I decided to go back to Museumsinsel and see the other museums before my three-day pass expired. I got off the bus at Großer Stern to get some pictures of the Siegessäule (Victory Column). It is undergoing construction work, so it doesn’t look as nice as usual. The sign on the construction scaffolding reads: “Be inventive. Be efficient. Be Berlin.”
Near the Siegessäule are various military monuments. These statues are across from the Tiergarten, which is Berlin’s largest park. The third one is a monument to Otto von Bismarck.
On the walk toward Museumsinsel, I saw many variants of this sign, which reads: “Walk on the ice and snow at your own risk / Grilling forbidden / Bicycles allowed on designated paths. Pedestrians have right of way.”
This is Schloss Bellevue (Bellevue Palace), the residence of Germany’s president.
Two pictures from near the river; the first is a decoration on a bridge pylon.
This is the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of Cultures of the world). The sculpture in front of the building is called Divided Oval: Butterfly by Henry Moore.
Further along, you get to the Reichstag, which houses the German Parliament. The dome was closed today (Sunday); it is a great tourist attraction.
Just a short distance from the Reichstag is the Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate). Really, I could not possibly get a picture of this monument that hasn’t already been done, so here are two utterly boring pictures of it. The third picture is the most incredibly clever abstraction I have seen in a long time. It’s only a few lines, but it’s instantly recognizable as the Brandenburger Tor. (The drawing was on top of some sort of kiosk near the gate.)
Continuing along, I passed the German History museum and a street market. One artist had a sign saying something to the effect of “anyone trying to take photos of my art may get attacked with a water pistol.”
Shortly thereafter, I made it to the Altes Museum (Old Museum), and got the following pictures. Although the exterior of the building is just huge, it didn’t seem that it was that big once I got inside. Maybe I missed a lot of it, or they aren’t using all the space.
From there, I went to the Bode Museum, which houses a large collection of religious art. The church really dominated the art scene for a long time.
You want a Madonna and Child? We have a whole wall of ’em!
You may think these look like some weird fashion models, but they are actually saints. I didn’t write down the information about when these were made, sorry.
The museum also had an exhibition of large gold coins. The first picture that follows is a stained glass showing scenes from the process of minting coins. The last picture is an immense gold coin from Canada.
The last museum I went to was the Pergamon Museum. These pictures of the Pergamon Altar, Ishtar Gate, and Aleppo Room are pure uninspired tourist kitsch. Much better pictures are to be found at the Pergamon Museum’s Wikipedia page.
The remaining photos didn’t come out too badly. The last few are from an exhibit of Islamic art. The first picture of the colorful glassware looks very modern; that’s because it is a modern work.
At this point, “museum fatigue” was definitely setting in.
I went back to a place I had seen yesterday on Karl-Liebknechtstraße.
This place, Keb’up, serves
Döner kebab.
The bread was amazing, and the sandwich was just great. I went to
a place called Thürmann’s next door for dessert. I got a
Schwarzwälder Eck Sacher ecke, a triangular pastry made of chocolate cake with
raspberry filling and dark chocolate couverture. It, too, was
wonderful.
I then went to Alexanderplatz again, where I got the following photos.
In Alexanderplatz, there’s an incredibly clever clock. The numbers are on a rotating cylinder, so you can see the current time and the time in other major world cities. The model of the atom above the cylindrical section rotates as well.
This is the screen on top of a self-serve kiosk for buying electronic goods.
The text reads: “Fast is booking at the last minute...before the minute is up.”
The first picture is from a screen on the bus. I don’t know what font it is, but I like how “clean” it looks. The second picture shows a street sign (corner of Großer Stern and Altonaer Straße) in a lettering style known as Fraktur. Notice that the two signs use different Fraktur fonts. The capital S is obvious; the lowercase e is also different.
