Strasbourg

On the first weekend, we joined the ERASMUS students on a day trip to Strasbourg.

Strasbourg is the main city for Alsace region in France but throughout history has been changing their nationality between being French and German.

The train station is quite a sight.
We went straight to the dock to go on the tourist boat.
I am more to independent travelling but I don't mind changing to accommodate when travelling in group.
Anyway, we have 40 minutes extra before the boat, so we walked back the charming street and made a stop.

a small scoop of ice cream for 2 euro, if I remember it correctly.

An Erasmus guy followed us.
Aida : What's your name?
Erasmus : Niko.
Aida : oh.hahaha. in Montenegroean, niko means nobody.

I swear by the timberhouses that she didn't mean to offend him. You can tell by the tone but we had to suppress our laughter.

Anyway, we went window shopping in the shops.
Alsace is famous for these

bundtcake/kugelhopf mould, the oval pot, tableclothes.

Well, as a fan of anything kitchen utensils, I highly consider buying them but was reasoned out by the fact that I am going to Colmar and baggage limitation because I'm flying back.

We then go on the boat trip. Nothing much to say it was a typical tourist thing. But for sure most of your pictures taken from the boat will look like these

the most photographed building in Strasbourg

After the bot trip we have an A4 size black and white map each and 4 hours. The first obstacle is the Asian shop selling beautiful pieces for a fractionated price. And I have 3 girls with me who don't mind the long q to the fitting cube and can only see the stuff inside the shop. Reading the map is rather tricky and after what seems like forever, we reached petite France to

- go into the souvenir shop for some shopping

- take picture with the sign

- sample and buy biscuits from the redflag bakery

- go into Asian shop and torn between buying the frozen stuff or not (all fingers pointing to me)

The signboard is typical for the region. They are in Freiburg too.

We were supposed to meet others at the restaurant and were runnig late.

Problem is, according to the map we are like at the other end. wisest choice is to walk along the river of which we did.

Then as we were turning into the street for the restaurant, we made few "come back, it's this way"

We went into the restaurant just as everyone is finishing their flamkuchen/Tarte flambée.  we ordered one for ourselves but I must say that the ones the BVMD made for international dinner is far better. We chat away and the girls arranged to meet the Spanish for some festival back in Freiburg later in the evening (FYI, they didn't find each other eventhough both parties went for it)

The thing that you have to know about the German is that they are not only punctual, but they also stride faster.

We were catching the train, which is like at the other end of the place and I stepped on banana skin. Just what I need!

We managed to catch our train back.

Conclusion is I take note that my further trips during the exchange will start no earlier than 9 am. 10 am seems to be the ideal time to take the train. They asked me how was the trip. I'd say it's average and I don't get to really wander the town because the time is too short. I think Colmar is less crowded, less touristy and more beautiful.

 

Vocabulary

I went on the exchange not even knowing what one is in German.
I came out of the exchange knowing just 2 numbers in german ~ein, drei

anyway, here's the words that I catched on during my brief stay
1. Scheiße.  I heard a lot of it in and out of the hospital. To think that I don't know a single Czech curse after 4 years and picking up German's curse word in less than a month.
2. genau. In case you don't know, I was in most of the half an hour morning meeting conducted fully in German. Only that I need to grow balls to mouth out the word genau as I like in the meeting.
3 ach so. refer to the comment above
4. guten morgen
5. tschüs
6. mein liebe gott I remember this one because it replaced Scheiße after the situation turned very tense during the late night emergency operation
7. danke because honestly it's ok if you don't know what 1 is in other language but not knowing thank you in other language is unthinkable.
8. bitte it's equal to "u r welcome". can also be used as excuse me i.e. you zoned out and didn't even hear what the other person is talking about. so you say bitte and the person will kindly repeat what he/she just said

9. achtung I swear by the ECG sticker it washes off the machoness of hewhoshallnotbenamed when he said this word
10. blut because I go around sucking people blood
11. kleine vampirette. refer num 10
12. nein
13. schwein
14. fleisch
15. montag, dienstag, mitwoch, donnerstag, freitag,samstag,sonnstag
16. klein
17. gross

The figure : das ist gross. the zeppelin balloon : das ist klein

18. assistentarzt/assistentarztin . arzt/arztin (a notch up the career ladder), obarzt/obarztin (the big fishes)
19. famulant/famulantin oh it's me!
20. herzzentrum
21. kinder

But can you believe it?I still don't know the apology in German. To think of the veins that I missed and the nerve that my needle touched.

