Wednesday, April 21, 2010

The Cliff Notes Version of Berlin


36 hours is simply not enough time to visit 2 hospitals in Berlin, and still experience the city. We put in a full day yesterday at Charite, a hospital that has 4 campuses, and spans both sides of the city. The main campus, right by our hotel, is on the east side. We were done there around 5 PM, and were due at dinner at 7:30 PM. Since we had missed our opportunity to sightsee the day before, we decided to walk to the restaurant and do a whirlwind self-guided tour instead.
We actually did pretty well. We walked to the Reichstag (the German parliament), which sits across the Spree river from the new modern library. We then proceeded to the Brandenburg Gate, then on to the nearby Holocaust Memorial. The memorial is quite beautiful…a field of concrete steles of different heights with undulating paths between then, and an underground museum below. Oddly, it was designed by an American, Peter Eisenman. It was then time for dinner, at a very chic restaurant in the Gendarmen Markt, famous for its 3 cathedrals.
Today, we had a very quick visit to Auguste-Viktoria Klinikum, where I scrubbed on an adult spine case. We are due in Cologne this evening, and things are so rushed that we didn’t even have time to give our talks. I’m writing this in the restaurant car of the train, where RT and I plan to nurse our cappuccinos for 4 hours, since for the very first time, we couldn't get reserved seats.

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