As the tour finished on Museum Island (so called due to 5 internationally significant museums being located here), we decided to visit Pergamonmuseum as the next day was a Monday and most European museums do not open on Mondays.
Enroute, walking past a mini Christmas market... obviously.
Crossing the walk bridge onto Museum Island.
One of the 5 museum complexes
The Pergamonmuseum comes highly recommended by Victor. In fact, he said he doesn't care what else I do in Berlin, I had to visit this museum so who am I to argue? What is the museum's claim to fame? It houses original-sized, reconstructed monumental buildings such as the Pergamon Altar, the Roman Market Gate of Miletus and the Babylonian Gate of Ishtar. The former two consisted of parts transported from Turkey and there is controversy (as usual) surrounding whether they should be returned to Turkey.
First thing we saw was the Pergamon Altar. This was built during the reign of King Eumenes II in the first half of the 2nd century BC on one of the terraces of the acropolis of the ancient city of Pergamon in Asia Minor. It is 35.64 m wide and 33.4 m deep, the front stairway is almost 20 m wide.
The base showed the battle between the Giants and the Olympian gods known as the Gigantomachy. The Gigantomachy frieze depicts the struggle of the gods against the children of the primordial goddess Gaia, who where snake-footed giants. After the new gods under the leadership of Zeus and with the help of Gaia had overcome the old gods led by Cronus, Zeus then opposed several of Gaia's children, contrary to his promise.
The Gigantomachy frieze depicts the struggle of the gods against the children of the primordial goddess Gaia, who where snake-footed giants. After the new gods under the leadership of Zeus and with the help of Gaia had overcome the old gods led by Cronus, Zeus then opposed several of Gaia's children, contrary to his promise.
This was part of the north frieze and depicted three Moirai (goddesses of fate) killing the Giants Agrios and Thoas with bronze clubs.
This was part of the north frieze and depicted three Moirai (goddesses of fate) killing the Giants Agrios and Thoas with bronze clubs.
A model of the Pergamon Altar:
View from the top of the stairs of the altar:
Statue of Zeus
Next, we went through the Market Gate of Miletus which was typically Roman facades on theater stage buildings, fountains and libraries. It was built in the 2nd century AD, a large marble monument about 30 m wide, 16 m tall and 5 m deep. It is a two-story structure with 3 doorways and a number of projections and niches.
Betwee the floors are ornate friezes with bulls and flower reliefs.
The Ishtar Gate was the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar II ordered its construction around 575 BC. Dedicated to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, it was constructed using glazed brick with alternating rows of mushussu (a mythological hybrid of a scaly dragon with hind legs like an eagle's talons and feline forelegs, a long neck and tail, a horned head, a snakelike tongue and a crest) and aurochs (an extinct type of large wild cattle). The gate was considered one of the Seven wonders of the world until it was replaced in the 3rd century BC.
Through the gate ran the Processional Way which was lined with walls covered with about 120 lions on glazed bricks. Statues of the deities were paraded through the gate and down the Processional Way each year during the New Year's celebrations.
We then went through the museum's antiquity section.
This stele showed a representation of King Esarhaddon of Assyria from 671 BC. It was excavated in the inner gateroom of the citadel of Sam'al in Turkey. This depicted a super-human sized Esarhaddon with his right hand raised, worshiping his gods. The king wears the beribboned, decorated royal crown in his left hand he holds both the mace and two ropes. The ropes end with rings through the lips of two subjected prisoners. The kneeling smaller figure appears to depict the Egyptian crown prince.
Basically, the Crown Prince was his biatch..... no homosexual connotations intended.
Can't remember what this is now, but probably another reconstruction of some ancient building.
The museum also had a Islamic and Middle Eastern section. The Mshatta Facade is the decorated part of the facade of the 8th century Umayyad residential palace of Qasr Mshatta, one of the Desert Castles in Jordan.
It is thought to have served as a winter residence and storage halls and probably dates back to 743-744. The main structures are built from burnt bricks resting on a foundation layer of finely dressed stone.
It was snowing heavily when we left the museum so we had fun taking photos of each other in the freezing cold.
We were on our way back to Gendarmenmarkt for the market there but stumbled across this random market on the way so we went through it for a side detour. All photos of the markets were taken by Instagram as it was too wet to risk taking my camera out.
Finally got to eat my salmon sandwich... except the photos were all blurry due to inadequate lighting. It was gooooooooooooooooooood. I had this at Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland when I got back to London and it just wasn't the same.
Also had a bratwurst....
We then continued on our journey and came across a souvenir shop selling all things related to the traffic lights men!!!!!!!!!
Also, saw mini bear statues...
We also found an upside down bear statue nearby!
Next, we went to check out Fassbender & Rausch which is this AMAZING chocolate shop near the square. Best chocolates I've had ever, hands down and i've had a lot of chocolates. I would go back to Berlin just for this.
Haha chocolate version of Brandenburger Tor
Reichstag which we will go check out the next day...
We kept trying to find this church but couldn't for some reason. The Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtniskirche was badly damaged during a bombing raid in 1943. The damaged spire of the old church was retained and its ground floor is now a memorial hall.
There was a restaurant upstairs so we treated ourselves to hot chocolates and a mango mousse cake.
After that, it was time to hit the most beautiful (allegedly) Christmas Market in Berlin. So beautiful that it was not free. We had to pay an entry fee of EUR1 each and it wasn't worth it.
Snow was starting to blanket the park around the market...
Last day in Berlin and we woke up bright and early to check out the Reichstag. We actually went and registered to go inside but our allotted time was 12 noon and we would be elsewhere by then so it didn't happen.
