Leider fast vorbei!

Today I write to you from the home of the Gnirck family, friends of a friend that helped me move out of the Uniklinik apartments yesterday. As usual with most Germans I've gotten to know well here, they have been much too kind to me, treating me as family, helping me with my German and generally being great. Despite the superficial steely expressions that Germans wear when moving through a normal day and work, they are completely different creatures when one gets to know them.

I don't think I've written about my work at the Uniklinik at all here, or at least not since May. Since it's already at an end, it'd be good to sum it up. I was employed as an intern in the psychiatry and psychotherapy department, working on a research investigation that had many facets- mood and emotion, olfactory function and effects on cognition, a neurological condition called essential tremor, stroke in the thalamus and cerebellum, etc. The full explanation may put people to sleep, but some of the highlights and anecdotes of the experience are worth telling, I think.

Some of our subjects that we tested had deep-brain stimulation machines implanted to treat essential tremor, which has many symptoms similar to Parkinson's disease. The machines are basically an electrode that zaps the thalamus, a deep part of the brain, with a couple volts of electricity via a power source implanted in the chest. I got to observe a surgery to implant one and watched as several patients used it during our testing. The surgery was one of the most bizarre things I think I've ever experienced- the patient was awake, with all kinds of things stuck in his head, and was asked to perform simple motor tasks as the voltage hitting his thalamus was slowly adjusted. In practice, the machine operates simply enough, with a TV-remote-looking device that is held to the chest and turns the machine on. That's almost the only external sign of the entire system. But the results are sometimes amazing- I saw one of our subjects turn his on, and within a second or so his constant hand tremors had significantly stilled, without any outward side affects.

I tested ever single patient using German, since we were testing older natives who were not likely to know much English. Despite the fact that my supervisor, Andreas, said that I definitely still sound American when I speak German, I got asked by at least 3 subjects if I was Dutch, from another if I was Danish, and another thought I was a Brit. It could me my ability to turn red in the face at any moment, but at any rate, at least it means I'd have a chance of fitting in over here if I had to.

The Uniklinik itself is a historical landmark- first designed in the 70s, it was supposed to express a vision of the hospital of the future. It originally was supposed to have more than 9 stories, but the building started to sink into the ground it was built on, forcing the builders to stop there. Thus today it's got exposed elevator shafts that originally were for serving upper floors sticking out, with external heating and ventilation ductwork crawling all over it. The inside is covered in green: green carpet, green walls, even a strange green horse in the balcony above the main entrance hallway. More ductwork runs through every ceiling, and the bare metal frame of the building is painted red, silver, neon yellow and other wild colors. It's supposedly either the biggest single hospital building in Europe, or maybe just Germany. I had a local friend tell me that it's really a transformer, ready to defend the border if the Dutch decide to invade Germany. Who really knows.

German society is way more hierarchal than what we'd consider normal in the states. The Oberartzt, or doctor that ran our department, had an official title of University-Prof. Dr. Dr. Schneider, Ph.D. Yes, they really do list all their high-level degrees like that on official documents. And despite the fact that I'm obviously an under-30, t-shirt wearing intern, the neurologist we cooperated with to do our research still called me Herr Kroener til the day I left. It even affects the way normal office work is done- money and documents sometimes pass through so many hands, that no one can tell you what's going on at all. Anything that steps outside these co-workers' personal responsibilities and knowledge is someone else's problem, even though they do try to help the best they can.

Like most things in life, I think learning more about the professional culture of Germany has left me with more questions than I had to start out with.