Week Three: Moving South

This week, my core course, Human Health and Disease, left Copenhagen.

The idea was not complicated. We took what we normally learn indoors and put it on a bus for several hours to see what it might look like somewhere else. Somewhere shaped by borders that have moved more than once. Somewhere that has been Danish, then not, then Danish again. We went south to Aabenraa, a small town near the German border that carries the history of the 1864 war quietly, as if it has learned not to bring it up unless asked.

The first day started earlier than anyone needed it to. I woke up in the dark and dragged myself to the Copenhagen bus station, where a coach was already waiting, fully awake and unimpressed. Four hours stretched ahead.

The drive itself is mostly missing from my memory. I took Dramamine on an empty stomach, which was a mistake I realized too late. Drowsiness arrived immediately and lasted all day. I do not nap. I simply sit there, conscious, blinking, watching the world go by while my body negotiates with itself. Denmark flattened out as we went. Fields, sky, fields again.

Our first stop was the 1864 War Museum and Dybbøl Mølle. The war itself was brief and devastating. Denmark fought Prussia and Austria over control of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, which were culturally mixed and politically contested. Denmark lost badly. The defeat reshaped the country’s borders and its sense of itself, shrinking the nation and forcing it to turn inward.

Standing at Dybbøl, it becomes clear why. The land offers no shelter. Trenches were shallow. Soldiers were exposed to artillery fire, cold, and disease. Medical care was limited and slow, and survival often depended more on luck than skill. The mill still stands on the hill, steady and quiet, while the ground around it remembers thousands of injuries that medicine at the time simply could not fix.

From a health perspective, the war was as much about infection as it was about weapons. Amputations were common. Anesthesia was unreliable. Germ theory was still new and inconsistently applied. Seeing the battlefield made everything we discussed in class feel less abstract and more brutally logistical. Where do you treat the wounded when the land itself works against you?

We drove another hour to reach Aabenraa, which became Prussian after the war and did not return to Denmark until 1920, when a border vote finally settled the question. The town looks peaceful now. Neat. Almost overly polite. You would not guess how contested it once was.

That night, despite exhaustion and good judgment, all twenty-one of us went out. There is only one bar open in town. It was our hotel pub, called the Fox and Hounds. We each ordered exactly one drink and treated it like a personal promise. Games appeared. Seven eleven dice. Spoons. Codenames. There was not much else to do, which made it easier to stay.

The next morning, I was able to sleep in… until seven.

After breakfast, we left at nine for a medical museum. Seeing medical tools after learning about the war put everything in context. Instruments designed for speed rather than comfort. Techniques meant to save a life, not necessarily preserve it. Some things had changed dramatically since 1864. Others had not changed nearly enough. Medicine, it turns out, advances unevenly and often under pressure.

Lunch was at a craft brewery. We were told we could order one drink before the buffet. Many people had not eaten yet. This choice unfolded predictably.

After lunch, we crossed the street to escape rooms and split into groups. Some were sent into magic academies. Others into secret brotherhoods. My group entered 1864, The Battle of Als. The setting was a taproom, full of rumors and half-truths. The Danes had already lost Dybbøl. Peace negotiations in London had collapsed. A Prussian surprise attack was coming, and it was our job to decode intelligence in time to warn Danish headquarters.

Context mattered. The history mattered. We moved quickly. We finished top ten out of more than three thousand teams. As you can imagine, our team of premeds was very proud and brought it up more than once. The other groups are still blaming their defeats on the brewery.

That night, a few of us returned to the Fox and Hounds for dinner. The bar felt familiar now. Or maybe we had simply adjusted.

The final day started early again. Six in theory, six thirty in practice. The result was no makeup and no time to fix it. We visited the Bioanalytics and Microbiology Lab at Sygehus Sønderjylland. The biggest surprise was the lack of gloves. Blood bags and other biohazards were handled without them. In the U.S., gloves are automatic. In Denmark, they are conditional. Hand hygiene is trusted. Judgment is expected. It was a small detail that said a lot about how healthcare systems reflect cultural trust.

Then we boarded the bus back to Copenhagen. Four and a half hours north. This time, the ride felt shorter. I talked the entire way with people I probably would not have met otherwise. Nothing profound. Just long conversations that made the time pass more quickly.

That night, we met a woman who was finishing her residency in trauma orthopedics.

This was the part that stayed with me.

I love meeting orthopedic surgeons. Trauma orthopedics is what I want to do, so meeting her mattered. The urgency. The precision. The reality that decisions matter immediately. Seeing a woman doing exactly that, without dramatizing it, made the path feel solid rather than aspirational.

By the end of the night, we had exchanged Instagram handles. She said she wanted to see where I landed in trauma orthopedics, said in a way that felt more grounding than grand.

It felt like the right ending to a week spent thinking about injury, recovery, and how history leaves its mark on both bodies and borders.