Sprawling Berlin
At the start of our second say in Berlin, we immersed ourselves in Museum Island. This island is a bit of land in the middle of the city where the river splits and then rejoins on the other side. On this little island is five separate world class museums, hence the name. We started with the Pergamon Museum, the Museum of the Ancient Near East. The main attractions here where the remnants of old Babylon and the wider Mesopotamian area. Upon first entering the museum you are subject to the massive blue Ishtar Gate. Seeing the real thing there in the flesh was amazing but ironically the more impressive part in my opinion was the small model of what the structure originally looked like. The gate in the museum had to be cut in half in order to accommodate the ceiling and didn't fully acknowledge the behemoth that it once was. In the the next hall was the Pergamon Altar. Again this altar was not nearly the same size it was when it sat in the east, but impressive none the less. The rest of this museum consisted of old Islamic artifacts ranging from utensils to giant statues.
The second museum was the Neues Museum, the Museum of Prehistory and Early History. This museum had many civilizations but I focused on primarily Ancient Egypt. The basement, quite appropriately, held all the mummies, tombs, burial items, and burial scripts. On the top floor was the gem of the museum, the Bust of Nefertiti. No pictures were allowed so I recommend googling this one. The bust was absolutely amazing. The amount of detail that went into the Pharaoh's every curve and bone is incredible. Seriously, google it.
Later that evening we went to an Sneak Peek at the local theater. Every Thursday, the theater shows a movie a few days before it's official release and it only costs six Euros. The catch is that you have no idea what movie you are going to see until you are sitting in the seat and it starts playing. We ending up watching Brick Mansions, a hilariously awful movie set in 2018 Detroit. It had some great parkour scenes which were fun to watch and overall it was a generally entertaining... but it was a bad movie.
Today we meet up with Jacob's dad, Bruce, who was flying back from Nepal. We started the day with the DDR Museum, which covered the history of East Germany. The museum was a little gimmicky and was trying a little too hard to cater to the younger crowd, but it was informative none the less. Just next to the museum was the dock to a boat tour. The hourlong tour took us up and down the river and have us the history and different buildings and parks as we pasted them.
The Reichstag was next: the house of the German parliament. Bruce was awesome and made reservations for lunch in the massive glass Reichstag dome. We had an incredible lunch complete with campaign, the best salad ever, salmon, and cheesecake to top it off. After lunch, we walked to the top of the dome which had a wonderful 360 view of Berlin.
The last stop of our very busy day was the Berliner Philharmoniker. The two hour concert was great, featuring a quick paced cello piece as well as Dvorjak's 7th symphony. We got out of the performance and meet up with Juergen (our host from Munich) for drinks. We then realized we were absolutely starving and went out for a very late dinner around 12.
I got home at 2 and crashed immediately and therefore forgot to post everything above. So now I'll address Saturday's adventures as well.
The started with the Stasi museum at the old headquarters of the Stasi. Unfortunately, most of this museum was in German so we didn't stay here long. Keeping with our theme we took the metro to the old Stasi prison in Berlin. Here we had a fantastic tour of the cells and interrogation rooms utilized by the East German secret police. Our tour guide did a great job of telling us stories and presenting theoreticals of what kinds of mental and emotional torture took place there. She then told us about her experience reading her family's Stasi files after the razing of the Berlin Wall. It was a very immersive and informative experience and well worth the time.
From there we headed over to the East Side Gallery. This is a very long expanse of the Wall that is still standing and the whole thing is dedicated to street art. Everything from outlines of hands to advanced spray paint images.
We rounded out the night with dinner with Juergen and his friend, Snoopy. It was an excellent German pub/restaurant with live music and although we waited around two hours for our food, it was still quite delicious.