Just a quick post to update...
I've now had three amazing days in Vienna. When we got here Sunday, we grabbed lunch and then went for a bike tour of the whole city where we saw some absolutely amazing sights such as the Hofburg Imperial Palace (which can fit the entire Vatican City inside of it- it's that huge), St. Stephan's Cathedral, Prater Park, Albertina, the Parliament building, City Hall, and so many other sights. It was awesome to do the bike tour because we saw so much and covered so much ground in just three hours. The tour ended at dinner with our group, and then we just had the rest of the night to explore.
Monday we had two academic visits: the Austrain Red Cross and The Vienna University Medical Hospital. The Austrian Red Cross was awesome for two reasons: the first because we they actually play a huge part in the Austrian health care system, and the second because we got the behind the scenes tour of all the blood bank stuff- the actual donating part, the labs, the storage, everything! They took us to Naschmarkt, this awesome open-air market for lunch where I got this random viennese pastry sandwich thing which was amazing. We then went to the Vienna University Medical Hospital and talked with the head of surgery who does specifically Bariatric surgery which i actually really cool to learn about, especially with all the diabetes and obesity we have in the US. He explained all the different surgeries and it was pretty cool to hear something other that just the generic cardio or pulmonary doctors. We then got the rest of the day to explore which we did, and got the classic Viennese dish of wienerschnitzel, basically fried meat (traditionally veal)- I got chicken. It was good, but too fried for my liking. We spent the rest of the night exploring and we got the Original Schauer-Torte (basically this amazing chocolate cake with unsweetened whipped cream) famous in Vienna. We decided to come back early and call it a night because we had to be ready to leave and have eaten breakfast at 7:30 today because we had another early academic visit.
The Academic visit today was at The Orthopedic Hospital Vienna-Speising. I really enjoyed this visit because it's a semi-private hospital, and talking to them, I pretty much discovered how ridiculously dysfunctional the American Health Care System is, regardless of who's president and what legislation is in place. It even makes Denmark look bad (which is really saying something). It also has this cool section of the hospital called "Gait Analysis Lab" where they hook all these trackers to you and you walk down a twenty meter path with hidden pressure panels and all these cameras that make a three dimensional image of your gait and the force panels can detect where you put pressure when you walk, high or low arches, and can then make the necessary adjustments in physical therapy and with orthotics. In addition to that, they have a treadmill with all those cameras and pressure points built into it for gait analysis of runners to get the perfect information for buying the right shoes. They even use this technology for something as simple as analyzing golf swings! We had the rest of the day free, but DIS paid for us to visit the Schonbrunn Palace which is so ridiculously huge and gorgeous it took us three hours to go through without even being able to see everything. It has a labyrinth of hedges, huge statues, gardens, a zoo, everything you can imagine. After that we went back and got changed for dinner and went to the ORCHESTRA! It was a great combination of Mozart and Schauss, and it was even better because for some pieces they had dancers or opera singers on the stage so it was even more than just an orchestra. After that, our group all went to get the best gelato I've ever tasted and then we all explored the city which was fun with us all being together.
Sorry I'm having problems uploading pictures, but they'll come with the Budapest post!
Til imorgen!!!
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