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October (2019#19)
October was a quietish month around here, as we recovered from out summer adventures, fought off colds, and enjoyed some gorgeous fall weather. But we did go to Berlin for five days to take in the museums. We travelled via train through the Elbe River Valley during the peak of Fall color and it was absolutely gorgeous. We stayed in an airbnb in former East Berlin, and found the local atmosphere to be very generic post industrial big city with no real charm. The city is actually quite new and is still being rebuilt after being almost completely destroyed in WWII.
Our first day we went to Museum Island to see the Main thing I wanted to see: the Ishtar Gate at the Pergamonmuseum and holy crap it did not disappoint. The Germans were world class looters and have reconstructed multiple enormous middle eastern monuments from the original material that brought back. The Pergamon alter was closed for reconstruction/maintenance, but I did not feel cheated as there was just so much else to see. We also wandered over the Neues Museum, which contrary to its name does not have new stuff. In fact it has the original bust of Nefertiti as well as the booty that Schielmann brought back from the original Troy excavations. This last was smaller than expected, though still amazing. The whole thing was completley overwhelming - I could happily spend a week in each of these museums, but we only had one day for both.
Next day we wanted something quite different and so went to the Natural History Museum. This was the only disappointment of the trip. This is the museum that houses Alexander von Humboldt's collections, and E and I are huge fans of his and were very excited to see this place. But other than the big dino skeletons in the atrium, the whole thing was a bust. No worries, we walked over to the nearby Medical History Museum which houses Virchow's collections, which, though a bit weird and unusual was really interesting. Now I've been a Virchow fangirl for a long time, on the strength of his contributions to anatomy, medicine, and pathology, but on this trip I learned that he was also an anthropolgist and archaeologist (he was at Troy with Schliemann!!!) and a very very progressive politician. In fact he did a whole study on "race" in and concluded that "Nordic mysticism" was ridiculous and that there was no such thing as an Aryan race. Unfortunately, Hitler misrepresented his studies, and used his works as justification for his own "theories" and I suspect this is a large reason why Virchow does not have the fame and reputation I think he deserves. OK, enough fangirling over Virchow, but I could go on and on about him.
The next day we went to the Technical Museum. This was incredible - the Germans are not afraid to go big baby! Part of it is housed in an old train station, and if you are a fan of trains, you really need to find a way to get yourself to this place. But that was only part of the museum, htere were huge exhibits on aviation and mining and oh a bunch of other stuff. Any other time I would have been fascinated, but I was quite tired from the previous two days of museuming and so spent a lot of time sitting while E galloped around in hog heaven - although he was disappointed that the beer brewing section was closed.
We weren't quite sure what to do the next day - there are dozens of important and spectacular museums in Berlin but honestly we were a bit museum'd out at this point and so decided to go to the Botanical garden to spend some time outdoors. This was brilliant idea, despite the drizzly weather, because guess what, this place is amazing.
Next day we headed back to Prague, exhausted but pleased with our trip.
The only other thing of note we did in October was a trip to the Prague Zoo the last weekend of October which turned out to be gloriously sunny (though coolish) day. We had been told that this is one the best zoos in the world, and holy crap, it really is. Usually zoos depress the crap out of me, but in this the animals all had large well kept habitats, and seemed well cared for. It's huge, and we weren't able to see all of it before I pooped out, but we saw enough to heartily recommend it.
Now we are in November and there are only 8 weeks left before our Prague sojourn ends. I am ready to go home, but also looking forward to the things we have planned for the next two months, which I will, of course, detail here.
The day before Halloween we met an out of town colleague of E's for dinner at one of the city centers and were surprised to see that Christmas booths and markets were already being set up. There was a large mall near the restaurant and since we had some time to kill we popped in there, and found Christmas decorations going up. Yikes. I was genuinely shocked. Somehow I had thought that Europeans would be more reasonable about keeping Christmas season to December. Silly me!
Our first day we went to Museum Island to see the Main thing I wanted to see: the Ishtar Gate at the Pergamonmuseum and holy crap it did not disappoint. The Germans were world class looters and have reconstructed multiple enormous middle eastern monuments from the original material that brought back. The Pergamon alter was closed for reconstruction/maintenance, but I did not feel cheated as there was just so much else to see. We also wandered over the Neues Museum, which contrary to its name does not have new stuff. In fact it has the original bust of Nefertiti as well as the booty that Schielmann brought back from the original Troy excavations. This last was smaller than expected, though still amazing. The whole thing was completley overwhelming - I could happily spend a week in each of these museums, but we only had one day for both.
