Okay, so even though I am back in the States now, I still
want to finish telling about my last couple days at Cambridge and my last trip
away from Cambridge. I’m writing all this down mostly for my own good, so feel
free to skip any of it. : )
After the Harry Potter studio tour we had one week left of
the program, but some of us were already done with classes because we only had
module three classes and not module two classes. As a result, Taylor, Nicole,
and I decided to go to Berlin for a few days while everyone else studied for
their finals.
We took a flight out of Gatwick airport in London early Sunday
morning to Berlin. Once we got there, we had a difficult time figuring out how
to get to central Berlin by train since absolutely everything was in German and
German only. At least when we were travelling in Amsterdam and Brussels,
everything was usually in Dutch and English, and sometimes even French. In Germany
though, everything was just in German, and none of us knew any German at all. It
was definitely a new experience to be in a country where we didn’t know the
language at all or have English alongside the native language. We watched some
other people buy their tickets and then managed to figure it out. : )
The first place we went was this square called the
Gendarmenmarkt. The Gendarmenmarkt has two cathedrals: the French Cathedral
(built by Huguenots) and the German Cathedral. The two cathedrals looked almost
identical, and I’m not really sure why. We went inside the German Cathedral,
and it had this really cool spiral staircase that went all the way to the top.
The cathedral is a museum about German history, and so we wandered through it
for a while, but none of it was in English. It was all just in German. So we
figured out that it was talking a lot about German parliament, but we got bored
of not being able to read anything, so we left and walked around the square a
bit more before getting lunch.
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I'm pretty sure this is the side of the German Cathedral. |
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And I'm pretty sure that this one is the French Cathedral. |
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Inside the German Cathedral, looking up to the top of the tower. |
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The Konzerthaus between the two cathedrals. It's a concert hall. |
After lunch, we headed over to the Brandenburg Gate.
Unfortunately there was some political rally going on, I think about the whole
disaster in the Middle East, but it was all in German, so we couldn’t really
figure out what they were saying. There were lots of protesters and lots of
policemen, but we still managed to get over to the Brandenburg Gate.
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Ooh look! Me in front of the Brandenburg Gate! |
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Closer up shot of the Brandenburg Gate. |
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Me in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Again. |
After wandering through the Brandenburg Gate, we decided to
walk down the really long road that leads from the Brandenburg Gate to the
Victory Column. Surrounding this whole area, though, is a huge park called
Tiergarten that apparently used to be hunting grounds for the king. There are
lots of memorials and statues spread out throughout the park, and so we
wandered around for a while. It was really cool to have such a cool park that
is basically a forest right in the middle of a huge city. We saw the Soviet War
Memorial, which was built in 1945 by the Allies to commemorate the Soviet
soldiers that died during the Battle of Berlin. We also saw the Bismarck
Memorial to Otto von Bismarck, who was the first Chancellor of the German
Empire.
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The Brandenburg Gate, from partway down the really, really long road between it and the Victory Column. |
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Soviet War Memorial! |
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The Bismarck Memorial, complete with Atlas holding the world, Siegfried forging a sword, Germania stepping on a panther, and a sibyl reading a book. |
The next day we decided to start out with another Hop-on
Hop-off bus tour because, as we had previously decided, they are great. Driving
around Berlin I realized that the city had a different feel to it than most of
the other major European cities I had visited—Berlin was way more modern. All
the buildings were pretty new skyscrapers, and I finally realized that this was
because Berlin was pretty much bombed into oblivion during World War II. In
lots of the museums we went to, we saw pictures of Berlin in 1945, and the
place was unrecognizable. It was just a bunch of rubble.
We got off the bus at Breitscheidplatz, a huge public square
that used to mark the center of West Berlin. It is a huge shopping center now,
with tons of fancy stores and stuff. We stopped to use the bathroom at a really
cool three-story McDonald’s that had a movie theater-style room that you could
sit in while you ate. : )
After checking out the church we had lunch with one of
Taylor’s friends from Canada that lives in Berlin now. We went to this really
good Thai restaurant, so that was lots of fun.
After lunch we headed over to see Checkpoint Charlie, which
is one of the most famous crossing points between East Berlin and West Berlin
back when the Berlin Wall was still up. It got its name because it was called
“Checkpoint C,” but then according to the NATO phonetic alphabet, you say
“Charlie” to clarify that you mean “C.”
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The cool sign. I'm not sure, but I'm assuming it is in English, Russian, and German. |
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I found it mildly hilarious that the entrance to the old American sector now has a McDonald's in the background. |
We also went and saw Topography of Terror, which is a museum
that sits on the site where the headquarters of the Gestapo and SS (which
stands for Schutzstaffel—I didn’t know that before) used to be. The walls of
the basements are still there, so you can kind of see where the rooms of the
buildings were. We saw where the house of the “Inspectorate of Concentration
Camps” used to be as well as buildings used for various departments of the
Gestapo.
