Czech Republic Part III

Ahoj! Dobrý den!

I spent this past weekend in Berlin, which is about 8 hours away by bus. The city is bustling with people, many of whom are presumably tourists because they look as excited about being in the city as we do. Emily's friend coaches the men and women's USA lacrosse team and had a tournament in Berlin, so we braved the complicated subway station and went on a quest to find them. When we did, we relaxed by watching the Germany World Cup game with a bratwurst in one hand and a German pilsner in the other. All the bratwursts in the city use small baguettes instead of buns so they cover only a small midsection of the brat. Makes it difficult to pour on the ketchup.

We spent our days in Berlin sightseeing the whole city. My favorite site was the Brandenburger Tor (aka, Brandenburg Gate, shown below). This majestic gate is the last existing gate that formerly divided East and West Berlin.


The night we got back to Brno, I went to the cafeteria at the dorms to get pizza. I asked a student to translate a few kinds of pizza for me. I got the usual "cheese and ham" and "margherita pizza" but then he paused and said "cheese and fruit". I assumed he meant vegetables so I ordered the pizza ovocna, which really turned out to be mozzarella smothered on peaches, tangerines, hazelnuts, and jam. I took one look at the pizza and put back the chocolate hazelnut pudding I was planning on having for dessert. The pizza wasn't bad ... it just wasn't what I was expecting. Sweet meals aren't uncommon in the Czech Republic. In fact, there are sweet Fridays where lunch consists of fruit filled buns, which are really good.

The pharmacy where I am interning is one of the largest in the Czech Republic. They make sterile eye drops in bulk once or twice a week and sell it for a minimum profit to other pharmacies in Moravia. The "sterile"environment is less stringent in the Czech Republic, where the pharmacists making the eye drops were working in a laminar flow hood wearing their normal clothing with open-toed shoes, without gloves, and hair not pulled back. I even got to pour a few bottles but I didn't even have to wash my hands before I did it! We tested the batch of eye drops by checking for correct mass, antimicrobial activity, and concentration of boric acid using — the titration method. I never thought I would use that outside of Med-Chem lab! The eye drops turned out to be within the correct range for all three factors.


This is the room where most of the compounding takes place.

When compounding, Czech pharmacies just weigh everything directly on the electric balance in grams. At first I wondered why they didn't measure liquids in graduated cylinders but I realize that it's much easier keeping everything in grams and not having to convert to milliliters. And instead of using a water bath to heat solutions in beakers, the pharmacy here uses a shallow pot filled with paper and water and sits the beaker on top of the paper water mixture. It looks similar to the consistency of mushy oatmeal and prevents the glass from breaking while being heated.

Kristin