Berlin: Day 3

Today we visited Museum Island. It's an island in the middle of a river, and many of Berlin's museums are located here. The first thing we saw was the Berliner Dome. It's a very large church with a dome so big that it was graced with the name of the city. The outside was intricately done, with many statues and some nice architecture. I didn't see the inside - the charge for that privilege was 3 euros, not something I was willing to pay to see another church that probably wouldn't be distinguishable in my memory after a month. But it looked nice from Emily's pictures. Then we walked down the island to the Pergamon. I noticed bullet holes in the walls of buildings along the way - remnants of Berlin's war days. The Pergamon was probably the most amazing museum I've ever seen. If you go to Berlin and have time for only one museum, this should be it. The first room is a temple reconstruction. It's hard for me to describe it's size; think of an ancient temple - that's really how big it was. They had reconstructed the reliefs that covered the walls from ruins. A lot of pieces were missing, but I was amazed that they had been able to put together anything from the small parts that had remained. It was very beautiful, still, even with some of it lost forever.

The next room contains the Market Gate of Millet. Millet was a city, and the market gate isn't like the gate to your backyard. It's a few stories tall, with walkways on multiple levels and large pillars. We looked at it and couldn't believe that the entire thing had been brought to Germany. Then we walked through it, and on the other side was the Ishtar Gate. This is one of the major gate of ancient Babylon, as tall as the Market Gate, made of blue glazed brick. It's huge. We were awed - Emily was like "Who sees this and is like 'I think I'll bring back the entire thing as a souvenir?'". Included with the Ishtar Gate was the Processional Way of Babylon, a long tunnel of the same blue glazed brick.

There was room after room of ancient treasures, trinkets, writings, statues, coins, and countless other things. You just become numb and cease to be impressed by all the amazing things. "Oh, there's another three thousand year old bracelet." "One more stone covered in thousand year old text." We saw an exhibit of Islamic art that was beautiful. The mattes around the paintings were as beautiful as the pictures themselves - very intricate, I loved it. They had rugs and vases, too, that amazed me. I really enjoyed that part of the museum - it was small enough not exhaust me. The other half of the museum was dedicated to Hellenistic Art. I love that classical style. It was a little odd, though, because all of the men were missing their genitalia. A display informed me that the more Puritan-minded Christians of later eras had chiseled off the stuff of male statues in the interests of modesty. I found my dream man there - too bad he was only a bust, and not real.

After lunch, we went to Alexanderplatz. The area was completely destroyed during the War, and has been rebuilt in a very modern style. It looks really neat. There were lights all over the trees and banners hanging from buildings, all decorated for the Berlinale. The Berlinale is a film festival, similar to the Cannes in France.

That evening we went to an Egyptian restaurant for my birthday. I had fun - I smoked a water pipe with apple flavored tobacco for the first time! The place was really nice, and the atmosphere was great. It was a nice birthday dinner. Then we made our way back to the hostel and crashed out, exhausted again.