The Reichstag is the parliamentary building that played a crucial role during Hitler's reign. The building caught on fire on 27 February 1933 under mysterious circumstances. This gave Hitler, then the Chancellor, the excuse to suspend most rights provided by the 1919 Weimar Constitution in an effort to weed out communists and increase state security throughout Germany. He arrested nearly 4.000 communist party members, basically all those that opposed him, and as most rights were suspended, he was able to detain them without trial indefinitely. With his opponents out of the way, he passed a law giving himself full legislative power. From then on, it was merely a matter of time before he became a dictator.
The main attraction is the glass dome at the top which has a 360-degree view of the surrounding Berlin landscape. Unfortunately we didn't have time to go so this stolen photo from wikipedia will have to do:
Walked through a park with snow covered grounds.... the kid in me still jumps with glee whenever there is snow.
We decided to stop for breakfast at a cafe near Brandenburger Tor.
German teabags come attached to a big cardboard and are always served with a little satchet of lemon juice. I always drink the lemon juice straight as I needed Vitamin C protection from the sick cat i was travelling with.
Next up, we retraced our steps from yesterday and went through the walking tour sites again, taking more photos as it was too rushed to take proper photos. But we wanted to stop and visit the Topographie des Terrors museum that was right next to the Wall.
Berlin Wall,the poster child of the Cold War. I got to touch it.
Following the end of WWII, Germany was basically carved into 4 sections ruled by Soviets, Americans, French and British. The Soviets, led by Stalin, had ulterior motives and wanted to control all of Germany and form a communist state. In 1948, after agreement talks broke down, they blocked Berlin preventing food, supplies etc from arriving in West Berlin. This started a massive airlift with US, UK, NZ, Australia, etc supplying West Berlin with supplies from the air. People from East Germany started moving across to West Germany under Stalin's increasingly despotic ruling.
The Soviets tried to control the situation by implementing rules such as visas and fines but people were still crossing the border easily. 3.5 million East Germans circumvented the emigration restrictions and fled across the border. Finally at midnight on 13 August 1961, the East German army closed the border with West Berlin and barbed wire entanglements and fences were installed. This was later built into a proper wall that included guard towers. Between 1961 and 1989, the wall prevented almost all emigration. Around 5.000 people attempted to escape over the wall, with an estimated death toll of over 600.
Madness indeed.
Every time someone managed to make it over the wall, the authorities would improve it. The final version that was reconstructed in 1975 rendered any potential attempts impossible. The top of the wall was lined with a smooth pipe, intended to make it more difficult to scale. It was reinforced by mesh fencing, signal fencing, anti-vehicle trenches, barbed wire, dogs on long leashes, beds of nails under balconies, over 116 watchtowers and 20 bunkers. The wall fell on 9 November 1989.
External basement walls of the Hotel Romerbad. From November 1934, the Reich SS Leadership had its headquarters here.
The Topography of Terror is located on the site of Gestapo (Secret State Police) and the SS headquarters during the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945. There are a number of permanent photography exhibitions here to do with those 12 terrible years.
It was a very intense place and left me shell-shocked at the lengths humans can go to for power. But I guess what was even more disturbing was the sheep mentality of people which was really the reason why the whole regime took off... or was it really human superiority? Deep down, are there really people who believed that they were so much more superior than others that it justified the elimination of millions of human lives? Was it propaganda was it just pure evil at work?
The thing that really broke my heart was listening to this old audio recording where a doctor described how they sorted the newcomers to the concentration camp - the healthy ones go one way and the women and the babies and the not so healthy men go the other. These would get sent to the gas chambers immediately. Babies who were so young that they couldn't be tattooed with a prison number except on their thighs. No questions asked. No second chance. Why waste bullets when a chamber of gas is so much more time and cost efficient? Broke.My.Heart.
The Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion was established in 1936. Approximately 40,000 previously convicted or suspected homosexual men were located and persecuted. They were generally arrested preventatively and sent to concentration camps. There they were marked by a pink triangle on their prison uniforms. In the camps, they were subject to particular humiliation and torment and were near the bottom of the camp hierarchy. Only Jewish prisoners had a lower status.
Hitler's supremacist and racially motivated policies resulted in the systematic murder of eleven million people, including an estimated six million Jews. Numbers which you just could not even comprehend.
Me chilling in front of the wall
After that, we jumped on the Ubahn and headed to the East Side Gallery, a 1.3 km long section of the wall with 105 paintings painted on it by artists from all over the world, symbolising freedom.
This painting depicted one of the early ways East Germans fled the wall. In the early days when the wall wasn't as sophisticated as the 1975 version, someone realised that a convertible would be low enough to go through the barricade if they just floor it and lay down low. So that's what they did, cleared the barricade and made it safely to freedom.
i looked like a dumpling with all the layers i had on.
Oh and I had to use one of the paid toilets in the mall and it was funky! Sensor operated and you wave your hand and it will sanitise the seat automatically.
Normal toilet.....
Then the seat will start to revolve as it gets sanitised!!
We went past one of the markets we've already visited and stopped for some sustenance.
Guhwein....
Eggnog that was pure rum!!!
We didn't have anything else on our agenda so we took time to hang with Santa.
I was going for a snotty look like those two by the way. So you mean a Hii look?????
One of the other Christmas markets we visited was at Potsdamer Platz where they also had Europe's largest mobile toboggan run which is 12 m high and 70 m long.
Random photos from the trip::
Cheap bread from a random bakery that I had for breakkie... i love me some fresh bread!
Damon's new girlfriend:
Statue of Liberty bear inside the American Embassy:
Berlin was fascinating and I wouldn't mind going back actually.
