Berlin Day 4

I got a bit of a late start to my day Wednesday, but I jumped on the bus and headed to back to Museum Island.  Right across from the bus stop stands the impressive Berliner Dom or Berlin Cathedral. Part of the Berliner Dom was badly damaged during bomb raids during WWII. During the 1960's the communist government decided to renovate the building and fix the damage caused by the bombing. However, they also decided to tear down a major part of the church that wasn't damaged... they actually spent more money demolishing than restoring. Go figure. The renovations weren't completed till the early 1990's. 

I will never cease to be gobsmacked by the greatness of European cathedrals! My neck ached from looking up at the dome! Of course it was difficult to capture the magnificence of the space and ornamentation in photos. Obviously, nothing compares to being there in person. 

The crypt was equal parts just the right amounts of creepy and fascinating. Many of the tombs had stone carvings of the deceased monarchs' crowns on top of stone pillows, but there were also several with the real, old, pillows and crowns! I just thought that was so interesting! 

It was already after midday when I left the church so I stopped by their little crypt cafe for some white hot chocolate and a brownie. 

Yay for enjoying dairy and gluten!!

After I filled my belly and got my blood sugar up I headed to the Neues Museum.

The Neues Museum 

Wow! This place was amazing!! The building itself is such a masterpiece! When it was built it was decorated with elaborate mosaic floors, painted plaster walls, and beautiful architectural ceilings. The museum was heavily damaged during bomb raids in 1943 & 1945. It was left in ruined condition until 1986 when they put a make shift roof on it and then finally restored in the 90s. When they restored it they decided to leave much of the building in its damaged state only rebuilding where they must and obviously creating new roofs and ceilings. The rustic walls etc add so much character and the architectural details are amazing!! I fell in love with the place!!! (Get ready for an overload of pictures....)

DORK

Pretty floors!

The artifacts were from early civilizations (German barbarians, a lot of Egyptian stuff etc) I kind of was over it a this point and really found the building more impressive than the collection. Though if this had been the first place I had visited I would have been more interested. 

Delicate gold jewelry

these little beads were smaller than the top of a pencil eraser 

Loved that you can still see the paint on these masks

Her whole head piece used to be covered with those little blue beads

This guy was the second in command next to the pharaoh. He took care of the princess. However, after she suddenly died as a child, he was stripped of his position and all the monuments honoring him were defiled (nose chiseled off and name scratched out)

I got to see the bust of Nefertiti!! Which, wow! AMAZING! It's such an important piece (one of those things covered in art history 101) and incredibly beautiful! Of course this was displayed in its own private room where photography wasn't permitted. There were multiple guards enforcing this rule so I didn't even attempt a sneaky pic. 

(stolen from Google Image search)

Another highlight was seeing the Golden Hat. But after that all I had left to see was the bottom floor dedicated to Egyptian funerary art and honestly the whole floor gave me chills and the creeps so I hurried quickly through that.  

This was neat. It was a tree stump people used as a well and threw sacrificial cups into it and they ended up being preserved for hundreds of years!

They believe this was one of the first battle fields in Germany

This happened to be one of my favorite or rather most interesting things I saw... stained glass melted down from bombing raids. 

Loved all the beautiful colors of Egyptian beads!

After I left the Neues I walked around the area and grabbed a piece of pizza for lunch in a little courtyard. 

I swear I'm not a huge selfie person. I was taking pictures to blog about later, so here is another dorky selfie 

I stayed out the longest I had yet and accidentally caught the bus at the end of the business day. Oh my gosh. So claustrophobic! Have I mentioned that the buses here are double deckers? Except they're yellow not red. Even with two stories there was no room!! 

Once I got back to the hotel and could breathe again i picked up Miguel and we headed right back to where I had just been so that he could see the cathedral and so that we could take photos with the wide angle lens. About 1/4 into our bus ride we got seats on the top deck, very front row. That was really cool and Miguel enjoyed it a lot. A neat way to see the city in an interesting, unobstructed view. 

