Oh, also sorry for posting this a week late... I've been having some internet issues lately!
On a Note completely unrelated to the rest of this post, the reverse culture shock has begun, and I think it's going to be much worse than the culture shock was (because I didn't really have any). I'm making mac n cheese for dinner tonight, acquired from a friend who received it in the mail. While looking at the directions, I fully prepared myself for the struggle of trying to comprehend Deutsch directions, as well as figuring out how much 250 ml is. Google translate on the ready, I prepared to make my dinner, and wouldn't you know it? The directions were in English (obviously)! That was a major shock. I'm not used to being able to understand things. My life for the last 4 months has had a relatively constant level of confusion, and I kind of like it that way! It makes things more fun :) Guess I'm going to have to prepare myself for reading menus in English, actually being able to understand waitresses and cashiers, and being able to read everything around me. I don't think I can possibly explain to excitement that follows understanding a waitress, ordering coherently, or reading a poster completely auf Deutsch. It's going to be a little disappointing not having to put the effort into every day things.
Anyway, more on that later, I'm sure. Today wasn't as much of a tourist success as the last few days, but it was still pretty freaking incredible :) I again woke up early to work on my history term paper. It's all finished and turned in now, thankfully! No more term papers! Now, only finals... Okay, back to the interestingness! So, after I finished my paper, J and I headed to the Pergamon. A bunch of other people were thinking of coming, but were either too tired from the night before, or had already been, or just weren't even up yet. It was pretty freaking cold, and for some reason we made the executive decisions to trek all the way to the museum from Freidrichstrasse. You can switch trains and take the s-bahn one stop further, but it seemed to make more sense to just walk. Absolutely freezing.
We did, however, happen upon the museum island flea market, that I completely forgot was going on! Because we didn't get there until around 3, there wasn't much to be seen, but it was still a pretty fun stroll looking at all the old books and jewelry. I almost bought Freud's psychanalysis book, in the original German, but 1)Mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut, at least not good enough to read that! and 2)It was a relatively new version, and not an awesome, antique looking book. Oh and 3) It would just be extra weighted in my already weighted town bags for flying back home!
We finally got to use our museum cards, which was extremely exciting, especially because it meant not having to spend any money that day! We seriously had no idea what to expect. We're both history majors, so you'd think we would realize that "Pergamon" implied ancient Greek and Roman stuff, but we really didn't think about that until a friend told us about it. So we walked into this place with absolutely no expectations. And here, I'm going to let the pictures do the talking of what we walked directly into after turning the left corner of the entrance:
This was absolutely amazing. It actually felt like
we were in an ancient city! And the lighting
on the ceilings made it seems like natural
sunlight. It was incredible!
we were in an ancient city! And the lighting
on the ceilings made it seems like natural
sunlight. It was incredible!
After climbing the stairs, we decided to veer to the left, and check out the super duper ancient stuff. This was again, not at all what we expected. Here are pictures of the next two rooms we walked through:
As we walked further back, we moved further back in history. It was really cool, and there were so many interesting things to look at. We didn't know where to start. There were rooms on either side of the hall, and these rooms led to other rooms, and these rooms led back to the hall, and it was very easy to get turned around! I think we covered everything, though we never did venture down the stairs in one room.... perhaps we missed something awesome.
On our way back to the Grand Alter, we passed by a staircase leading to an exhibit on Islamic art and history. I was so down to check it out, but J was being lame and didn't want to go... so we cut across the Grand Alter, and checked out the right side of the museum (the right and left here are being judged from being at the top of the stairs in the Grand Alter, for those of you who have been). As we walked into the next room, it was surprisingly less extravagant than the last few big rooms we'd walked into. There were a bunch of people looking at us as we walked in, so I turned to J and said "I bet we just walked through something awesome."
And we had.
However, as we ventured into the next room, and apparently the rest of the museum, you know, with all the Greek and Roman stuff, we were stopped by a sign informing us that some artifacts were being moved to the Altes Museum, and so the display was closed. Seriously? I mean, I know we knew nothing about it until 4 days before, but I definitely wanted to see some Greek and Roman stuff!! We did find another exhibit about "The Silver Horse." After trekking up tons of stairs, we discovered the strangest exhibit of our lives. We had no idea when or where in history the artifacts had come from, and since the entire exhibit was aud Deutsch, it was a little difficult to decipher anything. From what I could tell, the Silver Horse was belt buckle. What a disappointment!
Anyway, now that we were a little disappointed, we decided to check out the Islamic art stuff, because we didn't fell like we'd spent enough time in the museum at all. Such a good idea. The exhibit was beautiful! There were so many amazing jewelry and pots and boxes and corner decorations (<-- that is seriously the best description I can give them). And, similarly with Versailles, there was also some modern art interspersed with the ancient artifacts. Unlike Versailles, this art work was inspired by the ancient artifacts, and actually flowed with the exhibition. Again, these damn rooms leading into other rooms had us completely turned around, and we got lost trying to find the stairs back down stairs! What a hoot!
After that we decided to head back to the apartments because it was a little too early to get dinner, plus then we'd have to spend money :) I, of course, was drawn in by the allure of the Crobag directly on our S-Bahn station and got myself a wurstcroissant, aka the most delicious thing in the world, ever.
That was pretty much it for touristy stuff this weekend. Today I studied for my Deutsch final at Balzac for a while, and then me, J and B rented a movie and watched that. B has become increasingly frustrated with J and mine's love affair with German TV, specifically with terrible romantic comedies and Spongebob. So, instead of seeing what the number one Spongebob episode of all time was (they'd been counting down from 100 all day), or watched Patrick Dempsey in yet another incredibly terrible romantic comedy, he made us watch a movie with some culture to it.... not cool. haha, Though we did almost rent Cold Prey (the English translation of Fritt Vill, the terrible Norwegian movie we saw in Oslo).
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