Berlin part 2

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Tired of my self imposed sequestration and frustrated by our lack of tangible sightseeing I gave up my, ‘let someone else take charge’ ideology and googled my way to a plan for the next couple of days. A plan of course is useless without ticketed obligation. So (this is when I snuck out and timed my trip to the Brandenburg gate sans parents) I hurried down to the tourist info shop and booked ‘skip the queue’ timed tickets to The Nueus, the Pergamon and the Bode museums.



Oh my goodness, 1. Pre booked tickets are the only way to go. The queues were enormous and it was hot. 2. We had planned only a day at three of the museums on ‘museum island’ but we could have easily spent a week. They were brilliantly curated; intelligent, logical and creative all at once. I did feel like I needed a palate cleanser at the end of the second museum, maybe some ‘spongebob’ at intermission would have allowed some absorption time. My thoughts were awash in a veritable sea of fascinating facts. Unfortunately I fear most of the newly acquired knowledge was lost just as quickly, out the overflow of a fully saturated brain. Nonetheless, I loved it, I think we all loved it, although the others were sitting when I finally emerged from the last museum...maybe I was too dumb to realise I was passed the point comprehension if not appreciation.



There were a couple of things I really appreciated in Berlin, the main one being how sensitively they dealt with post war reconstruction. Much of the work was late in starting, certainly not the 40/50’s. They seemed to have had time to digest and live with the ravages of war and were anxious not to dismiss or forget it with a clean concrete slate. Repairs were done with a clear line between old and new, neither one without its own beauty be it honesty or ornamentation.

We were enthralled by the obvious sprays of bullet holes in the walls of significant buildings, from the Reichstag to the Berliner dome. The city’s scars illustrated ghostly vivid pictures of the battles past.





My biggest gripe would be the hollow hoards of ‘insta-twits’. Id centric, ignorant and oblivious to all around them. Anxious for the perfect selfie, they dominate iconic sites, pouting, pinching, flicking, smiling overtly then enigmatically with each click. This is no ten second endeavour, I waited over ten minutes while a group of girls took turns to parade their catalogue of memes for an ‘insta’ worthy shot. Perhaps they thought the gathering crowds were for them not the famous art they were obscuring. So frustrating!

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