me that there had been a very beautiful blond girl standing outside earlier but she had left. Then a nice Romanian guy from the Nike store took a break to go help me find internet. He was very nice, and we are now facebook friends J I got in touch with Mandy in an internet café, and took a cab to her place. We met up with Mandy’s friend Megan and went sightseeing. We went to the Pantheon, the Colleseum, Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II, Piazza Navona (where we proceeded to get Henna tats), the Roman Forum, and Campo de Fiori where there was a HUGE Europride (gaypride) parade/party going down. Beautiful people dressed in really bright colors, wearing angel wings and hotpants (one guy was wearing a priest outfit and angel wings J) were dancing on floats to Katy Perry’s I kissed a Girl amongst other wonderful dance beats. It was wonderful. In the evening we had pasta for dinner at their flat and proceeded to Scholars, an Irish pub on Via del Corso. The music selection there was top notch, and the Italians would come up to us and ask, “What is this song called?” and we’d say, “Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey,” and they’d say, “Believe in Me?” “No, Don’t Stop Believing” and it would go back and forth like this for a while; it was beautiful. We met a few italain students from Naples named Alexandro, Carmela, and Francesco. I was quite fond of Francesco…he was a very beautiful Italian creature who didn’t speak a word of English. We had a great time with them singing American classic rock: Sweet Home Alabama, Don’t Stop Believin’, All Summer Long...etc. We exchanged coasters with information at the end of the night and were going to meet up again on Sunday night. All three of them are also now my facebook friends. SUNDAY: Got up, showered, ate some yummy bruschetta and tiramisu for breakfast and headed to the Vatican. We went to mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica (which is a beautiful building). When it was time for communion I went up to be blessed and did the hand crossy/crossy thing that in English means “I’m not planning on taking communion” but the priest gave it to me anyways: maybe there’s an Italian body language way of saying “no communion please.” Afterwards we checked out the catacombs; they were really neat and saw the tomb of John Paul IV. After that, the rest of the girls went grocery shopping and I went to the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain. Both of which were beautiful. I met the girls back at the apartment at 7:30 and took Mandy out to dinner for squash Gnochi which were delicious. After dinner we met up with a group of students and went to dessert (I had some yummy Ricotta thing with candied fruit…the candy fruit was somewhat weird but the waiter told me it was from Cicily and was excelente, so I had to try it. After that we went to a nearby piazza and watched the street performers. One guy did slapstick comedy that was really funny and only mildly crude. Another performer was dressed as a Sphinx, and there was a group of jugglers with colorful, glowing clubs that were really good. MONDAY: woke up said bye to Mandy and walked to the Vatican Museum because I wanted to see the Sistine Chapel. It was beautiful but different from what I was expecting. After that I took the Metro to the Palatino Hill where I saw the house of Augustus, lots of ruins, and a very pretty overlook of the whole forum/contantine arch/colleseum. After that I went to the Colleseum and hung out there for a while before heading back to the train station and getting on the fast train to Milan. In Milan I am scheduled to take a train to Zuerich, arriving at 10:30 tonight. Well as it turns out, as things generally seem to turn out in Italy, the train will be arriving in Milano 80 minutes late, conveniently causing me to miss my connection to Zuerich. Customer service will pay for me to stay in a hotel here in Milano and I will take the first train out of here in the morning after sending an apologetic email to the derm dept. According to a girl from Illinois that I met on the metro in Roma there is a saying that goes, in heaven the police are British, the cooks are French, the engineers are German, the administrators are Swiss, and the lovers are Italian, and in Hell the police are German, the cooks are British, the engineers are Italian, the administrators are French, and the lovers are Swiss ……..I suppose you take the good with the bad. How can you expect the world’s most beautiful, tanned, love-loving people to also keep their trains running on time. In a world of choices and priorities I’d put kissing skills, love, tan-ness, tiramisu, pasta, and courtship over punctual trams any day J (not that I don’t absolutely adore punctual trams and die Schweiz)

 

As a sidenote: After this trip I think I was born in the wrong country. The passion (at least from what I’ve seen here in the past couple days) here is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. People are passionate about their food and about love, especially love, like I’ve never seen before. Everyone is so open and warm it’s really beautiful. The streets may not be as clean as Zuerich’s but the way the language sounds, the way everything is done with passion and intention, the hand movements, the inter-human interaction is all very beautiful. I will learn Italian and live here someday, for an undefined period of time. 