Heartmate

The first week of my internship involves a lot of getting-to-know. I am fortunate enough to have learnt about heartmate from Dr Weiskopf. Heartmate basically is a device that help your heart ventricle to pump the blood. She also taught us about the artificial heart.

In Zenker itself we have patients wearing heartmate. I was always careful to not dislodge anything because heartmate includes thick tubes of blood.
One good thing is that you can be homebound eventhough you are lugging the device around (actually, it's a device plus machine so the size is quite something)
Anyway, there's such a case where a man took the chance and hook up with the prostitute.
I don't remember, but I think something from the device (the tubes maybe) came off.
He died that instant.
They all said that he died nicely.

I'd rather keep my opinion to myself but I'm taking note to tell any of my patient that has to go on with such a device to steer clear of intercourse.

Woody Business

My German housemates told me

when discussing something bad, German would knock 3 times on anything wood. They believe such act can ward the thing off them.

Example
Peah : Someone jumped from the train and our train had to stop.
Usop : That happens sometime. Some people who want to commit suicide *knock 3 times on wood counter top*

They do it unconsciously and if they don't tell it to me. I would never in my 5 weeks notice it.
It came as a surprise for me when I caught Iva doing it and pointed it out.

Ka-ching!

I forked out quite a lot for the exchange.
We're required to pay a lump of 8000kc. mayb sth like fee, to our local IFMSA. My friends from Montenegro paid lesser to theirs.

A chunk was swapped for a nice Canon G12. Don't give me that look. Think of it as a present to self after finishing 4 years in medical school.

But most important of all, I got 50 Euro pocket money per week and in term of food, I hardly spent half of it a week. Oh yeah, I ate like a quarter of the usual. Filling breakfast. Occassionally heavy dinner. Sometime I do lunch. And amazingly, I'm far from hungry.

The feeling is always good when you get money.

Apart from the pocket money, BVMD supplement about 50 euro for activities. Mine was spent on Mugorsky concert (8euro) and NSP fee (30 sth Euro).

Don't ask. I don't remember why she got only 20 Euro.

U'd do the math and found out that I still have 10 euro plus to be spent. I'd just close my eyes and pretend that I don't see it because
~
~
~
~
on my first day, Iva handed me a decent nokia phone with 10euro credit. Which is very great because when you reload, you reload minimum of 20 euro and hey, I am not going to use that much in a month.

I can say that I am very lucky.
Jaime was promised a bike but turned out the bike doesn't fit her and they just forget about it. And she had to look out for ticket inspector everytime she's on tram.

Monotesticular

On Saturday evening during the NSP, after a half day hiking at Black forest, we barbecued some meats.
*George, one of the IFMSA guys was not there because he went to the ball.

Aynur asked me where is George. So I said "He has ball".
Aynur repated what I said thoughtfully. Fortunately, I caught what he interpreted after he said ball and not balls.

The damage however is done.
It became the talk of the NSP people.
Conclusion of the incident, George has the monotesticular title conferred upon him.
"George is a monotesticular man" was repeated so many times.
Good thing is that NSP ended on the Sunday afternoon.

The board who conferred the title with the title holder at the place of incident.

*George is not the true name of the guy involved. George, is a name borrowed from the crow that we tried to entice during the BBQ evening.
Photo by Christine G.

Oh Boze!

The first time I hear oh boze! I thought it sounds like oh bullshit. Jaime couldn't stop mouthing the exclamation because she also thinks the same XD.

Anyway, both applied when my hardly thought out and carefully written post that is not even an hour old vanished into nothingness.
Oh my, what am I to do?
Kiss the cow!