Day 8: Currywurst and museums galore

On day eight Cat and I went to the Reichstag, which looks like all the other building built in the 1800s, but the Germans built this dome on top of the building, which has a great view of Berlin. You can see the line of people waiting to get in. The day we were there it was raining, but it was still pretty impressive. You can walk all the way up to the top of it on this winding ramp. I don't know why we both ended up wearing all brown and khaki that day, but it's pretty amusing now.



Next we headed to the Pergamon Museum, which I highly recommend. I didn't take my camera in, which was a big mistake. The museum houses the Pergamon Altar. A very large portion of this alter was found in Turkey and transported to Berlin where it was partially reconstructed in an abbreviated version of the altar, but it seems huge when you are in there. These friezes are amazing and I wish we could have spent more time there. We only spent a few hours, but you could have spent a whole day at least. There is another whole section of the museum devoted to Middle Eastern Art. Istar's Gate was just as impressive as the Pergamon Altar, and we didn't even know it was there. The gate and processional way into the city of Babylon were decorated with blue tiles and low-reliefs of lions and other animals. The crazy thing is that they had no idea exactly how to reconstruct the tiles because nothing was left intact so they based it on artwork from the same time period.

For lunch we happened upon this place that sold currywurst, something I had been meaning to try as it is a specialty of Berlin. It's basically sausage smothered in kind of a cross between ketchup and BBQ sauce and topped with curry powder. They gave you so much that Cat and I decided to split one, but every German we saw had one to themselves and half of them were just eating what looked like a double order of currywurst and no french fries. =)


Our next stop was the Topography of Terror, which was a museum that had just opened in May. It's built on top of the former headquarters of the Gestapo and SS. These bunkers are all that's left. The museum details how the Gestapo and SS were able to do what they did using propaganda and fear. Not an easy museum, but very good and free!

Our last stop was the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. Has to be the worst museum I've ever been in so don't was your time. There are so many museums (that's pretty much all we did in Berlin) that are worth going to see that it seems criminal that we wasted our time in this one.

May 27, 2010