SGDV, BBQ...exciting learning times.

still working on F stock with the book which is great. On Wednesday a melanoma researcher from the Brode in Boston (Harvard med school grad/ faculty) came to give a talk about melanoma genetics which was really neat. Wednesday night Kieth, Layla, Maria, Danny, Marjam, and I went to Alexis and Marie's for a lovely BBQ. we hard corn, meats, salad, yummy spanish garlic mayo, baked bread, greek dippy stuff, potatoes...lalalala it was great. Keith and I got in a big fight about facebook. For dessert we had yummy apple muffins. We ate on the terrasse it was a beautiful night. and Maria told me us about the crazy boatride/club that is the ferry from stockholm to helsinki...i feel a trip coming on. Kieth's girlfriend Layla is lovely and comes from Finland so she told be all the best places to visit in Scandanavia and when to go (JULY) :) Went to bed late after walking back to the hospital with Maria and trying to decide where to tell here to go in the States in winter, seeing as she doesn't ski. Marjam, as it turns out, went to summer camp every year in Newaygo! We had a fun time chatting about that...and how her cabin mates wouldn't take her aspirin if they had a headache because it was from "Germany" how very american of them :) The next day we had the SGDV which is a congress equivalent to the American Academy of Dermatology annual meeting for Switzerland. All day we had a surgery course. In the morning lectures about technique, new tips and tricks etc. (the lazy s etc.) and then in the afternoon we practiced on pig legs. which was AWESOME! It was my first schwine beine experience and i truly enjoyed myslef, not that I knew anything about suturing. We had yummy food and drink all day and then after the surgery course we had some lecutres about biologics in psoriasis treatment and other psoriasis related issues. It was very informative. After that we had dinner in the private faculty only restaurant at the top of the ETH which overlooked all of Zuerich and Lake Zuerich. It was beautful! The dinner was also lovely. 4 courses and good company. This morning we had talks on lots of non-cancer related derma topics and a melanoma talk from Levi Garraway the Harvard guy and from people from all over Switzerland...and don't let my cultural lens show now but I am somewhat irritated with the French or I guess the French speaking swiss. Someone will go up, say that they are going to present in English unless "someone is particularly opposed" and then all of the French start whining until he starts speaking French. What's more, someone will give a talk in English or German and no matter what they will only ask their questions in French make their comments in French....grrr... and these are SUPER highly educated people...it blows my mind. I am by no means fluent in German but I definitely make and effort. In the afternoon we had workshops in small groups (6 to 8) and my first one was with Guenther Hofbauer about skin problems in organ transplant recipients, and it was very interesting/ enlightening (not to mention he is absolutely adorable, got the super-tall dark and handsome thing going on). The next talk was about hand and foot syndrome and that was also very neat and I might have gotten an idea for a research project with ice water, but we'll see...after that we had the melanoma talks. Dr. D always says Gordian Knot. There was some very interesting new data presented with a drug that has shown more promise than any durg up to this point, which is quite exciting. A plastic surgeon that I corrected a chapter for also spoke and he had sent me an email earlier saying "...and most importantly are you related to the great Ted Lockwood?" I asked him which Ted Lockwood he was speaking about and he said, "Why the famous plastic surgeon!" I had to tell him, "Well I am related to a great Ted Lockwood, but just not that great Ted Lockwood. A Ted Lockwood is my dad." After the presentations and round table discussion between four leading melanoma guys, we had snacks in the lobby and headed home. I went to buy my train ticket to Rome, finnish packing and send myself a few emails so that I can work on the train. I will say a couple of thankful things for SGDV: yummy food every few hours, lots of free schwag (antiaging, sunscreen, acne washes/creams, face refreshing sray) free bags, a free shirt, lots of free chocis, crossaints, juice, coffee, wine, fruits, other yummy assortments, and by far the coolest and most important, the wealth of knowledge presented about all of the most important advances in dermatology (presented in 3 languages). Vielen Dank SGDV and Dr. D...these were two days to be remembered. Now I'm sitting in the Starbucks near the train station waiting to go get on my night train to Rome to visit the lovely Mandy Jarboe...I cannot wait.