Next day we wanted something quite different and so went to the Natural History Museum. This was the only disappointment of the trip. This is the museum that houses Alexander von Humboldt's collections, and E and I are huge fans of his and were very excited to see this place. But other than the big dino skeletons in the atrium, the whole thing was a bust. No worries, we walked over to the nearby Medical History Museum which houses Virchow's collections, which, though a bit weird and unusual was really interesting. Now I've been a Virchow fangirl for a long time, on the strength of his contributions to anatomy, medicine, and pathology, but on this trip I learned that he was also an anthropolgist and archaeologist (he was at Troy with Schliemann!!!) and a very very progressive politician. In fact he did a whole study on "race" in and concluded that "Nordic mysticism" was ridiculous and that there was no such thing as an Aryan race. Unfortunately, Hitler misrepresented his studies, and used his works as justification for his own "theories" and I suspect this is a large reason why Virchow does not have the fame and reputation I think he deserves. OK, enough fangirling over Virchow, but I could go on and on about him.
The next day we went to the Technical Museum. This was incredible - the Germans are not afraid to go big baby! Part of it is housed in an old train station, and if you are a fan of trains, you really need to find a way to get yourself to this place. But that was only part of the museum, htere were huge exhibits on aviation and mining and oh a bunch of other stuff. Any other time I would have been fascinated, but I was quite tired from the previous two days of museuming and so spent a lot of time sitting while E galloped around in hog heaven - although he was disappointed that the beer brewing section was closed.
We weren't quite sure what to do the next day - there are dozens of important and spectacular museums in Berlin but honestly we were a bit museum'd out at this point and so decided to go to the Botanical garden to spend some time outdoors. This was brilliant idea, despite the drizzly weather, because guess what, this place is amazing.
Next day we headed back to Prague, exhausted but pleased with our trip.
The only other thing of note we did in October was a trip to the Prague Zoo the last weekend of October which turned out to be gloriously sunny (though coolish) day. We had been told that this is one the best zoos in the world, and holy crap, it really is. Usually zoos depress the crap out of me, but in this the animals all had large well kept habitats, and seemed well cared for. It's huge, and we weren't able to see all of it before I pooped out, but we saw enough to heartily recommend it.
Now we are in November and there are only 8 weeks left before our Prague sojourn ends. I am ready to go home, but also looking forward to the things we have planned for the next two months, which I will, of course, detail here.
The day before Halloween we met an out of town colleague of E's for dinner at one of the city centers and were surprised to see that Christmas booths and markets were already being set up. There was a large mall near the restaurant and since we had some time to kill we popped in there, and found Christmas decorations going up. Yikes. I was genuinely shocked. Somehow I had thought that Europeans would be more reasonable about keeping Christmas season to December. Silly me!
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I was also horrified to find Christmas stuff already in Italian and German supermarkets on our recent trip - French supermarkets are usually more restrained, although the big Carrefour at Cité Europe, which caters as much for Brits as it does for the French, always starts early. Mind you, Lebkuchen....
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A nice distinction!
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Did you get much sense of whether there's any east-west divide remaining in Berlin? is the former-east a kind of second class?
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I'm trying to decide whether to bring my camera... It's so bulky and takes up luggage space. I'm not great at architectural shots, so I'm kind of thinking (for once) that if its mostly museums and buildings, maybe my phone would be enough? Lately it's mostly animals and bugs I use my camera for... I'm assuming not as much of that in the middle of Prague?
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Does it sound glamorous? It definitely does’t feel that way! I’ve been more than happy with my iPhone camera, but I’m also not super into photography like you are. The thing that makes prague unique is that unlike most European cities, it was not heavily bombed during wwii so it is just chock full of amazing buildings and architecture. And as it was the seat of the Holy Roman Empire for awhile, Parts of it are really quite impressive. It is called the city of a thousand spires, or something like that for all the gothic and baroque architecture/spires. So i can’t really advise you... i will say that i see very few people with huge old cameras.
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