Athens

Tuesday we visited the Acropolis. It was full of other tourists but I still enjoyed seeing the ruins, along with the other sites there. The Temple of Athena Nike was off to one side as we went up the Propylaia. There were tons of people standing on the steps taking pictures. Up top, the stones were pretty slippery to walk on. We saw the Parthenon, which was completed in 438 BC. and had doric columns (the most simple ones). A large chunk of the side of the Parthenon was pretty much destroyed and men were working on the rest of the structure. The pediments and friezes had been restored/reconstructed. The best bits of the building are actually in London at the London Museum. Lord Elegin took them in 1801 and they’ve been protected/on display since then. We walked around the back of the structure and then over towards the Erechtheion, which I think I might have liked more than the Parthenon. It’s a smaller temple and has ionic columns on one side of it. On the other side, there is a small porch-like area where caryatids held up the roof. (Now plaster casts of the originals are in their place.) A caryatid is a column in the form of a figure (these are female), which serves as both decoration and structural support.

We descended from the Acropolis and entered the Theater of Dionysos which was built between 340-330 BC. It’s located on the hill just south of the Parthenon. We could actually see it when we sat on a wall next to the Parthenon, which is above the city and could be seen from a distance. The theater wasn’t particularly remarkable, so we didn’t stay there too long. Next, we went to the Temple of Olympian Zeus which was begun in the 6^th century BC. Hadrian’s Arch, located just outside the temple grounds, was completed in AD 131. The temple only had a few columns standing. These were, however, really tall: about 17 meters. One had been toppled and was in slices. From here, we had a great view looking up towards the Parthenon. Getting here was a bit of a challenge because crossing the street in Athens takes skills. They traffic lights are clearly designed to favor automobiles. People are barely given enough time to run across four-six lanes of traffic before the light changes. If there is an island in the center, you will be stopping there. No question about it; there’s no way you have enough time. You could sprint, but it’s 95ºF by 10 am, so that’s out of the question.

We wandered through the tourist-kitsch-filled streets to the Roman Agora, located on the other side of the Acropolis (closer to our hostel). It was a kind of forum like space used during the Roman time period, hence the name. We didn’t bother going inside because we could see the whole thing from outside the fence, and really it just looked like a bunch of rocks. We did, however, enter Hadrian’s Library, which was pretty cool. It was a series of buildings. The scrolls were stored towards the back flanked by two mini-auditoria. This is according to the reconstruction drawings on signs because there wasn’t really much left for us to see.

Our final site was the Ancient Agora, Athens’ marketplace and civic center. They had reconstructed the Stoa of Attalos which was a long, narrow building with two rows of columns in front of it. It housed a small museum of assorted vases and objects found at the site. The “museum” was very well air-conditioned and it explained how the site had been used over time. There was an 11^th-Century church on the grounds. We also climbed a hill to the Temple of Hephaestus which was from ancient times and really well preserved. The rest of the Agora was a jumble of rocks, all of which were labeled, but you had to use your imagination to see what they used to be.

On the way back to the hostel, we stopped at a market to pick up food for dinner. The produce at our local grocery store was terrible: moldy carrots, dead-looking tomatoes. We breezed through the meat market, where men held up lamb heads for us to see. They tried to guess where we were from. I was generally ignored, but Jess was told she was from Singapore and Kazakhstan. From the market we headed up the street towards Omonia, a central transportation area and large square. There were people setting up for an anarchist protest. We didn’t hang around because there were police everywhere: streets were closed off, police vans were parked and there appeared to be riot gear ready to go. Our hostel was only a few blocks away and we could hear some drum banging later on that evening, but the protest seemed peaceful (or at least we didn’t hear about any backlash.

