hillyinberlin

Berlin’s Natural History Museum

hilly — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 20:24:14 +0000

Today’s museum was something a bit different that puts a new perspective on things, after all the recent horrible twentieth century history we have been looking at. This afternoon, we visited the Natural History Museum, particularly to see the tallest mounted dinosaur (Brachiosaurus). There were lots of families with young children enjoying the exhibits, although it has mostly traditional-style museum exhibits, with very little hands-on.

http://www.naturkundemuseum-berlin.de/en/

Coming from a family of biologists, I even liked this room!

Did you know that dragonflies and Ginko trees were around 150 million years ago? As well as the mid-bogglingly-old Jurassic exhibits (how can you get your head around something being 150 million years old?), there were two other exhibitions of particular note. There is a beautifully-curated new exhibition about feathers, and another on wildlife within Berlin. The array of dramatically different single feathers was exquisite, some shown here with a shadow film of birds in flight behind it.

The display of wildlife in Berlin showed the problems of controlling wild boar and racoons, and the successful re-introduction of beavers.

Our last day

hilly — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 19:46:08 +0000

As I was carrying the suitcase downstairs this morning I knew I would end up covered in bruises. It always happens when I travel, especially if I have to carry loads up and down stairs. We have 68 stairs and very heavy suitcases, so I predict that I will have blue legs again buy tomorrow, like when we arrived in August. We took three very full suitcases to left luggage early this morning, to make our journey easier tomorrow when we have to leave the apartment at 5.20 a.m. (eeek!) with even more luggage, to catch our train from Hauptbahnhof.

A ring on the doorbell

hilly — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 19:41:13 +0000

Last night the door bell rang just when we had finished dinner. It was our neighbour from the apartment opposite on the same landing who had heard we were leaving, so brought us some homemade Christmas biscuits, wrapped up in cellophane with a red tie to wish us well. It was such a kind gesture.

More heavy WWII: Schwerbelastungskörper and German Resistance

hilly — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 20:49:14 +0000

I’m not sure how we ended up going to these today, but we went to see a couple more really heavy reminders of Nazi history. The first is an enormous lump of concrete (yes, an enormous lump of concrete) in Tempelhof. It was part of an experiment to test whether the huge buildings planned for the massive new city of Germania would work on Berlin soil. The fence around it was sealed off and so was the staircase which overlooks it. All there is to see is an enormous lump of concrete! It weighs 12650 tonnes. That’s the same weight as 2330 African bull elephants or 4518 African cow elephants: heavy! In the few minutes we were there, two other sets of visitors came to see it as well. It is actually amazing, or rather thinking about it in terms of its history and what might have been is amazing. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerbelastungsk%C3%B6rper

From there we went to the Memorial Centre of German Resistance, a large exhibition housed in a WWII headquarters of the German army which appears to be directed at Germans as there is very little signage in other languages (English and a tiny bit of French). There are audioguides in English (I don’t know about other languages). It is a huge archive, with pictures, documents and a lot of original source reference material about the people from many different groups (including young, religious, left-wing, workers, Jewish and military) who tried to resist Hitler both within Germany and in exile, from when he came to power until his suicide (1933-1945). Those suspected of resistance were killed (often on the same day as their trials) and later their whole extended families were sent to prison (including and 82 year old mother) and their children put in homes, stripped of any memories of their origins, or adopted by Nazis. Horrible.

http://www.gdw-berlin.de/index.php?id=191

and so to Max und Moritz via Modulor

hilly — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 09:53:40 +0000

We only have a few days left in Berlin, so yesterday afternoon we posted 18kg of books home, then caught the M29 bus to Mortitzplatz. Tauentzienstraße still looks festive.

I have already mentioned Modulor in an earlier post: it is a huge shop which sells things for making architectural models, art supplies and books, some fabrics, a huge range of amazing papers and all sorts of fascinating stuff. It has a number of other fine shops leading off it, including and excellent cook-ware supplier, designer furniture, a sewing workshop where you use the facilities by the hour or attend workshops. http://www.modulor.de/shop/oxid.php/sid/3a89243e5560d5bcd42a193bfd5223ab/cl/start/tpl/-/lang/1

Near the entrance, there is a row of lockers where you can leave things while shopping for 1 euro, which is returned when you put back the key. Given that the shop is warm and it is possible to spend many hours there and not realise what time it is, these lockers are very useful for stowing your outdoor clothes and bags. I have used a lot of lockers in galleries and museums, and usually they are numbered. I particularly like the lockers in Modulor, designed with their artistic clientele in mind. There are very discreet numbers on both lockers and keys, but your own locker is easily identifiable by the colour or texture of the door. All the lockers are different.

From Modulor, down the road a few hundred metres to the lovely old Kneipe (pub), Max und Moritz for a glass of Kreuzberg beer and some potato soup. Lecker!

http://www.maxundmoritzberlin.de/

The depths and heights of Berlin

hilly — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 09:20:07 +0000

Yesterday we quite literally went trom the depths to the heights of Berlin. In the morning, we went on a very informative guided tour of the underground bunkers from World War II where you are warned not to touch the phosphorescent paint on the walls as if ingested it gives symptoms like food poisoning! The guide did not disguise her disgust as she told us about the strategies and crimes of the Nazis, the wartime life of ordinary Germans, Germany’s slave workers, the ill-equipped Russian soldiers and the Rubble Women who cleared the bombed buildings by hand. The underground labyrinth we visited is extensive and has some exhibits in it from the the early 1930s to 1945. Most interesting, and chilling, was the cabinet of identity documents for the slave workers, mainly from eastern europe. So as well as the depths of the earth, it was about the depths of depravity. You can’t take photos in the underground, so here is a picture from their website.

