The Big Digital: My trip to Europe

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

My trip to Europe - Day 9

I know I've taken my sweet time wrapping up the travelogue of my trip to Europe. And for that I apologize.

Day 9 - Innsbruck

On Day 9, the next to last day of our time in Austria, we got up and had breakfast and then a bus came to pick us up to take down to Innsbruck.

We started out at the Innsbruck hospital where someone gave us a presentation describing the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) that they have there, and then after a short break, some more presenters talked to us about some of the specific modules and aspects of the system. It was kind of interesting to hear about someone else's EMR after hearing so much about IHC's, and be able to see the differences and benefits of each.

After these presentations, there was lunch at the hospital cafeteria and then we met back at the classroom to split up for tours of the hospital. I signed up for the tour of the lab facilities, along with a brief demo of the lab ordering system. It wasn't too informatics-y in the end, but it was okay.

After finally completing our tours of the hospital, we had a little bit of time before our scheduled guided tour of Innsbruck. In the meantime, it had really started to rain pretty heavily, and Spencer was trying to talk me into skipping out on the tour if it was going to take place in a downpour. I parted ways with him for a minute and bought a few postcards and an Austria T-shirt. Amazingly, right about the time that the tour was to start, the rain dried up. It was pretty uncanny, and very convenient.

The Goldener Drachl (Golden Roof) in the rain.

More rainy Innsbruck

We met at a museum near old town Innsbruck to start our tour and meet our tour guide. She was an older lady, probably in her 70s, who was full of energy and pride for her town. Her family had lived in Innsbruck for hundreds of years and she took great pride in showing off the town to us and pointing out a lot of details that I would have missed otherwise.

Narrow streets of Old Town Innsbruck

People were taxed for the width of their homes in ancient Innsbruck, so most of the residences were very narrow, but deep. Also there was no tax for how many windows you could have, so windows were employed to help light the deep, narrow homes.

Our tour guide. At one point she grabbed Spencer and I and physically pulled us to a spot to make sure we saw the ski jump off in the distance.

A look at the newer part of Innsbruck. In this case "newer" probably means its only 200 years old, instead of 500.

The Inn River

The front of the Innsbruck Cathedral

After our tour was done, we got back on our bus and headed back to Hall where there was a barbecue scheduled for the final night of the conference (the conference was the end the next day at lunch time) at the Leopoldinum. A few of the Austrian students took charge of grilling meat (bacon-wrapped sausage, chicken wings, steaks, and ribs) and vegetables (corn on the cob, squash, zucchini, eggplant, and peppers), and 4 decent-sized kegs of Austrian beer were available for those who wanted. Personally, I stuck to water and a soda that was somewhat similar to ginger ale.

BBQ

It was this night that we also happened to find out that there was a foosball table in the Leopoldinum, along with a poorly-tuned piano. I played my fair share of foosball, although Guiherme and a couple of the Austrian students turned out to be the real foosball masters. I also took time to teach Mareike how to play Heart & Soul (everyone should know that song) on the piano. As the night wore on, a large group started playing a drinking game in the dining hall. I stuck around to watch for a while and take a few pictures before calling it a night.