Germany

So I am back from Germany. Jet lag blows goats...hard. But the trip was a lot of fun. It included day trips to Amsterdam and Koblenz, and we were in Cologne the rest of the time. It's beautiful and everyone should go. I managed to figure out the train schedule, so all the other students just sort of relied on me for most of our getting around when we were sans-professors. We went to the Natl Socialism Museum, which is in the headquarters of the Gestapo. We saw cells where they held prisoners before they went to trial and were sent to the concentration camps. That was powerful.

I know everyone wants to know about Amsterdam. We took a canal tour about halfway around the canal to the Van Gogh museum. Then we took the tram (gotta love public transportation) to the Anne Frank House. I cried my eyes out for a few minutes towards the end of it. It was truly powerful. Then we went to a pot bar (no, I didn't do any) and to the sex museum. Once you see people having sex for about the 50th time, it gets really repetitive. We ate in the red light district and saw the prostitutes standing behind glass doors waiting for customers to come by. We saw a MARRIED man go into one.

I did learn a good bit about the German healthcare system while there. They do all sort of health promotion stuff, like health fairs. We participated in one the first day we were there. We also saw websites they run that teach teenagers about sex. It's comprehensive and totally free for them. They said that they realize that the whole "no sex before marriage" concept doesn't work, so they want their teenagers to be educated about how to have safe sex. Other fun stuff was learned that I'm just blanking on now.

It was a fantastic trip. Hopefully I will have pics up soon.