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Where the old Gestapo and SS headquarters used to be, with some of the Berlin Wall behind it. |
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Ooh. Bricks. Awesome. |
Inside the museum was a lot of information about the various
groups that the Nazis targeted and all the crimes that the Third Reich
committed, even before WWII was in full swing. I didn’t really know much about
what Germany did to Poland in the war, but I definitely learned a lot about it
here. The Nazis would basically just sweep through Poland, stopping at towns
and rounding up all the Jews, and then they just shot them and buried them all
in massive ditches. It was completely horrific. I don’t get how people just let
this happen for so long. The Nazis also seemed particularly fond of forcing
women who committed “crimes” to shave their heads in public. These “crimes”
would be something like marrying a Jewish person. Aside from targeting Jewish
people, the Nazis also didn’t like the mentally or physically disabled,
homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, ethnic Poles, Romani people, and anyone who
didn’t agree with their political ideology. They apparently kept many of their
political prisoners in cells in the basements of the Gestapo and SS
headquarters.
Outside the Topography of Terror is also a portion of the
Berlin Wall that is still standing, so that was definitely cool to see. Notice
the rounded metal pipe things placed on the top to make it harder for people to
get over the wall. I guess it was to make it harder to grab onto the top and
pull yourself over? Something like that.
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Me in front of part of the remains of the Berlin Wall. |
We then got back on the bus and went around the other half
of the Berlin tour that we hadn’t seen. It was super annoying because as we
were waiting by Checkpoint Charlie for the bus, some bird flew over and pooped
on my head! There were dozens of people standing on the sidewalk waiting for
the bus, but of course I was the only one that got bird poop all in my hair.
Lame.
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Since the whole wall isn't still up, they have a little line of cobblestones that shows where it used to be. |
We got off at the Brandenburg Gate and headed one block over
to see the Holocaust Memorial. This memorial is pretty cool, but kind of weird.
It’s just a huge area covered with 2,711 concrete slabs called stelae, and
these slabs are all the same length and width but vary in height. The ground is
also uneven, so you can walk between the stelae and have them be way above you,
or you can wander to the edge and sit down on some of them. They have signs
that tell you not to jump from concrete slab to concrete slab, but of course
people were doing that anyway. Apparently there is not really any symbolism to
the memorial, which has evidently bothered some people over the years. I
thought that the blocks were supposed to be, like, sarcophagi or something, but
no. They don’t mean anything. We tried to go down into museum that is located
below the memorial, but for some reason it was closed that day.
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The big block things that are apparently called "stelae" |
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The stelae are actually lined up in rows with little walkways down between them. |
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They get pretty tall once you're down in the center of the whole thing. |
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Finally! I picture of the memorial without any kids climbing on the blocks. |
We headed over to the Reichstag building and walked around
the outside. You need a scheduled tour to go inside and up to the dome, but the
lines to sign up for those were ridiculous. The Reichstag is where the German
parliament meets. It’s basically a cool building. I don’t know much else about
it. Oh, it was heavily damaged during WWII, like everything else in Berlin. I
do know that. Also, there were these people dressed all in white doing some
weird kind of meditation/yoga thing. They were basically doing some weird pose
like the one on
The Karate Kid movie
posters. Kind of weird.
We got some lunch (crepes and schnitzel!) before heading
over to Museum Island. Museum Island is so named because it is a small island
in the Spree River in central Berlin that is home to five museums as well as
the beautiful Berlin Cathedral. We first decided to go to the Alte
Nationalgalerie, because I was super excited to see some of the paintings
inside, particularly some by Caspar David Friedrich. The gallery had artwork
from the Classicism, Romanticism, French impressionism, Realism, Idealism, and Modernism
movements in art, so it was great to be able to see such a wide variety of
pieces.
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So this is completely random, but we saw several of these things as we were walking around. They sit in a circle and they each have pedals, so everyone helps propel the thing forward. |
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Ooh, and here is a beautiful sculpture. At least, I think it's beautiful. I can't really tell, because it's covered in SCAFFOLDING. Like, completely covered. |
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Crossing over to Museum Island! You can see the tip of the Berlin Cathedral. |
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In front of the Alte Nationalgalerie |
We went inside and got our tickets, and I was super
disappointed by the fact that two of the paintings that I had come specifically
to see had been temporarily removed for restoration purposes! Seriously?! You
can’t just take down two of your most famous paintings during the height of
tourist season! Ugh. I was pretty unhappy by this fact, but the gallery still
had some fantastic paintings. There were lots of eery paintings of biblical events and mythological people, but I particularly enjoyed the fantasy-like paintings
of epic castles and cathedrals painted against a spectacular landscape. A guy
named Karl Freidrich Schinkel seemed to like painting these. I wish I could
hang some of these up in my apartment.