View from the top, front row

The people at the cathedral let me use my ticket from earlier in the day (after a bit of persuading). They were about to close for the day so I think they just decided to go with it. As soon as we entered the main space I urged mig to start taking pictures but he told me he wanted to take it in first. Of course! It's awe inspiring! This was the ideal time to go! We were practically the only people in there! 

After we left the Berliner Dom we went to a near by souvenir shop so that Miguel could look at beer steins. That was his one request of something to bring back with us. He picked a black and grey ceramic stein with lots of metal details. He did a good job picking one that doesn't look cheesy or like a typical souvenir. The thing cost almost 80€!! So yeah. There is our ONE souvenir ;)

After we made our purchase we walked to dinner. We made reservations at this off the beaten path, authentic German restaurant. It's 400 years old and exactly how you would picture it. Small, dark, wood paneled walls, locals crowded together (with no sense of personal space) drinking beer.

haha! Miguel's beer drinking face...

Our food was hearty and yummy. I also discovered Apple juice with sparkling water (basically sparkling cider I guess) but it was fun to drink while mig had beer so I didn't feel so left out.

Our appetizer 

Our dessert was delicious! We ate a made-to-order apple pastry. It was served straight from the oven with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I was completely full after my meal but somehow made room for the pastry! This meal was one of my favorite things we did in Berlin.

The patio portion of the restaurant. It was too chilly to eat outside though. 

One thing I'm having to adjust to over here is the change of pace. Everyone takes their time. It's nice as it makes you appreciate your experiences and company. So by the time we finished dinner and started walking back to the hotel it was after ten o'clock. It was actually really lovely to walk back in the darkness and see the city lit up in a different light. 

The pedestrian walking signals in Berlin are unique. They are these little Walking Man figures instead of the typical hand signals. In East Berlin they had the "Ampelmannchen" (the little green guys with hats) and in West Berlin they had normal human stick figures. After the fall of the wall, the Ampelmannchen survived and achieved a kind of cult status and is now sold as somewhat of a souvenir item all over the city. 

(source wikipedia)

When we found this little guy in tangible form on our walk back to our hotel I, of course, had to take some pictures with the famous man!

Once we returned to the hotel it was lights out. Had to get our beauty rest for the next day! 

Germany Day 3

Day three of our travels was a little slice of heaven for me. I ventured out on my own to Museum Island which is the farthest I'd gone by myself. I had to navigate the bus line but it actually was pretty straight forward. No changing buses or anything like that. The ride was about 10-15 minutes each way. It was really cool actually to be driven through the city and see parts of Berlin I wouldn't have otherwise seen.

Berlin and the bus lines

Museum Island is paradise for any art lover! It houses five huge and impressive museums. I made it to two the first day I visited. I took my time and listened to the audio for every piece available. I don't think I've ever spent hours and hours in just one museum like that. It's fun to go at your own pace! It was really nice because there would be little bursts of crowds but there would eventually be large spaces and chunks of time where I had the place to myself.

The first museum I made it to was the Altes Museum. It was built all the way back in the 1820's and was at one point called the Royal Museum. 

Weird selfies happen when exploring on your own...

The scale of the first museum, the Altes, was really crazy impressive!

See the person to the right, gives you a sense of the scale!

The first thing I saw when I walked into the Altes was the beautiful Rotunda! Which was a fun surprise because you cannot see it from the outside of the museum.  The ceiling is beautifully coffered and the perimeter is surrounded with 20 Corinthian columns. Some of the museum's statue collection is displayed between the columns. 

I'm not very good using the iPhone's panoramic thing, okay. 

The museum houses the city's collection of classical antiques (mainly Ancient Greek, Etruscan, and Roman sculptures and funerary art). Of all the museums I visited in Berlin over the week, the Altes was the least crowded. I spent about two and a half hours exploring and I took a million photos. I really tried hard to limit the amount of pictures I'm sharing in this blog, as I know not everyone is an art enthusiast like me. 

