Tuesday - May 26
With the holiday over traffic was heavier, but nothing to compare to the day before yesterday. Not that we cared - no car or bus for us today. Weather turned progressively more darkly overcast and chilly during the day. Again, not that we cared, being mostly inside. We once more tried the German version of AAA's office, which was now open and very busy. We took a number. Drats! We were in luck though when our number was called to get a clerk who spoke English. 1/2 hour later and 61€ poorer we walked out with the windshield stickers needed for driving the motorways in Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. The one for Hungary we have to buy at the border. No sticker, huge fine if stopped. All except Switzerland were good for the number of days selected. The Swiss make it easy and costly; the sticker is good for a year. Maybe can sell it to someone for a few bucks as we exit the country. The alternative to the stickers is to stay on only rural roads and cow paths, not a practical option.
Next we headed to nearby Museum Square and bought a day ticket good for all five museums. The day was going so smooth....until the English-challenged ticket clerk confirmed, when we asked, that we did have to wait in a line which we saw in front of one museum when we arrived. The line was not that long, but they were feeding in people in small batches to limit crowd density inside. We had thought that all of the five museum buildings were connected somehow and that getting inside this one was the first step.
So, although we really wanted to see the Pergamon Museum and the Neues (new) Museum, good citizens that we are we followed the ticket agent's direction and stood in the line for the Alte (old) National Gallery. It was when we were finally inside the door that we were told the entrances for the Pergamon and Neues were each separate Ack! The line we stood in was due to a major new exhibit that had just opened at the Alte ("Impressionism & Expressionism"). Not to waste a wait in line, we took a serendipitously enjoyable walk through three floors of really wonderful art.
Again, Norm is disturbed by salaciousness posing as art (ha ha):
Later, when we walked to the Pergamon we passed several signs that informed those in line the number of hours they could expect wait from that point. The furthest out was four hours. But no line today - we walked right in. Oh, did we feel better. One of the Pergamon's claims to fame is its stupendous reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate, the eighth gate to Babylon built about 575 BCE. It is comprised of all original glazed bricks and bas-reliefs recovered from the German archeological dig. In those days it was finders keepers. But to replace the Gate at the excavation site is now buried to a print of the Warren Beatty/Dustin Hoffman movie "Ishtar", at long last getting what it deserves.
The Ishtar Gate (there's more to it than this photo shows):
The Market Gate of Miletus, Roman, 2nd century CE:
Norm looking up at Pam taking the photo:
Best Pam could do is snap this photo of a photo:
Absolutely no photos permitted, with three guards of baleful eye to make sure. Worth the price of admission all by itself. Another object in its own room is the Berlin Gold Hat, the best preserved of four known from Bronze Age Europe. The symbols traced on it aren't mere decoration - they have an advanced mathematical function which permits the determination of dates or periods in both lunar and solar calendars.
The Berlin Gold Hat (yes, photos were permitted):
Of course, we stopped in the museum cafe for a beer:
We also visited the DDR Museum on the waterfront
in East Berlin:
These bronze statues of nudes are sitting on the wall
overlooking the waterfront:
Vendor selling German fur hats:
We saw this huge statue as we walked back to our hotel. Pretty clever - looks like its part of the building.
Huge bottles of vino outside a liquor store:
Two more photo ops found near our hotel:
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