The rest of my time in Berlin was as equally incredible as the first few days. I walked all the way over to the Ku’Damm, a giant shopping street past the Tiergarten where what is left of the main tower of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church stands as a reminder of the horrors of war. The pictures inside are even more incredible, the ruins of the tower looming eerily above a wasteland of rubble, not a building standing to be seen. Today the area around it has turned into a prime example of the resilience of Germany, full of local and international shops and fun little side streets full of boutiques – and the Hard Rock Café Berlin. That evening I met a friend at the Pergamon Museum on Museum Island, a beautiful green space right by the Berlin Cathedral and in the middle of the Spree River. Got to speak German with the woman at the desk, explaining that I didn’t have an international student ID but she said my Russian one would be fine for the discount and actually seemed really excited to be playing with my Russian student ID. We grabbed our audio guides – mine in German and Melissa’s in English – and headed towards the museums main exhibit, the Pergamon Altar. It is in its own room, and complete with most of the original marble staircase and many of the marble decorations placed around the room and around the altar just like they would have been centuries ago. Each scene in the marble had an incredibly interesting story, like the one that you could hardly tell were a type of nymphs fighting right next to a depiction of Poseidon. You could walk around for hours just in that room, listening to the explanations of the scenes, the story of the excavations that uncovered the altar, and what used to take place at the top of the stairs inside the altar, though no one knows for sure. You could not, however, sit down on the stairs. Something about thousands of year old marble.
From there we went to the exhibition of the marble statues of the Greek and Roman gods, the museum is renowned for its collection and the exhibit was presented wonderfully, using a different bold color in each room that corresponded to a single god. Very interesting, and of course beautiful sculptures. The museum itself is incredibly large, from this exhibit we wandered through the Babylonian and Eastern art sections, until our stomachs didn’t care how beautiful the Ishtar Gate was or how famous the Muschatta wall was, or the incredible Islamic art and Arabic script. We walked slowly towards the exit, taking in as much as we could even as we left, through the giant lion statues that guarded Babylon and the mosaics that leant beauty to the ancient mosques. Out into the night that had already fallen, and strolled back towards the hostel talking about the incredible things we had seen and how cool it was that we were getting to experience things that the ancients had made. Then it was time for a slightly more modern invention – the döner kebap – and some good German beer at the restaurant and a bar, before calling it a night.
Friday Melissa wanted to see Sachsenhausen, but I had been to two concentration camps already at Dachau and Mauthausen and so passed on the trip. It was a gorgeous day and I happily grabbed my sunglasses – and forgot my camera. I wandered through a neighborhood between the hostel and the Museum Island where I would absolutely love to live someday, I imagine it will be awhile since it is sure to be an expensive area of town. The blue dome of the New Jewish Synagogue dominates the skyline of the area, not because of its height but because of its beauty and shape. Luckily I was able to capture a picture on my cell phone camera, though I’m not sure the image of the deep blue and gold against the light blue and white of the sky with the clouds will ever really leave my mind. From there I finally went inside the Berlin Cathedral, and climbed to the very top for beautiful daytime views of the city, as well as really interesting schematics of all of the different cathedrals that had built on the spot. The cathedral itself is beautiful, inside and out. A gorgeous organ and beautiful side chapels in baroque style intensify its beauty, and the crypt below contains many of the rulers of the ruling family of Prussia. I was struck most by the tiny coffins of the children of the emperors, decorated just as elegantly as those of the rulers themselves. On the way out of the cathedral, I was told about a choir concert being put on that night by many high schools in the area, and hoped to come back for it.
From the cathedral I headed downtown for one of my favorite things to do in Germany – sit in a bookstore and read for hours. I grab a pile of books, this time many that one of my professors in Frankfurt recommended I, and curl up in a corner, reading the first few pages of each one to decide which ones to buy. I eventually decided on a few, and took them back to the hostel before renting a bike and riding it to the cathedral for the choir concert. It was a great evening, I loved the feeling of being at a school concert in Germany and the cathedral was decorated beautifully for the event. I met some nice people, got a program as a souvenir, and got to ride my bike home after it was over, it was a rather long event. In the middle of the concert had been a speech about the great accomplishment in the fall of 1989 but also about the walls that still remain in today’s society. So I went to bed with plenty to think about, and woke up early to take advantage of my rented bike!
I rode all around the city, to places a little far to walk and really enjoyed being able to see the streets and people of a more everyday Berlin. I bought a small book on Advent at a book market by the Frankfurter Tor, and stopped at the East Side Gallery to look at all of the incredible artwork being done on a section of the Berlin Wall. Then I rode through the Tiergarten back to the Ku’Damm, and did some shopping at the Christmas Market in the center of town. Had a nice chat with the woman I bought a little smoker man from about her grandchildren and wanting to put out the biggest shoes possible for St. Nicholas day – because then when they are filled with goodies there are more goodies! It was a wonderful feeling having full control of my German back, it took a few days but it was great to feel so confident, and it was also making it hard to think about going back to Russia. That was Saturday, and by the time I turned in my bike and headed over to German Mass at St. Hedwig’s Cathedral, I was ready to enjoy my last night in Berlin but doubtful of what St. Petersburg would feel like after feeling so at home in Germany. I had a great last night out, and the return to Petersburg the next morning, as I talked about in an earlier post, wasn’t as difficult as I had thought it might be, thanks solely to my host family and how at home I feel with them. As I now prepare to head back in a few days, I know the same warmth will be waiting for me amid the Russian winter, and so I can’t wait!
Thanks for sticking with me through my travel chronicle, next post will be this weekend about my last few weeks in Piter and what I am looking forward to in the next semester. I head back on the 26th of January!
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