http://berliner-unterwelten.de/home.1.1.html

Apparently there are estimated to be over 2500 unexploded WWII bombs plus other munitions dropped in Berlin still hidden, and they are still found and defused regularly. The dynamite in them will continue to be active for another forty years or so. Berlin’s soft ice-age soil meant that bombs which did not land straight on their noses did not explode on impact. Only earlier this month in Koblenz, half the population of the city had to be evacuated and the river drained when a WWII bomb was discovered. Unexploded WWII bombs are still discovered in Britain.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16018659

After an engrossing hour and a half of a very nasty side of history, into the light and to join a long queue for tickets to go up the TV Tower. We had to wait for nearly an hour to buy our tickets, and then about another forty minutes before the numbers on our tickets came up so we could go in the lift. While waiting for the lift, we nipped across the road to have and excellent Thai fast lunch in the station at Alexanderplatz. Going back into the TV tower, my handbag was searched before we could enter the lift (bottles and cans are prohibited). This was the first time I had encountered any security measures in over four months here. One of the nice things about Berlin is that you can put your bags and coats in lockers before going into museums and galleries, and you are not held up in queues for security.

My ears popped as we flew up the lift shaft at 6 metres per second. The view from the top was well worth waiting in the cold for tickets. It was a clear and sunny day, and the view of a lego-sized Berlin stretching out all the way around us was marvellous. Trains snaked their way silently around the city. I enjoyed looking into the many large courtyards, identifying a lot of the city I now know, and seeing how the bits join up. It was fantastic!

Click to view slideshow.

A Christmas Concert

hilly — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 08:45:59 +0000

On the afternoon of Christmas day we attended a recital of Mozart (Salzburger Sinfonien) and Vivaldi (Four Seasons) at the Auenkirche church in Wilmersdorf. The musicians played beautifully and the church was completely packed with people. There was a lovely Christmas tree decorated fairly simply with real apples, straw stars and white lights.

Hills made of rubble

hilly — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 22:51:15 +0000

It’s Christmas Eve.

We had a very thought-provoking walk in the rain today, up Insulaner, a hill made of the rubble of tens of thousands of homes and other buildings destroyed by bombs in the second world war. This is one of twelve such hills around Berlin. Any building material that could be re-used from the bombing was used in the massive post-war rebuilding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuttberg

There is an observatory on the top.

On that thought, I wish everyone, everywhere, a very peaceful Christmas and New Year.

Gemäldegalerie – Old Master Paintings

hilly — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 22:17:53 +0000

On Thursday evenings, some museums are open late, so U-bahn to Potsdamerplatz, a quick look at the people sliding down the snow slope in inflatable tyres, squealing with delight (them, not us), straight through the Christmas market (yes, another one!) and on to the Museum Forum and the Gemäldegalerie.

http://www.smb.museum/smb/standorte/index.php?p=2&objID=35&n=5

Four large Cannalettos that used to hang in the entrance hall to a school in Berlin, Titians, Botticellis, Rembrandts, Vermeers, works of art too numerous to mention and I haven’t got the language to describe them well enough to do them justice. This is a wonderful gallery. Here are just a few of the many pictures that took my interest.

As I blogged about a bagpiper recently, this sixteenth century painting of one of his number conveys an interesting image of the life and status then of a (probably wandering) musician. Plus ça change?

This is one of the many painting showing people suffering hardship, these two being farmers eating a measly bowl of peas for their meal in about 1622 during the famines of the thirty years war

On a seasonal note, we liked this picture of the holy family, with a kindly old Joseph playing with baby Jesus.

I was fascinated by this self portrait of Anna Dorothea Therbusch, an eighteenth century painter, painted in the year she died aged only 61.

Dahlem Museums

hilly — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 21:35:39 +0000

It is about 15 minutes ride on the U-bahn to the thatched station at Dahlem from where we are living . Dahlem boasts an excellent collection of museums: the Ethnological museum, the Museum of Asian Art and the Museum of European Cultures.

http://www.smb.museum/smb/standorte/index.php?lang=en&p=2&objID=6370&n=4&r=1

There is an enormous amount worth seeing. We had previously seen the African collection, so a couple of days ago we went to see the rest of the extensive exhibitions. Just when I felt ready to give up from exhaustion (or suffering from museumological overload, as my brother described it) we came across the collection from the South Seas. We were amazed to come across a load of sailing vessels – a boat which carries fifty people, a canoe the length of twenty of my paces, and numerous other vessels made with local plant materials, and usually two-hulled to deal with the waves and winds. The sails made of plant fibre were fascinating. There was a film which showed one of the boats in sail, and then the sailors neatly folding the V-shaped sail in half at the end of the voyage.

This part of the museum also contains three buildings. The one on the right was a men’s club. If you take your shoes off, you can go in it. I am small enough not to bang my head on the rafters.

The Worlds of Islam collection shows some wonderful clothes like this beautifully-embroidered woman’s shirt from East Turkestan (1905), and there were even some felt mats (felt being one of my current obsessions).

Hidden unobtrusively in the basement, is the museum’s restaurant where we went for lunch and to rest our feet. In contrast to the quiet museums, the restaurant was thronging with people. The food was good and cheap and the restaurant had the convivial atmosphere of a university refectory, filled with people from the nearby institutes and the occasional lost-looking museum visitor like ourselves. I had what was modestly described as a small portion of a very tasty dhal, but was actually rather large.