On Wednesday we tried to go to Delphi, but we had missed the bus. Instead we went back toward the Acropolis and walked around a few blocks filled with religious shops. Jess’s dad really likes Eastern Orthodox icons so she was looking to buy him one. The shops were all the same: store owners sitting inside, looking rather bored, and smoking a cigarette. They were somewhat confused as to why two American girls would be in their shop. She didn’t buy anything and, instead, we went to the New Acropolis Museum. The building was finished this year and the museum had only been open for five weeks. It was built by a New York based architect, who designed the building on top of some ruins. Large areas of the floor were glass, so people could look down at the ruins below. You entered in the bottom of the museum and walked up a slight incline, meant to represent the walk up to the Acropolis. That walkway was inclined and lit by natural light from the glass floor and ceiling of the third story of the museum. The second level was full of sculptures, including the originals of the caryatids (except for the one in London). These were really interesting to see up close because no two of the six were identical. Their hair was all done differently, and their clothing was slightly different as well. Up on the third floor, we watched a movie about the Parthenon. This floor had been constructed with the dimensions of the Parthenon in mind. The room where the movie was shown was meant to be “inside” the Parthenon. On either side exits lead to a glassed-in room which had the originals (and plaster casts of the parts taken by Lord Eligin) of the inner and outer friezes. The pediment statues were also at either end of the O-shaped room. I really liked the way the ruins had been displayed because it gave visitors a way to experience the friezes as they should have looked.

Leaving the air-conditioned (we were actually cold) modern building, we headed towards the tourist streets to find some lunch. I had grilled octopus and feta cheese. The octopus had been sliced vertically instead of in rings. It was delicious. Jess had orzo and lamb in a light tomato sauce which she really liked. Then we tried to go sit in a park and read but that didn’t work out because people kept bothering us. One guy actually followed us when we tried to switch benches. There weren’t many people just sitting around in the park. There were some people walking through it, but the only people “hanging out” were really sketchy-looking, so we left.

That evening I went to Carrefour for some groceries and a Priest was speaking in the center of Omonia. There were police again, but far fewer than had been patrolling the previous evening.

Athens

Athens is huge. It’s absolutely enormously huge. Okay, it’s probably not as big as Mexico City (land size) and it does only have a population of 3.7 million (Lonely Planet’s figure). From the plane it was gigantic. We flew over the city, passing it completely, then did a u-turn over the sea and spun back, landing 30 km away in the countryside. After getting off the plane, we took a bus into the center of the city and walked to our ho(s)tel. We booked the place online (on a hostel-booking website), but it’s nothing like the other hostels we’ve been staying at. When we arrived, the place was virtually deserted. We rang the bell and were buzzed in, but no one was in the common-room when we entered. Finally the people emerged. The owner is from Guam, and his English isn’t that great, but he laughs a lot. His “business partner” looks as though he hasn’t showered in year and tried to give us more change than he was supposed to. We corrected him and he put us in our own room for the night. It has two beds and a cot, so we might be getting a roommate for the evening. It’s got a kitchen (well fridge and hot plate), but no microwave, which is fine. We’re close enough to walk to the ruins and the airport bus, but we’re not in the super tourist section. The hostel is also on the 5^th floor of building and our window looks out to other apartments. Everyone has their windows wide open and laundry strung across the shutters (us included). It’s hot here. We have three fans in the room and no top-sheet or blankets. We don’t want them. As soon as we got here, we went to the grocery store to get stuff for dinner. On the way there we passed a Swedish family (mom, dad, two little kids – ages four and five maybe) who was just arriving. When we got back from the store a French couple (in their 20s) was cooking dinner. Everyone seemed kind of scared or had a look like, “where are we and what have we gotten ourselves into?” Thus far, the impression we have of our Greek neighbors is that they are loud. Music plays a lot and people have no qualms about screaming from one window to another across the airshaft in between the buildings. The hostel is fine. It’s clean enough and works for the price and location. We’re pretty pleased, and as Jess pointed out, “we HAD to stay somewhere like this in our travels.”….although I did just hear someone throw yet another plastic bottle out their window and onto the roof below us.

The rest of the trip will be written from Malta and posted starting 24 July (approx.).

Prague Summer (not Spring)

We arrived in Prague midday on Saturday. It’s a small city with a lot of historical buildings which are still in tact. The Jewish section is especially well preserved because it is rumored that Hitler wanted to maintain it as a “Museum to an Extinct Exotic Race.” This means the city suffered very little damage during either world war. It has been used as a movie set for scenes from old European cities (“Amadeus” was filmed there). Most of the streets are narrow and windy. The center is very touristy, as was the area near the castle, where I saw (horror of all horrors) an Ed Hardy store.

