Berlin Tag Funfzehn

Bust of Queen Nefertiti

A portion of a frieze from the Pergamon

A partial view of the Pergamon alter

TV tower in Alexanderplatz, with restaurant and observation level.

Hello there,

We had a nice day today visiting two of the great museums in Berlin, and then going to the TV tower which was built by the DDR in the 60's, which is near to the museum island.

First, one note in addition to a comment we made yesterday about the history awareness in this country. Late last night, and again today, at 6:00 P.M. local time, Pat found on the German TV a program about Hitler and the Third Reich. In fact, as I am writing this, there is another one on German TV. These are in German language, on the German TV channels. The history is up front all of the time here, there is no hiding from it. I only wish Americans had any real knowledge of WWII and the implications of it all. Perhaps we would have stood up when our government chose to take away many of our rights with this so called "Patriot Act".

Anyway, we had a nice day today. We went to the museum island and first went to the Altes museum, where on the second floor is the Egyptian exhibit. We have some great pictures, as they let you take pictures in these museums as long as you have no flash. The most famous piece is the bust of Queen Nefertiti dating back to 1340 B.C., and the museum police will get you if you have a flash or sit where you should not be sitting ... :-) After the Egyptian exhibit, we went next door to the Pergamon museum. This is an awesome exhibit of some ancient Greek history. There is on display portions of the Pergamon alter and still reliefs. While most is only partially intact, there are some great pieces to view. Now let me elaborate about the "Sitzen Polizei": people are sitting on the steps of the Pergamon alter and I was listening to my audio guide on the side of the alter and sat down....well the Pergamon Police swooped upon me - Sitzen sie nicht! Well sorry, there is no " Nein Sitz" sign there! Lots of other people sitting on the steps but only where you get to walk up to the top of the alter. I did manage to get a little brave and sit for a picture in the middle of the alter, take that you Sitzen Polizei!

After the two museums, we went over to the TV tower in Alexanderplatz, that was built by the former DDR back in 1969, and is 204 meters high (600 Feet). It has a restaurant and an observatory floor. We went to the observatory floor and had a German beer and enjoyed the view. We did not eat in the restaurant as the food is notoriously bad. We took some photos, and two girls asked us to take their picture with their camera. The camera they had would not take the picture (they looked like shadows!) so we took a picture with ours. We agreed to send it to them by email but Mark has been unable to get it to go through. If your out there and read this blog, we've got your picture! Perhaps we should of just given them our email adress.

After this it was 4:30 and we decided to call it a day and head back to our flat to cook dinner, and have a beer....

Talk to you tomorrow...