Today I decided to finally go to the Pergamon Museum, one of the museums on the famous Museuminsel (Island of Museums), which is famous for it's greek, roman, and islamic art, sculpture, and remnants of buildings.
I left the apartment mid afternoon, using the early part of the day to practice, and headed towards the Friedrichstrasse U-bahn station (located about half a mile from the museum).
Walking along the road from the U-bahn station was pretty cool. I found myself in kind of an ally that paralleled the S-bahn track, where there were lots of cool looking shops and restaurants. It was about as wide as a street, but only for pedestrians.
Soon I got to the entrance of the musem, paid for an entry ticket (5 euros for a student ticket), and headed inside.
The museum was really cool. The main entrance was built to look like the entry to the Pergamon Altar (a temple built on the acropolis of Pergamon, Greece)
Yeah, so the lens on my camera is not nearly wide-angle enough to actually get the entire entry way to the altar in one frame, but if you can imagine another protrusion (as on the far side of the steps), but on the side closer that is cut out of the shot, you get the whole picture. Here's a link to a page with some wider-angle shots of this altar.
After seeing the main throne room, I went into one of the large wings, in which there was a large exhibit on islamic art (including lots of calligraphy!), as well as collections of interiors of roman houses. In another part of the museum (possibly my favorite part), they had lots of statues from early civalizations, including some with cuneiform writing (one of the oldest writing systems on the planet. One such example was a statue of a kind of monster that was supposed to scare the enemy off (basically lion's body, eagle's wings, and a man's head), and then on the side was lots of cuneiform writing basically saying how awesome and powerful the king was, and how an enemy shouldn't mess with him.
and of course a close up of the writing
After I was done at the museum, I walked around stadtmitte, and discovered a Ritter Sport chocolate shop! Basically Ritter is a brand of affordable, tasty chocolate, in a few bazillion flavors. At this particular store, you could even make your own chocolate bar, provided you came back in half an hour (maybe later, didn't have time today). Needless to say, I bought some chocolate.
After that I headed home, of course while sitting on the U-bahn, I was thinking about something and actually missed the stop for me to get off. So, I got off at the next exit, got on the next train going in the opposite direction (without paying attention to the number of the train), and found myself after that at Ku'damm...definitely not the stop I intended. So, finally getting on the right train, I got home in time for dinner with the Thiermeiers.