As soon as we arrived, I dumped my stuff at the hostel and went up to Prague Castle. The complex is from the 9-10^th Century and is still in use today as the official residence of the Czech president. As soon as I got there, I went inside St. Vitus Cathedral, a gothic structure with colorful stained- and painted-glass windows. Jess had told me to look for a stained-glass window by Czech illustrator Alfons Mucha. I had some trouble figuring out which one it was and, in the end, wound up taking pictures of most of the windows and having Jess ID it later. The church itself was probably one of the top-five nicest churches I’ve been to. The windows were brilliantly colored and it had a huge tomb in the back. I especially liked a spiral staircase leading up to the second level (above a side-chapel). It was carved with a vine over it.

As I was waiting to get into the church it was drizzling. That slowed down as I left the church and headed toward the Old Royal Palace where I entered at the Vladislav Hall, a large space with arched ceilings. The Palace itself wasn’t that interesting, as there wasn’t much to see inside. I could only visit a four rooms and a chapel. I did really like the Basilica of St. George. It was a small-ish church, connected to a cloisters that I could not visit. The church had some frescoes on the apse, but my favorite part was the stairs. The altar was raised above the crypt and on either side a large (for the space) staircase gave you the option of going up (to the altar) or down (to the crypt). It was like a staircase you wound find in an entrance foyer of a large house, but this one over-filled the space and was in a church.

The last place I visited inside the castle grounds was Golden Lane. In the 16^th century, tradesmen lived in tiny houses in the castle’s wall. Above the houses you can walk down a hallway the castle guards used as a lookout. The houses themselves are really tiny. I fit through all the doorways, but many people did not. The rooms inside were about the size of a Tufts single, some as large as a double. The houses are used as souvenir shops today; I browsed around, but nothing was worth buying.

Leaving the castle, I walked down and crossed the river to the Staromestske nam, the square in Prague’s old town. The square is bordered by buildings and churches, which are as old as the 14^th century. At one end is the Old Town Hall where an astronomical clock (it’s a partial replica) from 1410 stands. It’s large and chimes on the hour (apparently apostles parade out of the top of it, but I never saw it). In the center of the square sits a statue to Jan Hus, a religious reformer of the 15^th century.

Back at the hostel, I made rice and a mock red-curry for dinner (broccoli and carrots in tomato sauce with curry). Our hostel was one of the nicer ones we’ve encountered. Jess and I both got bottom bunks in a room overlooking a plaza. Our room had three (!!!) windows and, therefore, a cross-breeze. The hostel also had a full kitchen and wifi.

Sunday I woke up and took a free walking tour of Prague. (Jess had been to Prague before and didn’t really want/need to do the touristy stuff.) The tour guide was from Colorado and had only been living in Prague for two months. She’s there to teach English. We started in the old town square and moved on to see a church where an arm hangs. Legend has it that a man was trying to steel from the church. As punishment his arm was cut off and left hanging to remind others not to steel. Pretty much it looked like a brown dog bone 20 feet in the air hanging from a small chain.

Next we walked through the Jewish quarter and saw the cemetery from the outside. Then we walked across the Charles Bridge, which has statues lining the sides of it. These are all plaster casts because the originals won’t survive the elements. The statues are mostly of saints and the bridge was crowded with tourists and people selling things. On the other side of the bridge, we visited a small, man-made island. Prague floods every few years and some times this island is completely submerged. A restaurant marks the water level of the various floods. A few years ago, the entire first floor of every building was flooded. From here we saw a wall where people sprayed their opinions of communism and love on a wall. During the 80s, a Mexican university student painted “All we need is love” onto the wall and kept painting it after the police painted over the graffiti. The idea lasted (even though communism did not) and people still spray-paint messages of love onto this wall. The tour ended up at the castle.

I walked back down the hill and to the old part of the city where I went to the Jewish Museum, which is actually a series of buildings. The first one I entered was the Pinkas Synagogue from 1535. The walls have been painted with the names of 80,000 Jews from Moravia and Bohemia who died during the Holocaust. These names are arranged by location and are all over the main part and women’s gallery. Upstairs there was an exhibition of art work by children who lived in Terezín before being moved to the concentration camps. Their teacher, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, kept their work in a turn and it was discovered, preserved and donated to the museum. Next, I went through the Old Jewish Cemetery which was established in the 15^th century. It has almost 12,000 tombstones, but more people are buried there without markers. The stones are literally smashed up against one another. Because space was at a premium, and the Jews were not given many other areas, people were buried in layers. The ground at the cemetery is actually slightly higher than the streets around it. The oldest grave is from 1439, but it was really hard to even tell that the rock I saw was marking a grave. There were some tombs in the walls of the cemetery, but most of the people had been buried “underground.” After the cemetery, I went to the Ceremonial Hall, a building used by the Prague Burial Society. Inside I encountered an exhibition about death in the Jewish religion as well as objects used by the society, including tableware from their annual banquet. It was believed that their job was so depressing that they deserved a yearly break.