 

An old handheld mirror

A comb and pair of tweezers

There also seemed to be a lot of pieces that were actually replicas or pieces that had previously been 'mysteriously missing' since 1945 and only recently been found....  A number of artifacts were also 'acquired' around 1938-1945. 



After the Altes I went next door to the National Gallery. The National Gallery houses 19th, 20th, and 21st century art, most of which is paintings. I learned a lot of German history and painters I didn't know. I was really bummed though because the whole second floor (dedicated to impressionists) was closed for renovations. It of course opened back up on Friday - the only day we had plans all day. 

Again, the scale of this museum was crazy impressive. See the people descending the stairs in the background? Yeah, the scale was big!

Again, I'll try not to bore everyone with an overload of art, but I'll skim over some of my favorites. 

I thought the story behind this painting was interesting. German artist, Franz von Stuck, painted this image of actress, Tilla Durieux, playing the role of Circe. I think it is an intriguing image, but Durieux hated it. She didn't like the green tone of her flesh and publicly spoke poorly of the image. 

Then this painting of a German king reminded me of the actor Bill Nighy! Miguel doesn't see it, but to me they look almost identical!

I also thought this unfinished work by Adolf Menzel was interesting. For starters, it was massive! It took up a whole gallery wall and was so large that I couldn't fit the whole thing into my camera frame! It depicts a scene from the Seven Years War of Frederick the Great's address to his generals before the Battle of Leuthen. Frederick is one of the unfinished, blank characters in the middle of the generals who sort of form a semi-circle around him. Menzel wanted to show the strength of the generals against the cold and the upcoming battle. One of the reasons Menzel never finished the painting is because he was afraid Frederick would look small next to the generals. 

After six hours I realized it had been hours and hours since I had eaten and I was actually pretty hungry. So I decided to go track down some food. I walked around the area for a bit looking for somewhere to eat. It was so cool walking around. This this the kind of moment I wish Miguel had been with me because it's just so cool and you want someone to share it with! There were violinists and accordion players playing music in the streets giving such ambiance to the area and it felt like I had stumbled into a European romance movie. That was the first time that Berlin actually felt like Europe to me.

I ended up going to the Neuse Museum, which was next to the National Gallery, to eat at their cafe. Eating by yourself is kinda bleh especially when you have no internet or reading material to distract yourself (the museum makes you lock up your bag). But it forces you to really take in the scene around you... The table across from mine was a group of French people who sent their food back twice. Haha! Stereotypes are there for a reason I guess. I also found it interesting that English is the language used to communicate for a lot of foreigners. For example when the French guests spoke to the German waiter they spoke English to each other. This was common everywhere we went.

The cafe itself was pretty cool. It was pretty and felt old. Right across from the wall were the art exhibits so that was neat. The cafe was in the heart of the museum not near the lobby. I ate a chicken, tomato and basil sandwich which I was grateful for as I finally found a nitrate-free sandwich that I could eat!

At least I wasn't the only one eating alone!

After I ate I headed back to the hotel. Miguel's seminar lasted an hour longer than we had expected so I sat down on the couch instead of the bed so I wouldn't fall asleep as I waited for him to finish up. An hour and a half later I woke up. 

This is where Mig found me when he arrived back at the hotel room.

Miguel and I were both pretty exhausted from our days so we decided to just stay close by for dinner. Our hotel was located on the edge of a huge park (similar to Central Park I guess) that has a couple of beer gardens. We decided to check out the park and a beir garten for dinner. Walking through the park felt kinda magical. I can definitely see why fairytales are set in German woods! Did you know they have RED squirrels there?!

The beer garden was amazing!!! It's one of those memories I hope I have forever! The beer garden was on the lake were there were rowboats anyone could take out for free, cafe lights strung up over head, a booth where you can purchase beer and pretzels then go sit on the benches by the water and a restaurant restaurant. We ate at the restaurant and I had so much fun! 

Even the napkins felt very "German" to me!

 After dinner we grabbed a pretzel and beer by the water.

As we walked back to the hotel the sun was setting and it was the perfect way to wrap up the day!