I’m really sad that I didn’t have time to write every day. It’s kind of difficult because I’m always travelling… Frau Pepelnik explained me the way to the clinic once more, what I was supposed to do there and so on…  Mr. Karbownik prepared me for the interviews –  What should I say? Certa is perfect. Oldenburg is a really nice city… Or at least that’s what I thought at first. But the people here remind me of Aachen and the places I got to see there… And if you’ve read the blog then you know that… Uhm…yeah. I went to the clinic and waited in front of the door of the secretary. She came and she gave me a form that I had to sign. Then came the Professor. He seemed pretty nice. We went together to the morning meeting. Ooookay… There was this big room full of doctors, all dressed in white… and there was me. In my red jacket. Great start C. The professor grabbed a chair for me and placed it next to him. Oh yeah! Look at me sitting next to the pros 🙂 Someone dig a hole somewhere for me, please.

I’m not gonna talk too much about it but there were a couple of things that I didn’t like. Certain facts were discussed during the meeting and I really found one of them to be quite disturbing. Also, there was this midwife who couldn’t quite speak German and she has to present something in front of everyone. One professor told her to just speak already! Oh, the poor girl was so nervous. There was another person giggling while the midwife read her piece of paper. Uncool. German’s a really hard language to learn. And it gets even harder with time. I mean if you’re older when you start learning it. You cannot get rid of your accent and you have a tendency to think in another language. Plus you need to be able to actually transmit the right information. Which is really not that easy. Oh, I’d challenge that professor to learn a simple phrase in Romanian. I would give her a week. And then I’d say ‘okay present it in front of these 20 Romanians’. I’m sure she would f*** up. Our languages are really really different… Anyway, there were other doctors there, who actually came from different countries. I found that to be good. But yet again – why is the atmosphere here so tense?? …. That I didn’t like. I got to see a lot of things… one of the assistants told me she had her first night shift after one year. Here people start taking night shifts only when they’re comfortable with it. Which I find really wise. She also mentioned that she’s already participated in 50 or 60 C-sections in just a couple of months – wow. And she also said that if you can handle the birth section where you can basically “own it” everywhere in Germany. She said they were a level one clinic that they had the most premature births around there. Nice.

And then came the interview with the staff department. They really didn’t tell me anything about it… I just went in and they were already there… waiting.

They asked about the research I had done… that was as I was in my first study year. They wanted to know if I didn’t find it important. Doh.  Of course, I find research important! I would love doing more research, but I never really got the chance to. “But you know your PhD study… it doesn’t …. matter to anyone here…it probably won’t even get recognized.” And I said well I actually think it does matter, but I’m a little bit disappointed in it…tbh. “So wouldn’t you like to do something different here – since you like research so much? We already had two PhD students who graduated with Summa Cum Laudae…?” Well… my heart skipped a beat. PhD in Germany. Yeah, that would be nice. Then came a whole bunch of other questions regarding my CV and what I had written in there. They asked why I preferred gynecology. I explained to them that I had done a clerkship in Innsbruck… I told them it was an exchange program between students from both universities and so on… They then asked some other questions and two minutes afterwards one of the guys there asked if Certa had offered me the clerkship in Innsbruck. Uhm. No. Okay… so no one had been listening to me. That’s really nice, very professional. Not. “So why would you want to leave Romania?” I was already a bit tired of their lack of concentration. “Professor, I think you’ve asked the wrong question.” “What do you mean?” “I did not want to leave Romania. That was not my purpose. My purpose was to come here.” “But you cannot do both of them, can you?” “Yeah you’re right you cannot do both of them but I do not like the way you emphasized the word <<leave>>. I guess you should emphasize coming to Germany.” “And why would you want to come to Germany?” I find the systems better, the patients are polite, you can actually do a lot of things for them and I really enjoyed living here.” Normally. “So what would be your dream if you were to work here? Like: so I come here and I really want to do that!” “So the dream would be oncology but that’s can only happen a bit later… Yeah, that would be the dream” “Not obstetrics?” “Well obstetrics is, of course, a part of it, but no, that’s not my dream.” “But it is a little bit too early for oncology.” “I know. You asked about my dreams, I answered your question.” “Yep.”

“So when would you like to begin?” “I could actually start as of now.” “Wow that’s really cool, but we need some more time for the paperwork, you know?” “Once again – I just answered your question. It can be tomorrow Foor in three weeks-time.” “You’d probably start on the 1^st of April.” Okay. And then I went back to the clinic… I got to see a pretty short operation and then the professor came back. He just wanted to greet me before going to Uni. There was this other doctor there; she told me about births, births and more births. But the professor had got the idea that that’s not how they were going to gain me over. He mentioned oncology again. I was already enthusiastic. I could have little everything I have ever wanted before. So why do I lack a great feeling about it? I went back home. Up North. The real North – Hamburg. How did I end up stuck in the body of a grown-up?