Next, I visited the Klausen Synagogue, which was the result of taking three smaller buildings and turning them into one larger space. The space was set up as museum on Jewish traditions and they had installed a bimah with a torah in a glass case to show how it would look during services. This synagogue was built in the 1600s and was the largest in the ghetto. The third synagogue I visited was the Maisel Synagogue. This one was dedicated to the history of Jews in Moravia and Bohemia. The building was built in 1590-2 and had three naves. It was much squarer than the previous two synagogues I had been inside. It too had the arc symbolically set up, but no bimah. I saved the Spanish Synagogue for last because I knew it was the most opulent of the four. It was in the baroque style and housed an exhibit on the history of Jews in Moravia and Bohemia from emancipation to the present. It also had a room full of torah-pointers and other old silver objects. I liked the set-up of the museum, that you had to walk between the spaces, but the actually cases were dark and there was tons of text in each. The Berlin museum was much better in that the exhibitions included hands-on elements and the lighting made it easy to see everything.

I walked through the newer part of Prague, up to Wenceslas Square, where I saw a statue of him on a horse. Wenceslas was known as the “good king” and he is well loved in Prague. I stopped at Tesco for some groceries and wanted to pay with my ATM card because I only had enough Czech crown/krona to get to the airport the next day. The card machines weren’t working and I asked if I could pay with euros. I only had a 20-euro note and was spending the Czech equivalent of one euro. While I was trying to explain to the woman that I could pay her with euro, but I wanted euro back as change the man behind me paid for my groceries. I was shocked and embarrassed but he said, “ah, no problem. You can pay next time.”

That evening, I went on a mini-excursion to DM (a combo CVS/health food store) for wheat-free pretzels. Jess had found the store and told me where to go. On the way, I got turned around in this gallery and wound up encountering a statue of Wenceslas on an upside horse which was suspended from the ceiling. I had known about the statue because it is by the same artist who put statues of babies on the TV tower in the city. From far away, they don’t really look like babies, but Jess had know about it and told me.

Going out in Berlin

Our final night in Berlin we decided to go out to the Tacheles. Jess had gone there when she spent a summer studying in Berlin. The building used to be a squatters’ building but it had become a space for a beer garden and artists, studios. The whole structure was covered in graffiti and stunk like a toilet. All along the street there were entrances to various bars/clubs that are part of the building. We went into one of them which had stairs leaving up to the artists’ studios and another bar at the top of the place. Some of the artists had really cool pieces for sale. One guy had done “sculpture/diorama scenes” of marshmallows and photographed them. (He had used Jet-Puffed, smart man.) He also had T-shirts he had painted. Other artists had paintings for sale. This was all on the second floor of the building. Upstairs was a spray-painted hallway which was covered in graffiti, but none of those artists were in their studios. On the top floor, we went into a bar to look down at the beer garden space (which had a cover charge). It looked like fun downstairs, but it wasn’t that packed and not worth paying to enter. When Jess lived in Berlin, there was no cover charge and the place was packed all the time. You don’t have to buy alcohol at the bars because Berlin doesn’t have an open-container law. I had purchased a gluten-free rice beer the previous day and we walked around sharing the half-liter bottle. We didn’t even drink half of it because it was pretty bad. Jess didn’t like it because it was bad beer and I didn’t like it because it still tasted very beer-like. It confirmed that I don’t like beer. Being allergic to beer is actually pretty easy for me because I think it’s pretty gross.

Last day in Berlin

Today was our last day in Berlin. We spent a fair amount of time running errands (laundry, printing confirmation pages and boarding passes), etc.

