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 :-)
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