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The accursed sign. Why must you remove this paintings for restoration?! I get that they need to be maintained, but it's the height of tourist season! We came halfway around the world, people. Gah. |
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I think this one is called Atelierwand (Studio Wall) by Adolph Menzel. Those are two arms and a hand hanging on a wall with mysterious lighting. |
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This is Tilla Durieux as Circe, by Franz von Stuck. Kinda creepy looking. |
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This is Samson Blinded and is by Lovis Corinth. Also kind of creepy. |
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Aha! Now we are moving away from creepy and toward epic awesomeness! This painting's name is still a teensy bit creepy though. It is called The Isle of the Dead, by Arnold Bocklin. But hey, at least the island looks pretty cool. |
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Now THIS is an epic painting! If I could hang this in my future library/office, I totally would. It looks like it came right out of a fantasy novel. I even bought a postcard of it. This is Ritterburg (Knight's Castle) by Karl Friedrich Lessing. |
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This is Gothic Cathedral with Imperial Palace by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. It's got a Gothic cathedral and a rainbow. Super awesome. |
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This one is gorgeous. You can even see a deer walking around by the tree in the front. It's another painting by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and it's called Castle by the River. |
We also saw paintings by Cézanne, Van Gogh, Manet, Monet, and Renoir, and even some sculptures by Rodin. I feel like we see these painters in every single museum we go to though. Except for Cézanne. I don't think I've seen his stuff in real life before.
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This is a painting by Cézanne. You can tell because (A) it has flowers and fruit and (B) the tablecloth is totally distorted. Tablecloths would never look like that in real life. His paintings were very geometric and rigid. |
Even though
Monk by the Sea and
Abbey Among Oak Trees had
been removed (grrrrrr), there were still some other Caspar David Friedrich paintings on
display. I really like how he paints silhouettes of people staring off into
magnificent landscapes, as well as the dark, slightly Gothic tone of many of
his paintings. I just like how gloomy and dramatic his paintings are.
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The Oak Tree in the Snow. Ooh look, a dead tree! I much prefer the dead trees if they are the backdrop to some kind of abbey ruins or something. |
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This is Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon |
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Moonrise Over the Sea. I really like this one. And he seems to really like watching the moon. |
After the Alte Nationalgalerie, we decided to go to the
Pergamon Museum to see the famous Pergamon Altar from the ancient city of Pergamon,
an old Greek city in modern-day Turkey. Unfortunately, the line went way
outside of the building, and we were told that it would be a three-hour wait,
so we decided to go to the Neues Museum instead. This museum had artifacts from
the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Middle Ages, as well as an extensive
collection of Egyptian stuff. We saw lots of weapons and carvings and jewelry
and stuff. The two most famous items in the museum are the Nefertiti bust and
The Golden Hat.
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Egyptian jewelry. There was tons of this stuff. |
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SKULLS!!! |
The bust of Nefertiti is 3,300 years old. Nefertiti was the
wife of an Egyptian pharaoh, and she was widely known then and now for her
beauty. The bust is actually pretty cool looking. It was the one room in the
entire museum where you couldn’t take pictures, and they had two museum
attendants waiting to swoop down on anyone who so much as reached for their
camera. So here is a picture from Wikipedia. : )
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The Nefertiti bust. It is remarkably well-preserved. |
The other famous item in this museum is The Golden Hat. This
weird hat thing was apparently worn by priests from a sun cult in southern
Germany during the Bronze Age. Only four of these hats have been found. They
really don’t know much about these hats, other than that they look cool. They
suspect that they were used as a calendar, because somehow the little etchings
in the gold leaf could have been used to determine the date based on a lunar
and solar calendar. Other than that, this hat seems like it would be a pain to
wear.
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The Golden Hat. It looks terribly uncomfortable and impractical. But hey, it would make |
After leaving the museums, we decided to lounge on the grass
in front of the Berlin Cathedral before heading back to the airport since we
couldn’t actually go inside the Cathedral. The people dressed in all white
doing weird Kung-Fu type poses that we saw the other day at the Reichstag
showed up here too. I wish I knew what they were doing or who they were or
something.
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The beautiful Berlin Cathedral! |
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In front of the Berlin Cathedral, trying to keep my eyes open while staring into the sun. |
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Berlin Cathedral dome |
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I really liked the statue of this angel playing the violin. So pretty! I have never seen a statue of an angel playing a violin before. |
Getting back to the train station was actually kind of a
disaster. The train line that we needed to take was closed, but it was hard to
figure that out because we know absolutely zero German. After walking to two
different train stations and finding out that the line was closed there as
well, we ended up taking a taxi to a different train station that we could use
to get to the airport since we had already bought a train ticket. Our taxi
driver (thankfully) knew some English, and it was really fun talking to him. He
told us how he was in Germany when the Berlin wall came down. He was working in
a car factory outside of Berlin, and he said that someone came in that morning
all excited that people had started taking down the wall, but nobody believed
him. They all thought that it was impossible. They didn’t realize that it
really had been taken down until they went home that night and watched the
news! He drove us by a section of the wall that was still standing but that had
been covered with graffiti artwork, and that was fun to see.
We finally made it to the train station and finally made it to the airport, where luckily we were still a bit early for our flight. We made it home to King's College late that night, and promptly went to bed because we were so exhausted.