We also went to the Neue Synagogue, which was right around the corner from our hostel and has an amazing gold dome on top of it. The other day, we could see the dome from the top of the Reichstag. The building opened in the 1860s and was ransacked in 1938, then re-openned before it was hit by a bomb in 1943. In 1957 it had to be destroyed because the bomb's damage made it unsafe. Part of the building, including the dome, was re-constructed in 1989-90. The main prayer room was not part of the reconstruction because it was too badly damaged. Only the entrance foyers were rebuilt. The building was in the style of the Alhambra in Granada. It was also not built at a right angle to the street. The entrance is, but the main part of the building is on an angle because that made it easier to have the arc face Israel. Inside we walked through an exhibit about the history of the building and Jewish institutions around it (hospital, orphanage, stores, etc.). The exhibit included artwork by children who had seen Marc Chagall's "I and the Village." It was obvious which were painted by little girls (lots of pink and purple), but the more interesting one was painted by a boy who included Super Mario and Star Wars in his painting.

We walked around the back of the building where the main part of the synagogue used to be. Instead of rebuilding this part (they didn't have any remnants left over from the rubble), pillars were placed to show where the building used to be. The arc is represented by some columns across the grassy space. After seeing that space, we climbed up to the dome which had a pretty great view of the city. Unfortunately we could not take pictures from up there, or anywhere in the complex.

Afterwards we stopped in a park to eat some lunch. Then we walked through the trendy areas towards Jess's neighborhood (which was outside the city). In the trendy area we stopped into an alleyway. The building used to be owned by a man who hired Jews to work at his factory. He hired them to try to protect them from deportation. Now, it's a grafitti-covered area filled with cafes and an exhibition of Anne Frank.

Continuing along we walked through hipster neighborhoods filled with trendy cafes, stores and the like. We stopped at a cafe to wait for a quick rainstorm to end. Then we walked back stopping in deisgn stores and a clothing store where Jess bought a patch with the TV tower on it. The street we walked was the one Jess used to walk on her way home from classes and she enjoyed seeing how much it had changed in the two years since she had been there.

Museum days in Berlin

Wednesday morning we walked to the Hamburger Bahnhof Art Museum. It’s a contemporary art museum. I had never really been to a museum for contemporary art, I had seen some of it in galleries, but most museums (that I’d been to) don’t really go past modernism or post-modernism. This works in this museum were highly concept-driven. I’m still not sure I understood most of them. There was an entire wing of Joseph Beuys’s work. He is a German artist who worked internationally during the Cold War. Most of his works deal survival; some deal with education. Many of his pieces were installations or video performances. I was especially intrigued by a series of large sculptures made out of tallow, which is like lard and can be used for fuel. In another part of the museum, we saw some large-scale sculptures by Anselm Kiefer. There was a lead plane with books and rotten plants on top of it. These items were meant to weigh the plane down, but it’s made of lead and, therefore, cannot fly anyway. The museum was somewhat unsetting because I haven’t really come into contact with that many conceptual works in one place.

Next we headed toward Checkpoint Charlie passing through the high-end shopping area. Checkpoint Charlie was one of the main crossings through the Berlin Wall. It’s the one most diplomats used when visiting the city. Now, there is a replica guardhouse with two men dressed in uniform “guarding” it. You can pay to have a picture taken with them. You can also pay to have East German stamps in your passport. Large photos of soldiers are on display in the middle of the road. From one side you see a soldier from the Allied Forces. The other side shows a Russian soldier. Their photos are there to make you understand what you would have seen had you been at that spot between 1961 and 1989.

From Checkpoint Charlie, we walked to a place where a substantial amount of the wall still remains (actually most of these bits have been moved there). It’s also where the SS offices were. They’re building the museum, but an open-air exhibition called “Topography of Terror” gave a lot of historical information about the space and the city.

We ended our day by spending three and a half hours at the Berlin Jewish Museum. Jess hadn’t been there and I had learned about the building and wanted to see it in person. It’s insane. It’s one of the most complicated museums I’ve ever visited. It was designed by Daniel Libeskind who is an American architect of Polish-Jewish decent. He does a lot of Jewish/Holocaust museums and memorials and also did a building at Bar Ilan (I’ll update you on what it’s like). You start in the basement where there are three axis (aka hallways): the Axis of Exile which describes the flight of the Jews and ends in the Garden of Exile, the Axis of the Holocaust which introduces the visitor to victims of the Holocaust and ends at the Holocaust Tower, and the Axis of Continuation which takes the visitor to the rest of the permanent exhibition. The Garden of Exile is the only place in the museum that has right angles. It’s a grid of tall towers covered by Russian olive trees which form a canopy over the space. It’s meant to be disorientating: to show what exile and moving to a new place is like. The Holocaust Tower is an empty trapezoidal room, 42 meters high with the only light entering through a slit in the point. It’s not heated and doesn’t really have much of an explanation. The visitor is supposed to make his own interpretation (this is a common Libeskind theme). Also, these axis were not level; they sloped upward. We found upward sloping areas in other parts of the museum as well.

