The end of 3rd year.

It really is a crazy thing: another year gone and another year closer to being a doctor.  Fully 3/4 MD at this point and it seems like only yesterday that I started med school.  The real give-away is when I am around non-med school people and something medical gets mentioned in very general/lay-mans terms - that's when I know I have been learning too much medicine and hanging out at the hospital for way longer than a normal human being would!  For instance, this past Saturday I played a 'hat tourny' with my sister - this is an ultimate frisbee tourny where everyone is supposed to wear a hat.  Fortunately for me, I had brought my cycling cap to protect my poor, already burnt scalp from the sun not knowing that I would need a hat otherwise.  But back to the point, we  were waiting between games and one of the guys on my team (which by the way we got shafted because we did not have a super tall guy nor a super good guy and no subs to boot!) started talking about having sciatica(which always makes me cringe when someone says they have that) and taking 4 ibuprofen a day and that it was gonna kill his liver.  I made some comments in my head and then realized it wasn't worth it and moved on, but case proven - I have learned some stuff over the last three years.
  But on to the main point of this post - what happens when 3rd year is over and specifically what happens when 3rd year ends with a teaching elective in Poland followed by a student fellow year.  So, little did I know when I decided that Rochester was the school for me, but Rochester truly is a sweet place to study medicine. The neurology department is kinda a big deal and I took full advantage this past spring by being part of the neurology teaching elective in Poland.  The doc who teaches our neuro clerkship is a big name in neurology teaching and was an integral part of starting an English language medical school in Krakow, Poland several years ago.  Now he returns every May and teaches the 3rd year neuro clerkship with the help of 10 medical students and the neuro chief residents(which for you non-med peeps are generally people in their last year of residency).  So I took full advantage of the opportunity to travel to Poland for a month with a bunch of good friends and then took another 2 weeks to do some additional travelling - definitely the way to cap off 3rd year!

Ah, that's where Poland, and more specifically Krakow, is!

And so a look at the trip in photos(mind you a small selection - between the 4 of us travelling - myself, Mac, Robin and Katie - four members of the rotating fabulous funf - we had almost 5000 pictures!):

Mac and his wonderful parents who fed us well and then drove us all the way to the Newark airport.  Fantastic people!

The crew.  And I look remarkably alive considering I almost didn't make the drive to NYC.  If you don't already know the story you will have to ask me in person - it's definitely better and person and not one that I want to post online...

We actually flew into Munich, Germany and this was the view we were greated with as we stepped off the subway.  Hello Europe!

Someone should tell them they're almost doctors...

Love me some clouds.

Cool church in the middle of the Bavarian countryside - on our way to the fairytale castle.

Bavaria is gorgeous.

This is certainly one of my favorite photo spots of the entire trip - we were on our way Neuschwanstein Castle - a fairytale castle with photos a bit further down - and I saw this church kinda sandwhiched between two roads and asked to stop so I could take some pictures - well worth the break!

And then the fairytale castle - incredible!

From the front - with Christian - the most amazing host you could ask for.  Not only put up 3 strangers (he knew Robin) for a week, but also acted as tour guide and chef!  Can't ask for anything better.

Dachau - the first of several haunting concentration camps...

Beer for breakfast!

Liter beers!

Playing some Polka at the famous Haufbrauhaus.

Munich Olympic Park - pretty cool but very funny to see what they thought was futuristic...

Glockenspiel

Then to finish of Munich with a good beer drinking excess at Fruhlingsfest - the smaller, spring version Oktoberfest.  Still, plenty of beer - lots of lederhosen, dirndls and dancing on benches(that last part may be a traveller imposed custom) but a great way to finish a phenomenal week in Germany!

So much beer!

They have a special relationship...

This guy was a beast - carrying up to 7 liters of beer in each hand!

The day may have ended up with us being escorted from a beer tent for loss of balance- but it was a fantastic day - although I don't think Mac nor I will be trying to drink 7 liters of beer in a day ever again...

So that was a brief look at Munich and for the sake of time a super long posts I think that I will have to make each city we visited - 8 in total into a separate post, but we'll see how that goes.