Berlin/Dresden

Well, seeing as i'm in Istanbul at the moment and feel sick, why not post about Berlin? I've got nothing better to do.

So, Berlin. We arrived with little problem despite the threatened strike on the long-distance trains. As we soon learned though, the local metro and bus workers were striking. So we had to walk everywhere or pay for cabs, neither proposition seemed like fun. We decided to walk, so we struck out for the main highlights down past Alexanderplatz to the Unter den Linden and saw some of the shops and such. We then walked past/through the Bradenburg Gate. This was pretty cool. It's an enormous gate with a large bronze statue on top. There wasn't much to do other than read a bit about its history, then move on.

Next stop was the Reichstag, another drive-by. Again, a very large, impressive building, but not much else to it. I may have just been exhausted, but none of it was all that impressive. We then walked through the Tiergarten a bit to get to the art museums to the south. We visited the Gemaldgallerie, which houses a lot of great works of art. I'm not a huge fan of art for the most part, but i did like most of it. The audioguide was helpful, but oftentimes it went into too much detail about the past and really slowed me down when all I really was looking for was who painted it, why, and what's depicted. So I ended up skipping most of the info and giving a lot of what was in there a cursory look. But overall, I really enjoyed it. It was certainly worth a trip, even if you're not a big fan of art.

At this point, I wanted to go and see the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial, which was a few miles away, so i left the others and proceeded on. On the whole, it was not likely worth the trip, but it was still interesting. If the metro had been running it would have been more worthwhile, but walking 4 miles or so round trip didn't make it appealing. I did however find a Dunkin Doughnuts (shush, I needed something American and i've been craving doughnuts for a while) which made for a good lunch. On my way back to the hostel, i passed by Checkpoint Charlie, which was pretty cool. They had both sides of the street lined with information about Berlin and the Cold War. I didn't know most of it, so it was reall interesting. A bit too much at times, but overall pretty good. I almost missed the actual checkpoint itself, but I saw it across the street. It was about to rain, so i almost ran back to my hostel. I did stop at what i think was Book Burning Square, but it wasn't really marked. Overall, I walked about 13 miles that day. Ouchie.

On Wed. we travelled to Dresden. This was an expensive train ride, but worth it. I knew basically nothing about the city other than it was firebombed and burned pretty much to the ground. But it was a gorgeous city. Perfect for walking around in and looking at pretty buildings. The Zwinger was our first stop which was an art gallery inside of one of the most amazing buildings i've seen. The gallery was equally impressive with several Peter Paul Rubins and even an El Greco. There was an armory exhibit next door which I saw, along with other galleries like porcelain and sculpture. I didn't go to these, but they looked cool. We then proceeded to walk around the city, walking into the churches and such. The Albertium was closed, but it wasn't a problem. We were pretty tired, so took the train and got back to Berlin around 10.

On the last day, we went to Museum Island. Mainly the Pergammon and the Altes Museums. Both were pretty cool. The Pergammon had a lot of Islamic and Middle-Eastern art, which was a major change for me, and the famous Pergammon Altar. I'll admit, I didn't see it on my way in. I had no clue what it looked like or what it was. Upon figuring it out, i thought it was pretty cool. There were depictions of all the gods and goddesses which for me were cool. There were some fun sculptures and pottery. There was a wierd exhibit upstairs on museums in the 21st century which i breezed through. It was then on to the Altes. This museum had a lot of Greek pottery and sculpture on one floor and Egyptian on the next. They had the famous Bust of Nefretiti (spelling?) and some really cool statues. All in all, i actually learned a lot about cultures i didn't know much about before, so all in all, a very good trip.

We left on Thursday afternoon, flew back into Athens, whereupon i quickly went to sleep. I woke up and picked up Emily from the airport, then went on to Nafplion. All in all, a good Spring Break.

Next up, Istanbul (puking aside).