We went up the Axis of Continuation to a side gallery which had a photo display celebrating “100 Years of Tel Aviv.” The city had been founded in 1909 and this exhibit – put together by Magnum – included work by Robert Capa, Abbas, and other photographers. I really liked the Abbas photographs especially because he’s Iranian-French, yet spent time working in Israel. Photographs spanned from the creation of Israel up to present time.

At the end of the photograph exhibit, we found ourselves in the Memory Void – an indoor courtyard space where we encountered a pile of metal faces meant to represent victims of the Holocaust. We could see this space from the upper floors of the museum.

Upstairs the exhibit started with the history of Judaism. First we were introduced to three Jewish villages from the 10^th Century. Called Worms, Speyer, and Mainz, they are generally referred to by an acronym of the first letter of their names Shum which means garlic in Hebrew. We watched a 3-D video which was terrible. The information in German was really basic – “The town had a temple and a bathhouse; the Talmud was studied in the temple” – and even more abbreviated in the English subtitles. Continuing along the zig-zag hallway we learned about the Hebrew alphabet on computer screens which told you how to write your name in Hebrew. Throughout the museum, there were also three large black stones. You put on headphones and moved around the stone. As you moved around the stone you could hear different voices talking and music playing. It was like scanning the radio except you were moving.

After the stone, we came to an exhibit about Glikl bas Judah Leib (born Hamburg 1646) who wrote the oldest autobiography of a Jewish woman. She was a merchant and we learned all about her family and work. One of the hands-on sections had a computer game where you had to pack her bags for her trip to Amsterdam. You had to pack things like “kosher snacks” instead of a “bunny rabbit” and “cell phone.” In that area of the museum were three video monitors with animations about objects (host, cup, headscarf), locations (Lourdes, Garden of Eden, Niches) and actions (pilgrimage, wedding). These were written in simple language to teach children about Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The animations were brightly colored and used symbols to convey their messages. The one about niches talked about the mihrab, the arc and the apse as different variations of the same idea. It ended saying that “every religion has a niche.”

The rest of this level of the museum dealt with Jewish traditions: as merchants, philosophers like Moses Mendelssohn, and how celebrations have changed over time. There were more interactive games and hands-on sections for children and adults. We spent some time looking at information regarding the various holiday celebrations. They had a chuppa and you could play wedding music while standing underneath it.

Downstairs we walked through an exhibit on what it meant to be German and Jewish at the same time. We started getting tired, so we sped through the exhibits about modernity which presented Jews in the arts and sciences along with the building of modern synagogues. There was a section dedicated to the Jewish experience during the WWI and the Weimar Republic and then during the Holocaust. The museum ended with present time and computer monitors which asked questions like “Should Turkey be allowed into the EU?” We said yes, and learned that half the museum-goers also said yes, while 50 percent said no.

Throughout the zigzags you could look into “voids” – empty spaces like courtyards which could be seen from both levels of the museum. These were integral in Libeskind’s design and are meant to make the visitor think about the space between the lines. In the end we decided that the museum was probably the best value (it only cost 2.50 for students) of any of the museums we had had to pay for thus far in our trip. Like the museum in Glasgow we appreciated the desire to teach and the hands-on approach in many of the exhibitions. Each section had something for people of all ages: children could color and watch cartoons drawn by Jews, while adults could read and listen to traditional songs sung during services. The building itself was worth seeing and experiencing.

