I decided to go to the Museumsinsel (Museum Island) today. The hotel clerk suggested that I take a bus. I couldn’t get any really good pictures from the bus, but here are two bus advertisements that caught my eye. The first one says, “We build...you look.”
Here are some views of the Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral Church)
The first picture is of the old museum; I haven’t been there yet. The other pictures are of the Old National Gallery, my first stop.
Here are pictures taken inside the Old National Gallery. They were all taken without flash, so they may be a bit blurry.
The first picture has the best title ever: “The corpse of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, carried to heaven by angels.” I had to get at least one painting with a cat in it, and that’s the second one, a portrait of the painter Franz Pforr.
My next stop was the New Museum (named strangely, since it has really old stuff in it). I suspect it’s called the new museum because it was restored after being damaged in the war. You have to reserve a time slot to go to the New Museum, so I had about an hour to go out and walk around the area. I think the large Christmas ornaments are left over from the season. The painted bear is one of those city-themed things. If I see more of them, I’ll get pictures.
I passed the Ampelmann store. Apparently, the walk/don’t walk icons on East Berlin traffic lights have become a sort of cult figure. Note: site is really difficult to navigate.
I got back to the Old Museum about 10 minutes before the time slot, but they weren’t busy, so they let me in. This museum also houses the bust of Nefertiti (Nofretete in German), and it is the only place in the museum where photography is prohibited. It doesn’t really matter, since photos can’t do it justice. It’s incredibly lifelike and still looks new, even though it is over 3000 years old.
And now, other pictures from the Neues Museum.
This is another famous statue in the museum, the Xanten Youth.
Even the floor tiles in the museum are worth looking at.
No, this person is not Mark Twain! It’s Carl Richard Lespius.
Outside the museum, I went to Alexanderplatz. Here are some pictures along the way.
Everywhere you go, there are clock towers. I really liked the direction signs that tell you which way, and how far, the tourist attractions are. The last picture in this set was taken in Alexanderplatz.
Talk about “big people clothes.” This store sells clothing for really large folks.
This is a clever display for Pixi books.
A clever mosaic; the text reads “Garbage separation in Berlin saves 403,000 metric tonnes of CO2 per year. Thank you.”
I saw a lot of ads for Google’s browser. The text on this one reads “Quick is waiting for the pizza to arrive and not for the Order...ing...P...a...g...e.”
Finally, I had to get this picture. It was in the window of a furniture store that was having its grand opening. The competition certainly has ended, given that the dialog box says that the application has “quit unexpectedly.”
In German, the letter ß can also be written in some cases as two letter s in a row. In fact, the letter is really a ligature, or tying together, of the s and z. Usually you see ß written like the Greek letter β, as on the sign on the left. On the right-hand street sign, you can very clearly see the s-z heritage of the letter; especially if you think of the s in the old style like in Congre∫s.
