16th September

Shems: After coffee and cake at a strange bakery in a passage joining two rival supermarkets, we headed into the centre. Travel was frustrating due to S-Bahn still being out of order so everything took an age. We walked around the centre for a bit and had a fast-food risotto. It both amuses and delights me that risotto can be considered a fast-food. Italian cookbooks describe the dish in typically romantic terms - lovingly-made, mama's secret recipe, all that stirring and ladelling of fresh stock. Nonetheless it made delicious and filling fast-food fuelling us to eurolines HQ to ask about the camera which went missing on day one of this trip. As any reasonable person would expect, the camera was not there. Losing your brand new camera on day one of a trip does not help you to be reasonable. Nevertheless we were still relieved that we could give up thinking about it.

We headed into town to have a look at the Berlin museum. Unfortunately I was in charge of map reading, and so we ended up at the Jewish museum instead (it did seem strange as we approached, that the Berlin museum should need armed security guards). The building is one of architectural significance and very modern: tinted glass, steel and concrete complete with some sort of geometrical philosophy. I cannot get excited by such architecture so will leave Chris's photo to do the job. The museum itself was very interesting. Though it had a challenging exhibition on the Holocaust, clearly the emphasis was more firmly on the history of Judaism in Europe. The use of hi-tech interactive technology was incredible, definitely the most advanced I've ever seen. However at times it left me wondering whether it didn't detract from the point. One example was a big chunk of back-projected text and copies of historical documents which appeared through an intially transparent wall (they were activated by a pressure sensor underfoot). Is that necessary or would the text written up more conventionally be equally accessible? I have often heard the argument that attention and interest are maintained by this sort of thing, but are they really? I found my concentration continuously broken as I fiddled around with technology. Lots of children seemed to be rushing around from interface to interface, hardly noticing the content of the exhibits. As with all casual observations and such sweeping generalisations, I'm not taking my initial opinion too seriously. I would find it really interesting if anyone has views on this they would like to share though...

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