Berlin, Germany
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Another late start saw us miss breakfast as we walked in the bright morning sun to the Jewish Museum. It took us about 20 minutes of meandering down the back streets of Berlin, crossing the path of the wall twice ( marked by a double row of cobblestones ) and pausing to buy a doughnut from a small cafe.
We enter the museum, our bag being scanned by a very pleasant Turkish lady, purchased our tickets, Lucia getting a student discount after she was quizzed by the ticket lady, and stopped first at the cafe to supplement the doughnut with other pastries and a yoghurt for Belinda. Then we entered the museum proper. It was a strange mix of architectures and designs, the initial part being sparce to the point of emptiness whereas the second area was packed with a rather random ( to me at least ) collection of artifacts, stories, rituals and histories of the Jewish people in Europe and especially in Germany. I’m please we went, and some of it was interesting and moving, but I really get the feeling now a days that museums have moved a long way away from the ones of my youth and are more confusing than educating. My favourite things were a number of simple stools in the education room. I thought they looked brilliant. … Ho hum again !
After the museum we walked to Potsdamer Platz where we had lunch. It is an impressive collection of modern buildings and the food isn’t bad either ! We didn’t stay long though, so once Lucia had picked up her frozen yoghurt drink from Starbucks, which turned out to be quite an important occasion. Let me digress here; one of Lucia’s friends is a Starbucks obsessive and is a real-life gold card carrying member of the Starbucks appreciation society. Now it turns out that the frozen yoghurt drink she chose is unavailable anywhere else in the world and this required a “selfie” and an email to basically gloat over her yoghurt to the friend. Anyway, back to the day, we walked over to Berlin Zoo.
Walking ….
Walking …..
Walking …..
OK, once we arrived we decided immediately that we would be getting a taxi back to the hotel. We were hot, sweaty, tired and foot sore and we hadn’t even entered the zoo yet !! However the zoo itself was lovely. It is old and you can tell that from the size of some of the exhibits but it was, for the most part, well kept and tidy. The animals seemed, well, like animals, and spent most of their time lying around doing nothing. The hippos and the orang-utans were the stars though, for us at least, and we eventually left the park when it was closing. We gratefully jumped into a cab and were back in the hotel within 15 minutes.
Dinner tonight was a classic German affair of meat, fish and potatos. It was excellent and the service was superb. We were delayed for about 10 minutes, waiting to cross the road while at least 300 roller bladers steamed down the street. The police had blocked the road and they zoomed down happily – you would never, ever see this in the UK ! Brilliant ! (Picture to follow)
And for the benefit of my Sister-in-law, a beer bicycle is a strange contraption that involves about 7 people pedaling a sort of bicycle while drinking beer; they are very popular in Holland ! Check out google, it is the first thing it pulls up !