OXOX love from zueri/rome


Lauren

ps-if you need sunscreen i'm your girl.

the past 17 days of varying levels of swiss and german crazy.

Monday-Wednesday were the typical working days on D floor (rounds and correcting, but more on work later) After work I met L & crew at Rote Fabrik in Enge, this very neat restaurant right on the lake, and we hung out for a while. A guy in his mid-forties -50s came and asked us where to buy weed. We did not know where to tell him to buy weed. After that we went to a mstrkrft concert. That was a very good time and I was impressed that I knew some of the songs (even one's that I hadn't youtubed earlier in the day to figure out what I was in for). After the concert we hung out in the park on the lake in Enge until morning at which point I took the train back to Vogelsang 10 at 7:00 and slept my Fiertag (free day/holiday) away. Somewhat of a waste, but the night made up for it I suppose. I even met an Austrian who challenged me to an epic tubing battle (like he stands a chance). Saturday I biked the 30 miles to Raperswil which is a beautiful ride on the lake the whole way. Raperwil is a very old quant tourist town with a castle and 270*+ views of the Lake. I had a yummy lunch at an Italian place on the lake and this two old greek guys sat next to me and the one (Michael) was propositioning me to meet/marry his 24 year old son-who knows, maybe I'll give him a call :) Sunday I went to the FC Zueri v. Ascona soccer game (which I thought was in Zueri turns out it was in Ticino). I showed up at the Hauptbahnhodd a little after 11 thinking 'wow, this is strange. we have never met at the train station before a soccer game, and never this early either.' Well we were meeting at the train station at 11 to train the 3+ hours to Ticino, which was if I might add the most beautiful train/car/plane trip I've ever taken. We travelled through the Alps, next to rivers, through tiny Swiss cow towns; it was lovely. Zueri killed up which made us Schwizer Meisters (the Swiss Champions) so it was time for lots of fence climbing, tear gas experience number 2, lots of singing, lots of soccer players undressing, and a very bouncy train ride home due to the jumping/singing combination for the duration of the train ride. It was absolutely fine by me though and I was singing the songs just as loud as the Zuerchers. When we reached Zuerich there was a mob of people singing and waiting to greet us at Hauptbahnhof. The mob then began marching in a parade through the streets of Zuerich, through Zuerich's red light district and into this big park. I had to go earlier than I would have liked because I had to work in the morning (I got a good scolding from Domi & the other for leaving early because "they're [the team]  just about to come into town and stop here") I had my first Kebab that night which was very yummy. I think I will have to have another Kebab before too long. This week brought some very good things in terms of the work situation. I've been working on a book project that my boss is spearheading/editing/orgaizing. The book is the sister manual to the World Health Organization's book Pathology And Genetics of Skin Tumours (WHO Classification of Tumours)  http://www.amazon.com/Pathology-Genetics-Skin-Tumours-Classification/dp/9283224140

