Museum Island is really something! You should see it.
I started this morning at the Bode-Museum, another amazingly beautiful building. Here’s what you see when you enter, before you even make it to the ticket counter.
Then if you are interested in French and Spanish antiquities – the museum contains only antiquities but little ones, the kind I like – you must climb the stairs under the “little dome.” It is only little in comparison with the main entrance dome.
Really, it’s a little difficult to appreciate the art when the building is so fantastically beautiful. I distracted myself from the architecture long enough to see a sculpted version of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s work.
I also found many wonderful sculptures and interesting framed bas-relief works. The Bode is huge and its collection enormous.
The most enormous thing I have seen in Berlin, though, is the Berliner Dom, the Protestant cathedral set on Museum Island and constructed from 1894 to 1905. It was severely damaged in World War II and has now been restored.
The Berliner Dom is so large it makes its next door neighbour, the Altes Museum which itself is a pretty good size, look kind of insignificant. Were I to speak German and live in Berlin, I might myself become a churchgoer. The interior alone is enough to occupy one through any number of interminable services. 🙂
With entrance to the Berliner Dom comes the opportunity to climb to the dome to get a 360˚ view of Berlin. After drooling over the interior of the church which can seat 3,000, I decided an exterior panorama would be just the thing.
On the way to the top there are encouraging signposts letting one know of the progress one is making. At step 88 there is a museum which provides a welcome temporary respite for climbers. After step 88, every 50 or so steps there is a small layby for one (i.e. me) to catch one’s breath. A small girl of about 8 skipped by me well into the 200-step level.
I did make it to the top and this selfie is my proof. If the gift shop, through which we were routed on the way out, had sold stickers or pins saying “I climbed to the top of the Berliner Dom and lived to tell the story,” I would have jumped at the chance to purchase one. But this was a church after all and its gift shop carried no such crass merchandise.
What better reward for climbing to the dome than a nice beer and a French pizza called a tarte flambée. Just as I was finishing several of my cheekiest friends turned up to help me with the leavings.
I spent this afternoon immersing myself in World War II history. Checkpoint Charlie is of course gone, but there is a reproduction complete with actors posing as American and East German military. I resisted the impulse to pose for a selfie – twice a year is more than enough!! – and settled for a photo of this doppelganger of a younger me.
In the Mauer Museum I read the story of Raoul Wallenberg who protected tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis. He was eventually taken by the Russian secret police and has not been seen since. From time to time, someone claims he is still alive in some penal colony, but if so he would be very elderly by now so it’s unlikely. An amazing story of a very brave Swede. You can read more about him here: https://www.biography.com/people/raoul-wallenberg-9522537
From Checkpoint Charlie, I travelled part way across Berlin to the East Side Gallery. The “gallery” is a mile of the still-standing Berlin Wall that has been decorated with 105 paintings by artists from around the world. There are signs forbidding the desecration of the Wall. For some reason, some parts have been pray to graffiti bandits while others have not.
The Wall was thinner than I expected. All those John LeCarré and Len Deighton novels left me with the vision of a wall at least a few feet deep, so impenetrable it was.
After a long day and MANY stairs I treated myself to dinner at a neighbourhood restaurant that had been fully booked last time I tried. It was a tasty end to a day filled with wonder and accomplishment. See you tomorrow!
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