Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Day 19: Berlin (Oct 5)

Today's pictures can be found on Flickr here.

Last day in Berlin was Museum Island day, in particular the Pergamon and the Neues Museums. The Neues ("New") Museum is known for its huge collection of Egyptian artifacts, including mummies and a bust of Queen Nefertiti. Upstairs they've got a prehistoric museum collection that's still in work, but includes some Neanderthal skeletons.



As interesting as the displays is the history of the museum itself. It was a museum pre-war, but was so heavily damaged it basically sat as a pile of rubble until after reunification, 45 years later. Many of the exhibits had been removed and relocated, but some were lost in the damage. Flash forward to the 1990s and the rebuilding of the museum has been undertaken to make the museum useful again but not to hide the damage. Inside, some columns are blackened from fires, plaster paintings on the walls have fallen, leaving only bare brick, etc.

The Pergamon Museum is dedicated to basically one place, a Roman city in Turkey called Pergamon. In the late 19th century, German archaelogists "discovered" the ruins and essentially paid the Turks for the rights to remove an entire temple (along with other artifacts) and bring it to Berlin. In order to get it workable, they recreated the front section of the temple and took the friezes that encircled it on the outside and put them on the inside walls. A new exhibit has a 360-degree panorama of what the city might have looked like at its height.

I ended these museums at 5pm, which didn't leave enough time for the German Historical Museum - you can't do all of German history in less than an hour - so I'll save that for another day. I went back to the Gendarmarkt and to the Fassbender & Rausch chocolate store to inhale the aromas and to ogle their chocolate Titanic, Reichstag, and Brandenburg Gate, and an erupting chocolate volcano. Of course I had to buy a box of truffles. Ended the night with a 4-cheese pizza at a nearby Italian restaurant: mozzarella, blue, goat, and Parmesan. Back to the apartment to pack and get ready for Prague in the morning.  Auf wiedersehn!

Today's pictures can be found on Flickr here.

(Originally posted 10/12/11 at 12:08am, Vienna)

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