and it focuses on the Treatment of the tumors covered in the formentioned text. I've been working on editing the english of chapters written by non native english speakers from 5 continents. Marie Zipser (probably one of the sweetest most adorable people ever who invites me to BBQs and teaches me how to do PCR, DNA extraction, and other fun stuff but more on that when I get to today) informed me that Dr. D wants to have everyone's stuff done and ready to send to the publisher before July 1 so that he could present at the American Academy of Dermatology in Miami in March and she told me that I should go...it is over my spring break, hopefully I will go. Dr. Dummer also told me that I will be acknowledged for my work in the text as an Assistant Editor, at which I had to go into 'prevent-self-from-peeing-pants-mode' this will be my second publication in under a month. I am learning so much from my work and my coworkers are so wonderfully wonderful. On Wednesday, as we have every Wednesday, we had a very interesting presentation from a guest speaker. This particular guest speaker,from Luasanne, was especially interesting as his specialty was something in melanoma genetics that Dr. D was particularly interested in. After the presentation/team meeting (which also happens every Wednesday) Dr. D. took us and the friendly Luasanne gentleman to a very lovely Italian lunch. The lovely Luasanne MD/PhD man gave the University of Michigan a very nice compliment; this made me smile. Thursday was another very special day. at 2:00 Dr. D Marie, Joanna, and I headed over to the circus/ medical colloquium. The medical colloquium part consisted of presentations from optometry, infectionology, high altitude medicine, dermatology, sports medicine, orthopedics, psychology...with the latest research in topics ranging from depression, doping, glaucoma, cataracs, skin cancer, rotator cuff tears, shoulder dislocations...and all of this took place under the big top. Mepha (the european generics pharmaceutical company) sponsored the event, which meant more pharma presents for us (always fun). During intermission and after the colloquium part before the circus part they fed us nice treats (crossiants, mini sandwiches, qeisch, oragne juice, wurst, hard rolls, french fires, bubble water) few things bring one such blissful happiness like free yummy treats, and pleasant conversation with nice boss, his nice wife, and all of one's nice coworkers. The circus was AMAZING and I'm not going to try to describe how truly amazing it was in this silly blog of mine, but if you get the chance to see Zirkus KNIE (the swiss circus) please do , you'll be glad you did. Friday I decided that I'd take a trip to Barcelona. Serendipitously for me the train to Barcelona was full so I went to the ticket window guy and explained my situation. I said "I have a full backpack, and a free Monday, you gotta send me somewhere." He didn't seem to understand this so he sent me to another girl who also didn't seem to grasp the concept of traveling on a whim. We finally figured each other out and by the end we were best friends and she was telling me how lovely Hamburg and Berlin were etc. So that's where I went. Night train to Hamburg. Morning bus tour of the city. Russian Cold War U Boat tour. Got set up in a Hostel for the sleeping sitch then headed down the road in search of good eats. On the way this conversation happened: 

L: Entschuldigung. Kennst du ein gutes Deutsches Restaurant in der Naher?

young people 2 girls 1 guy: Do you speak English?

L: Yes.

O: OH GOOD! we can speak english with you. Where are you from.

L: USA.

O: Where? 

L: Michigan.

O: OMG my boyfriend lived in Michigan for a year on exchange he's just in the store there if you want to wait and talk to him. 

L: Ya that would be sweet. Where are you guys from? 

O: Brazil.

L: Sweet! 

O: So I think we're going to go to this beach bar and hang out for a while then we're going to head over to Reeperbahn wanna come?

L: Sure!

