So we're all on the bus, trying to sleep, when our course assistant (and second year medical student), Adam, decides it's a good idea to turn on a loud and violent movie called coincidently, Adam's Apples. It is apparently a perfect representation of Danish humor. I think it was just a very weird movie. We arrived at the Aarhus University Hospital around 11 and tried to stay awake through a lecture about the different scanners the hospital has at its PET center - they have 2 MRIs, a PET/CT scanner, an HRRT, and an MEG scanner. We took a tour of the scanning center and were all getting hungry to eat our lunches on the bus.
So I enjoyed my ziploc bag (I didn't want to use tupperware) of pasta, tomatoes, avocados and sriracha sauce as we set off to a General Practitioner's office in Skødstrup. At the Skødstrup Laegepraksis, we actually enjoyed a lecture about the universal health care system in Denmark by one of the doctors at the practice. In Denmark, every citizen chooses a GP as their primary doctor - you go to your GP for anything and everything, and then you get referred to specialists in other practices or hospitals for specific problems. Eighty-eight percent of the population visit their GPs every year, and maintain good relationships with them. Since Denmark has universal health care, the GPs focus on improving health in their own communities, and so they have a list of patients in their region that they are responsible for taking care of (and also get paid by the National Health System to take care of). If you don't like your GP you can always switch to a different one, but you are limited by the number of GPs in your area. Even though the Danes pay between 40 to 70% of their income for taxes, some Danes opt to additionally pay for for their own private insurances. All the money that's collected from taxes goes to paying everyone's complete education and medical costs - it's pretty awesome.
After taking a tour of the GP's office and rooms, we set off to our hostel called Danhostel, and had a short discussion with Adam about the main differences between the health care systems in America and Denmark. We also understood how the educational system works in Denmark - primary school goes until year 13 (and you have to choose a track for high school - either math/science, language, or arts/music), and then for medical school there are 6 years of uni, 1 year doing a post-graduate internship, and then 5 years training to be a specialist. Adam told us that the final test for medical school is being able to diagnose a patient in 7 minutes or less (you get multiple tries) - very different than all the standardized testing we're used to.
After a small break, we headed into the tiny town of Ebeltoft for an amazing buffet dinner and bowling. When I heard buffet, I admit I immediately thought of huge pans of mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, different meats, salads.. this buffet wasn't exactly like that. On a small table, there were bowls of shredded lettuce and different toppings like corn, peanuts, feta cheese, etc and then there were small pans of french fries, roasted potatoes, scalloped potatoes, and finally a meat plate. Even though it was a small buffet it was delicious and everyone went up for seconds, thirds, some even went for fourths - it was a great meal. Bowling was so much fun - I hadn't been bowling since I think middle school when I had birthday parties at the glow in the dark bowling lanes at Chelsea Piers or Port Authority. I did roll a lot of gutter balls, and I definitely lost every game but it was still really fun to be doing a classic American past-time in the middle of nowhere Denmark.
After a decent night's sleep, we were up bright and early for a great continental breakfast and on the road to the AROS Art Museum in Aarhus. Little did I know a museum would be the highlight of the weekend. There were three exhibits that made the trip so awesome. One of them was a giant room filled with smoke and different color spectrum lights so each time you moved you were stepping into a different color gradient. Photos speak better than words:
The second best room was this one with different suspended metal rings/squares and lights that reflected off of them:
The third was this ring of color on top of the museum - as you moved around you saw the city of Aarhus in different shades of colors and it was really cool:
We enjoyed a lovely lunch of potato soup and sandwiches at the museum and then went off to Skejby Hospital, the largest hospital in all of Denmark for a lecture and a tour of the facilities. The lecture was super boring and nearly everyone fell asleep buttttttt we got to see med students operating on live pigs! I didn't bring my camera in with me so I don't have any pictures but here's one I grabbed from someone's facebook album:
After that, we traveled to the Steno Museum at the University of Aarhus and were treated like fourth graders by our tour guide as we learned about the history of medicine in Denmark. It was really weird. And there was a giant uterus display that you could climb into and relax in - I guess I was born again this weekend. Weird weird place. There was a giant pendulum attached to the ceiling that revolved around and hit different pegs according to the earth's rotation and we were all enamored by it and literally spent 10 minutes watching and oohing and aahing and eating Danish ice cream.
We traveled to our second hostel, also called Danhostel, and prepared for our night out in Aarhus. I ate dinner at a restaurant with a few friends and we got twenty dollar bacon cheeseburgers but they were really so delicious that it was worth it. Except when they charged us for a bottle of water and wouldn't give us tap water instead - weird. We walked around the shops on the canal and wound up joining a bar crawl of Danish physiotherapy students that all had numbers written with eyeliner on their cheeks. It was their orientation weekend and their tutors were herding them around like cattle. It was really entertaining to hang out with these students for a while but we eventually headed to a bodega to hang out with the other kids from our MPP program and ended the night buying snacks in the 7-11 around the corner.
Saturday, our final day of the trip, we went to see the Jelling Stones and got a tour of the museum there by this really kooky Scottish guy. The first rune-stone was created in the 10th century by King Gorm the Old in dedication of his wife Thyra. The second rune-stone was created by Harold Bluetooth, Gorm's son, and states Denmark as a Christian country for the first time. When we asked Adam what the stones said he told us they said "Denmark, bitches."
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| Denmark, bitches |
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| Michelle gives handball a thumbs-up |
This weekend was a whirlwind but very very fun indeed. I reunited with friends last night and today I slept until 1:30pm and lounged in bed and caught up with friends from Roch and spent 3 hours writing this blog on and off. I just made swedish meatballs that I accidentally stole from Ikea and even though I overcooked them, anything free still tastes delicious.
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