copenAIDAN

This weekend, I traveled to Munich, Germany, for the opening days of Oktoberfest! It was such a fun weekend, and it’ll probably be one of my favorite (non-academic) trips of the semester.

I arrived late Friday night (shortly after my last blog post) and navigated by myself on the S-bahn (the regional train) to my AirBnB. Everything was in German, which led to me ending up taking a *slightly* roundabout route. I (eventually) made it to my AirBnB, where I was greeted by some of my closest Notre Dame friends – James and Carolyn and Danny! We all went right to sleep so we could get up at 4:30 the next morning. Yep, 4:30 am. After getting dressed in our dirndls (for the girls) and lederhosen (for the boys), we headed over to Theresienwiese, the park where Oktoberfest takes place each year.

my flight to munich + getting up bright and early with danny

We waited outside in the cold from 6am to 9am (huddle for warmth!), after which we were enveloped by a stampede of young Germans shoving to get through the gates and a crazy sprint to the tents. We were able to grab one of the last tables in Hofbräu, the most famous tent where the mayor taps the first beer keg each year. Around forty of my Notre Dame friends ended up sitting at two long tables right next to each other, which was so great – I really missed hanging out with ND people!

The rest of the day was tons of fun – singing songs (hearing “ein prosit” will now forever give me flashbacks), running into even more Notre Dame people around the fairgrounds, dancing to “Country Roads” in the Hacker tent, going on rides, and eating German pretzels and schnitzel. We went straight to sleep at 8:30pm because we were so exhausted.

On Sunday morning, we explored Munich – we saw the glockenspiel and the clock tower, ate an American-style breakfast at Mr. Pancake, wandered through the old town square and food markets, and enjoyed a German bratwurst for lunch. After that, I hopped on my flight back home to Cope, where I was pleasantly surprised with a first-class upgrade! I was moved from row 31 to row 1 and enjoyed a free meal of New Nordic cuisine and some Swedish chocolates from Malmö. I made it back safe and sound to Copenhagen – what a whirlwind of a weekend!

This week was another pretty standard week in Cope (AKA it was amazing). I can’t believe how comfortable and well-adjusted I feel here. I’ve really been biking a lot lately – on Wednesday, I biked twelve miles total! Yesterday I biked *only* nine. I hope it’s offsetting the pastries (at least a little bit). I’m definitely going to come back to the U.S. with some serious quad muscles. Get ready, folks.

On Monday, I enjoyed lunch with my friend Alicia from my Medical Practice & Policy core course. She told me all about her weekend trip to Hamburg with one of her elective classes (read about it in her blog post here – she’s the official MPP blogger for DIS!). We studied some more in the København public library together. After our MPP lecture, we went out to drinks as a class with our course assistant, Ida. Again, something that would only happen in Europe. Not complaining about that.

I’m loving my classes more and more every day! I never want to leave my Medical Practice and Policy class at the end of each lecture. This week, we learned about the respiratory system, including COPD and asthma. Our professor Nicklas told us about a seventy-year-old patient he saw who had smoked for 40 years. His oxygen saturation was 60% but he was totally fine, talking and joking, and he went outside to smoke as soon as he was discharged. Yesterday we learned all about neurology, including stroke, epilepsy, meningitis, Parkinson’s, and brain bleeds. It was pretty exciting for me as a neuroscience major. We also got to practice performing neurological exams on each other! So far, I don’t have any signs of dementia. Yet.

I also love my health economics class – economics itself may not be quite my thing, but I still really enjoy learning about it, especially in the context of Denmark’s healthcare system. On Tuesday, we had a guest lecture from a woman who works for a liberal healthcare think tank in Copenhagen. She told us about some of the problems with the Danish healthcare system and why she thinks there should be co-pays for visits to the GP – it was very interesting to hear a new perspective on the current model.

In my neuroscience of religion class this week, we designed our own experiments using brain imaging techniques – my favorite quote was when my professor said (in all seriousness), “Now, how much LSD are you planning to give those nuns?” We also had a neuro of religion field study on Wednesday to the Atheist Society of Denmark. The Atheist Society isn’t so much an advocate for people not believing in God as they are a political organization that advocates for separation of church and state (Denmark is officially Lutheran even though it is among the top ten non-religious countries in the world). We heard from the director of the society, who converted from a Jehovah’s witness to an atheist.

I also picked up my scrubs on Wednesday for my long study tour trip to Berlin and Poznan. I’m getting really excited to travel with my core course to Germany and Poland and learn from physicians about their healthcare systems! I enjoyed a Wednesday snegl and studied in a corner café (one of my favorite things about Danish culture is all the hyggelit bakeries).

wednesday kanelsnegls

Yesterday, I played my first weekly doubles match with my new tennis partners – a Dane, a German, and a Czech. It was super fun to get out and hit. My partners loved the English word “deuce” (they kept saying it over and over) and the fact that we say “love” for zero. I also studied at the medical school again yesterday – I really enjoy being surrounded by all of the Danish medical students. 🙂

Overall, this was an absolutely fantastic week. Now, as I sit in a corner café (yet again) and the rain falls outside (yet again), I can’t believe I’ve already been here for a month and a half! I’m seriously loving every moment and can’t wait to share more with you all. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for next week (midterms, more cafés, and my host brother’s soccer game)!