And so began my evening. Turns out her boyfriend lived in East Jordan for two years on exchange and played and lost to TC in the football playoffs (small world). The beach bar was very neat--a beach without sand. After that we cruised over to the Reeperbahn and saw the Beatle monument, several beautiful female sex workers with fanny packs (that's how you can tell who they are if you couldn't manage to figure it out using your excellent critical thinking skills), many many brothels, porn movie establishments, and very erotic/vulgar/explicit (insert word of choice) window displays. We saw lots of bachelor/ bachelorette parties running around trying to raise money for their impending family; this is a type german tradition, and I think it is quite lovely. As a general rule everyone in the party wore matching t shirts that said something referring to how the individual's freedom was coming to an end, and then they had different activities to try and raise money for the family. One group was polishing shoes. Another had a made himself into a human soccer goal with two holes in his costume for the ball to pass through, and to take 3 shots you paid 2 Euro. A group of women was just drunkenly walking around asking for money. We ended up in a really cool Irish pub called Murphy's with a cool Irish guy singing really good american and german rock/ pop songs. Before the night was over one of our comrades found herself in jail for doing something in a park/public that you're not supposed to do in parks/public; she got to sleep there. Took and early morning train to Berlin where after only a little wandering I found my self serendipitously on the trail to the Medical History Museum. Up front lets go ahead and say it was the best 1.5 Euro I could have ever spent and by far the coolest museum I've ever been in. The first floor was all crime scene Forensics. Every form of unnatural death/ crime one could think of, which worried me a little bit because I wasn't sure I could handle 4 floors of crime scene/murder/suicide. However, I truly appreciated the up frontness of the whole museum. It had a sense of honesty and explicitness that I have yet to see in the States. The next three floors were all medical history. From the tragic experiments of the Holocaust to thousands of antique medical tools, detailed written histories of different diseases, treatments, healthcare systems, hospitals in Berlin and elsewhere, but by far the coolest part of the Museum were the specimens. Thousands of preserved specimens filling an entire floor of the museum. Livers, lungs, kidneys, bladders, uteruses, bones, skulls, brains, hearts, ears...I could go one but I would have to legitimately name every body part, and I am not about to do that. By far my favorite group of specimens were the skin specimens. Tatoos preserved in their entirety, almost every skin disease that I have been editing research papers on was there, in Formalin. Melanoma metastases the size of small dogs...truly mind blowing specimens. It is an interesting feeling walking around an exhibit such as this, knowing that all of this tissue used to belong to a living someone. I feel a unique sense of gratefulness in this situation. If I die of something cool and interesting that renders my organs unusable for therapeutic medical donation, please send them/me to Berlin's Medical History Museum :) After the epically interesting mind overload that was that museum it was time for food. After dinner of Pork cutlets, white asparagus, and fried mashed potato balls and Apfel Strudel I went to the Deutsches Theater's production of Goethe's Faust. It was truly incredible and an interesting contrast to the one woman show version I saw in April in East Quad. Night train to Muenchen. 6:30 train arrives in Muenchen. It is cold. Gotta get inside where it's warm, so I head to a coffe shop for a green tea. Once in the coffee shop I sit down and start drinking my tea, at which point four rowdy individuals come bouncing into the coffee shop. Two of them order breakfast and coffee the other two order beers. Beer at 6:45 in the morning!? This is blowing my mind. One of the guys starts semi-complimenting/ semi-flirting with me and another comes and starts apologizing for his friend. They had been out all night salsa dancing. We talked and exchanged stories for a while, and listened to Timur sing Michael Jackson and Justin Timberlake songs and Mathias sing a Michael Jackson song that I swear does not exist. They invited me back to the 'Haus of Claus' for breakfast. There was a lovely girl in the group named Christiana, and I felt comfortable with them so I agreed. Apparently breakfast at the flat wasn't breakfast so much as Sangria, Fuzzy Navels, and Beer from the night before. At this point it was 8 am or so, and I couldn't quite wrap my head around alcohol at this hour but apparently Muenchen can :) We stayed at the flat and talked and hung out. There was, naturally, more singing. I learned a song of which I'm now particularly fond called Guten Morgen Sonnenschein (Timur and Mattias also seemed to be quite fond of this tune). Then the Yodeling happened which made me very happy. I also learned the word 'Bussi' which means a little kiss. Everyone was always asking everyone else for Bussis--"right here" on the cheek. It was a funny game. Later we went to a traditional Bavarian Bier Garten where we ate traditional Bavarian Weiss Sausage and Bretzeln which were sooo lecker (delicious). I also learned how to hold a Mass (a reeeealllly big thing of Bavarian beer) like a Bavarian. Let me tell you though, it was heavy, and it kind of hurt the fingers--see fb for photo reference :) We partook in more yodeling, more Michael Jackson, and more Bavarian love songs, and of course more Bussis. I am so very impressed with how very open and friendly the Bayrisch are. There was an elderly couple sitting at the table nest to us and just an hour or so later they were sitting with us, and it was as if we were all old friends. So much so that the old man was trying to convince me to stay in Bayarn with Timur, (because he was a real Bavarian man and after all this was love, what is more important than that) explaining to me the most vulgar possible analogy/ description of a dead cell phone battery (trust me it's more vulgar than you'd think), kissing my driver's license and wishing me all the best, and telling me about how much he likes smoking marijuana (I'm telling you this guy was well into his sixties)! When it was time to take the evening train back to Zuerich Timur showed me off at the train station and I made it back to bed in time for bed. Work this week has been good, but there's so much of it. Today I was at the office until 8:30 (over a twelve hour day) working on a 63 pager for the book. It's great though! Marie taught me how to do DNA extractions today, showed me the two melanoma cell types from their theory as well as cancer cells responding to a new treatment, and she even let me keep the Western Blot print outs :) I love it here; I'm learning to be a scientist. I better watch out of I might fall so in love with the Deptartment of Dermatology at Unispital Zuerich that I'll just stay here :)

With love hugs and excellent dairy products!

Lauren :-)