Mehr Berlin

Before I tell you about my Berlin adventures ohne Tyler, I must mention something he forgot in his Berlin post. The day we traveled to Berlin was the first day of Karnival. Apparently, the first day is one of the days of the Karnival season that one celebrates with copious drinking, costumes, and song. We thought it a bit strange to see several costumed hooligans on the Aachen Schanz platform before 9 AM. Things got more exciting from there. As we headed toward Cologne the train filled up with people from all walks of life wearing elaborate costumes, drinking, and singing. Cologne is the place to be for Karnival in Germany, so all the arriving trains were packed and the station was a madhouse. Brass bands were playing as they marched through the station. I saw a group of three young men dressed as giraffes. Tyler's favorite costume was Man in Wind--a guy in a suit with his tie wired so it went up over his shoulder and leaves and newspaper stuck to his pants. We can look forward to more of the same come February, I'm sure.

On Monday I went on a tour of a WWII civilian shelter built around a Berlin subway station. (The tour company is called Berlin Unterwelt Verein.) The tour guide's somewhat eccentric English added entertainment value (and the content was quite interesting, too). The shelter still had the original signs on the walls indicating how many people were allowed per room in the original phosphorescent paint. There were displays on the propaganda campaign begun just after the Nazis came to power in 1933 and on the cleanup still being done in Berlin--of unexploded bombs and unidentified bodies. Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed on the tour.

After that I toured the Berlin cathedral. It was finished in 1905 and was severely damaged in WWII. The final restorations were completed just a few years ago. The coolest parts were the dome gallery, which afforded great twilight views, and the crypt. The Hohenzollern family (emperors of Prussia, including Frederick the Great) have very elaborate sarcophagi.

















Also interesting was the Dom Museum, where one can see many different proposed (and failed) designs for the cathedral, along with architectural drawings and models of the final design. Dan Gasser, these are for you.





On Tuesday I finished my homework in record time so I could visit the famous Pergamon Museum. This museum's great draw is its reconstructions of several architectural wonders of the ancient world, most notably the Great Altar of Pergamon and the Ishtar Gate.





(Note: Pergamon was located on the west coast of present-day Turkey. It was ruled by Greeks and Persians in its glory days.) The Great Frieze on the altar of Pergamon is 130 meters long, all told, and 2.5 meters high. It depicts the great battle of the Olympian gods with the giants/old gods.



The Ishtar Gate was the gate of Babylon, built by Nebudchenezzar. (It says says so right here on this wall. That's cuneiform, FYI.)



The portion reconstructed in the museum is only a small fraction of the original size. This model shows the actual layout, including the long processional corridor lined with lions, intended to show visitors to Babylon who was boss.



The museum has lots of other cool stuff, including:

This Syrian reception room.



This other giant gate, also from Pergamon (I think).



These lovely lions. (Lions were popular in the ancient world, I've noticed.)



This palace facade (Syria? Jordan?).



This priceless rock crystal ewer (from a private collection).



I made quite a thorough yet efficient tour of the museum, with only slight museum fatigue. On my way to meet Tyler I stopped by the chocolatier Fassbender & Rausch, which we had visited a couple nights before, to photograph their charming chocolate Berlin Bear. Enjoy.



P.S. for Heidi: I got yelled at only once in the Pergamon, for taking a cell phone call (which I kind of figured was against the rules).

A Fancy and AUTHENTIC Castle

This is Burg Eltz. Pretty cool, huh?

Okay, I admit it, this is actually a picture I took of the front of the brochure I picked up at the castle. Lame, I know. But I had to show you what the castle is supposed to look like. This is what the castle actually looked like when we visited on Saturday:



Not quite so picturesque. The construction is supposed to be finished before next summer, so perhaps we can go again with visitors and see it in its newly-renovated glory. We each got a commemorative coin for our support of Burg Eltz and our patience with the renovation, though.

Now, to begin at the beginning: we met our friends Tim and Kimberly (formerly of Oakland, now of Frankfurt) in Koblenz on Saturday morning, where we caught a train to Moselkern, a tiny town on the Mosel River. From the Moselkern train station we walked for about 90 minutes through very pretty countryside to get to Burg Eltz. Here's a picture of us on the trail. (Hooray for friends who take pictures of us AND speak much better German than we do!)



And here's a view from the bridge leading to the castle:



Burg Eltz is a serious castle. It was built between the 12th and 17th centuries by the Eltz family, one branch of which still lives in the castle. There used to be three branches of the Eltz family in the castle. One died off (they only had daughters) and one sold their part of the castle to the third branch. The castle has never been destroyed, which makes it something of an anomaly. It's also furnished and decorated primarily with its original contents (collected by the family over several centuries). We saw 15th-century beds, 14th-century tapestries, 12th-century chests, etc, etc. Here's a tapestry I loved. Pictured are the nine muses plus a god-goddess pair; I'm not sure which. (Julia, any guesses? They're brother and sister AND husband and wife. Does that narrow it down at all?)



(Yes, this is also a picture of a picture. Photography is not allowed inside the castle.)

This is a view from inside the courtyard where our tour began. (It was in English. Hooray.) The glass in the windows was made by blowing balls of glass and then smashing them into discs. This glass is in almost every window in each of the castle's 100+ rooms. On a side note, this is perhaps the first original window glass we've seen in a significant pre-1945 building since we've been here. One is reminded of the devastation of World War II every time one enters a church in Germany.



We also got to see the castle's treasury/armory. It was most impressive. Here is a selection of cool items. (There are more on our Flickr.)

There were dozens of these intricate gold and silver objets d'art (some of which were supposedly complicated drinking vessels or candelabra). This is one of a series of three Greek guys holding spheres.



There was lots of beautiful china.



This guy has a different expression on each of his four sides, and each eye is shared between two sides. Pretty clever.



The list of cool things we can show you if you come visit us continues to grow!

P.S. This picture is on a sign near the Moselkern train station pointing the way to Burg Eltz. We were afraid they might not let us into the castle because we hadn't gotten the memo on proper German hiking and castle-visiting apparel. Kimberly and I left our skirts and pointy bras at home, and Tyler (and as far as I know, Tim) doesn't own a Peter Pan hat.



P.P.S. Tyler would like me to mention that he took his new toy for a spin the other day along the Rhine, and he liked it very much.