As if we hadn’t had enough museums on Wednesday, we decided to spend Thursday on Museum Island, a small piece of land in the middle of the Spree River. We started at the Pergamonmuseum, which contains the Collection of Classical Antiquities, the Museum of Islamic Art and the Museum of the Ancient Near East. Entering the building, I was immediately struck by the enormous size of the Pergamon altar. Pergamon was in Western Turkey. The altar is shaped like the Ara Pacis, but five or six times larger; it’s in the Hellenistic (late-Greek) style. It’s a huge marble staircase surrounded by a ten-foot high frieze of sculptures. You can climb up the altar and take pictures. They’re removed the side and rear sections of the frieze and put them up around the room so it’s easier to see. In the next room we found a façade called Market Gate which is also from the same region in Turkey. This façade was greatly intact and had Roman imperial (1^st/2^nd century AD) sculptures around it. Walking through the gate, we were met with another gate: the Ishtar Gate. This alone would have been enough to draw me to Berlin: not just to the museum, but also to Berlin. Constructed in the 6^th century BC with blue stones and covered with lions and other animals, the Ishtar Gate lead up to the palace in Babylon. All that remains is the lower gate, but even that was way to big to fit into the frame of my camera. The colors are bright and a large amount of the mosaics have been reconstructed. You can start at the far end of the gallery and pass the lions lining the hallway as you walk up to the gate. That part of the museum also contained reliefs, sculptures, and paintings of the areas done at the time of German excavation.

Upstairs was the Islamic art section which had calligraphy, carpets, parts of mosques and a small section with a Moroccan/Andalucian room. It also had a façade from a palace in Jordan which had been constructed in 743-4. Another small room called the Aleppo Room was covered in carvings and decorations. You could walk into it and get a 360 approach to the art. Basically, the Germans lifted entire sections of buildings and brought them to this museum.

The other half of the museum was the Greek section where we walked through an exhibit about Greek Gods. The pieces, which had not been displayed since 1939, were recently sent to Brazil for a big show there. They have since returned to Berlin and are back at this museum. This exhibit was good, but the pictures of the Brazilian version looked like it was much better organized.

Museum number two on Museum Island was Altes Museum which was largely under construction. We saw more Greek objects like vases, coins, helmets, jewelry, and statues. This museum houses Queen Nefertiti’s bust. She was the wife of Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten and lived from 1370 BC-1340 BC. She’s really beautiful, but I was surprised that she only had one eye painted on. People clustered around the case taking pictures like crazy (I was one of them).

Continuing along, we went to the Alte Nationalgalerie, another bizarrely laid out museum (this is becoming a theme here). This time, the actual museum was a rectangle (for the most part), but the galleries were difficult to navigate and dark. On the first floor we found one tiny room that was not renovated with the rest of the museum. It was meant to show how the museum used to look (which is better than it looks now). This floor was somewhat dull, with tons of dark pieces. I did like some of the works by Adolph Menzel, but nothing was that great. Upstairs we wandered through some more German art and some French paintings as well. On the upper floor we found Romanticism and the Dusseldorf School which turned out some pleasant paintings which I enjoyed. These focused on light and color and were mainly landscapes with a few cityscapes thrown into the mix.

Finally we went to the Bode-Museum which houses the Sculpture Collection, Museum of Byzantine Art, Numismatic Collection and Works from the Gemäldegaleria. The building was newly redone and probably the best space of all the museums. It had a room with a large dome and one with a small dome; these were connected by a room dubbed the “basilica.” Around the sides were wings with more galleries. I didn’t love the collection. It was mostly religious art: Baroque, Renaissance, Romanticism, and Byzantine. I did like how some of the altars were displayed – on metal stands about four feet in the air allowing the viewer to walk around them. They had a few other interesting pieces and the store was well stocked. There was also a coin collection in some of the upstairs galleries. Even though the building was newly redone, the floor plan was a bit confusing and it was difficult to walk around the museum without having to retrace your steps through certain rooms.

We were allowed to take pictures (without using a flash-light) in all of the museums. In the Pergamon, we could bring our bags in and no one said anything to us. At the Altes Museum we were allowed to bring bags in, but not water, and the bags had to be in front of us (not on my shoulder, but across my chest). As we were leaving, a girl was getting yelled at for trying to bring a tote on her shoulder. She then checked it, but brought her water bottle with her. The guard sent her back to the coat check once again. I should also point out that she spoke German and still wasn’t getting it….oye. In the Alte nationalgalerie we had to check everything and by the time we got to the Bode-Museum we decided to just check it and not bother with the crazies guarding the museum. At the Pergamon, we were stopped at the exit and asked to fill out a survey. The girl (about our age) asked questions in English about our experience at the museum and in Berlin. She typed the answers into a blackberry, which I thought was nifty.

Berlin

We arrived in Berlin Tuesday morning. Our bus came in near the Radio Tower. We took the subway to the center and went to the hostel. Jess spent six weeks here (two summers ago) on a study abroad program, so she knows the city really well and understands the language (I’m in “smile and nod” mode). We dumped our stuff at the craziest-decorated hostel I’ve ever seen. It’s called “Heart of Gold,” which refers to the spaceship in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Our room has diagonal orange and red strips and questions written all over the walls. The hostel has a great location and they don’t mind microwaving things (like rice for breakfast) for us.

Anyway, we walked to Alexanderplatz where we saw the TV tower. Inside the plaza, there was an exhibit set up about the 20th anniversary of the wall coming down and reunification. Panels explained the events leading up to 1989 and the early 1990s. It was entirely outdoors and free, so everyone could enjoy it and learn about it. Glass cases held objects from refuges of the time. One of these objects was a stuff animal I used to own (I called it Puffy). It was unnerving to see the same toy I had played with for most of my life sitting there in a glass case.

Also in Alexanderplatz we saw a huge clock which tells the time all over the world. It’s round and the hour moves around the various time zones. Leaving the plaza, we walked down Unter den Linden, a wide boulevard where many museums, memorials and university buildings are located. The burned books memorial is currently underneath Mercedes Benz Fashion Week. (I was not happy about this.) We passed the US Embassy, which is recently redone and right outside the Brandenburg Gate. The building is pretty ugly and doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the street. It does, however, have a great location, and overlooks the Tiergarten which is across the street).

Suddenly we were inside The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It’s a series of stelae (big rocks) which are arranged in a grid, but their number and measurements don’t have any meaning. The stones are also graffiti-proof. They were actually treated with chemicals produced by a company which produced chemicals used to kill Jews during the Holocaust. No one realized this until after the memorial was created. The designer was okay with this because it was like history coming full-circle and gaining closure. The stones are huge and it’s difficult to walk around without walking into people. Underneath the memorial there is an indoor museum space. The space housed a timeline of the Holocaust as well as rooms housing quotes from survivors and information about families. At the end there is a computer and a series of photos. You can look up the location of Holocaust memorials around the world.

We also walked to Potsdamerplatz where the world’s first traffic light was installed. The wall used to run right through the square and today there is a memorial set up here. The city is working on turning this neighborhood into a financial center. The Sony Center is here, along with many high-end hotels and restaurants. The Sony Center is actually an outdoor/indoor building. It’s covered, but the entrances are wide open and the buildings around the courtyard are full buildings with their own entrances. There is free wifi in the courtyard because they want to encourage people to use the space. There is also a fountain that can be covered with a stage. It’s in the center of a space and, therefore, people cannot walk up to it and touch actors or famous people on stage. This is also the place where movie premiere are held.

Walking toward the Reichstag, we passed through a bit of the Tiergarten, Berlin’s main central park. It was a forest before the war, and totally destroyed during WWII. In reconstructing Germany, the Allies donated trees to be planted here. It’s the only place in Europe where you can find Canadian maple. We didn’t go inside the park, but walked around it. At the Reichstag we went in and took the elevator up to the glass dome which was built in 1997. The original dome was destroyed in a fire one month after Hitler took power. This dome is awesome because you can go to the roof (it’s base) and walk around the inside. Then, there are ramps leading up to the very top. These ramps spiral around the dome. Everything is glass and the views of the city are pretty spectacular, especially because the whole thing is free. Jess has been inside the building and the main chamber (where the equivalent of the Senate meets) is right below the dome. Mirrors and windows allow light to enter, but the public can’t see down into that space.

Finally, we went to some Germany health-food stores and did some grocery shopping. There is so much food here that I can eat. It’s really quite amazing. There are three health-food stores with gluten free sections within five minutes of our hostel. I’ve found pretzels, American marshmallows, soymilk, rice, rice cakes, gluten-free beer, tons of cookies/crackers/cake mixes and other foods. The prices are reasonable and I’m able to eat really well. I can’t read the ingredients of most foods at the grocery store, but Jess can! So far, I’ve tried red cabbage and apple (frozen, prepared in our microwave here) and egg salad with mushrooms in it. She won’t let me buy the sweet-and-sour sauce because she can’t be sure there isn’t wheat or something hidden in it.