but could really only stomach down about half the coffee… not good coffee like in the states. I think they just don’t understand drip coffee on this continent. That is ok with me because I have become extremely fond of my little shots of espresso with sugar in them that I drink almost every morning… and maybe Europeans should just stick to that. The people at Matt’s internship call American style coffee “sock water” and it is no wonder because if they think that all American style coffee tastes like the coffee we had at Dunkin’ Donuts then it did taste like sock water. Not good coffee, but you can’t mess up donuts! It was lovely!After breakfast we still had a lot of time before we had our appt at the New Museum, so we set off to explore parts of the city that had been recommended to us both by Dr. Burggeman and by Mac. We wandered over to an artsy part of down town called Tacheles on Oranienburger Strasse in the ruin of an old department store, where there were all kinds of artsy things to see.
Near there we went and saw the New Synagogue which was really lovely, but there was a line to go inside so we just took some pictures and imagined what it must have looked like after Kristalnacht where in it was completely destroyed. We then walked down the street even more to find some courtyards that were lovely, with tiled walls and all kinds of little gardens and things called Hackesche Höfe. It was really very lovely, and it makes it very hard to even imagine how the city must have felt when it looked the way it did in my grandpa’s pictures. 
We had to take another coffee break and get some espresso since our nasty sock water just didn’t cut it for our caffeine fix for the morning… and the sun shone really nicely so we just wanted to keep walking and discovering new courtyards and little shops forever!
Fully sugared up from the donuts and caffeinated from the espresso stop, we set off to explore Museum Island a little bit more before our reservation at the Neus museum. (the new museum, which used to be the old museum…) at 1:30. This museum was actually very interesting because it was the last museum to reopen after WWII, and it did so very recently. When it reopened, it officially marked the end of the period of destruction after the war, and finally, all five museums on the Island were open again to the public since their existence had been interrupted starting in 1933. We always think about how Europe was destroyed during both of the World Wars, but Germany had it very hard near the end of the Second World War…and then the division of the country and everything,it really is no wonder it has taken them close to sixty years to fully recover from the devastation of the war. And many of the objects that were once in their collections were destroyed, either by bombings or by exposure to the elements for many months after the bombings before the country could even begin to get itself back together. I can imagine that there is much mixed sentiment about whether or not the country could really be upset after the war because they fought long and hard for a very large force of evil… but I still hate to think of Allied bombs dropping on Berlin and destroying archaeological findings that once documented a species of prehistoric humans… so much knowledge was lost, and irreplaceable things as well. It makes me rather sick to think that war destroys so much… and that it continues to go on in the 21st century. The same think happened in Iraq in 2003, when the US forces neglected to protect the one of the most prominent museums in Baghdad, and the museum was bombed and looted, and some many priceless things were lost to the known world of knowledge probably forever. It makes me feel like crying and vomiting just to think about it… are we ever going to get our priorities straight? I just don’t know.
On really nice thing about museums in Berlin, is that included in the price of your ticket (or in our cases our three day passes) is an audio tour in your own language which allows you to learn and understand much more about what you are seeing. The guides also tell you about the history of the buildings and how they were rebuilt after the war, and what happened to a lot of things that were lost… it was really fascinating. One of the coolest things we saw in the New Museum was a bust of Neffretiti which is more than 3000 years old and in near perfect condition. It is a wonder that anything like this survives to this day, considering time wears on things in general, but we are also really good at destroying ourselves… but it was really very cool to see.
After this museum, we set out to find some lunch, even though it was like four o’clock. We had some brats on the side of the street near a little market, as you can see in this picture… I had currywurst which is a strange combination of flavours involving hotdog, ketchup and curry powder… random but delicious!
We then set out to do some neighbourhood exploring on Easter Sunday… and first we headed down to the Berlin equivalent of the Champs de Lycee called Kurfurstendamm and walked and walked, but most of the shops were closed either because it was easter, or because it was Sunday, it was hard to say. But we weren’t really all that interested in shopping; just walking and looking so it was perfect. Then we jumped on the metro and headed up to the Alexanderplatz where we discovered a lovely little Easterfest thing going on… we walked around in it, but made our way just beyond it on the tram into the old east neighbourhood of Prenzlauer Berg near the Kollwitzplatz, where we found a side walk café which offered us blankets so that we could sit outside and enjoy the evening without freezing! It was lovely, and here is a pic of the night sky and the café! But as the sun set our stomachs were certainly growling again after all of the walking we had done. We were so hungry, that anything and everything sounded good… and the only solution to that kind of hungry is clearly to find some cheap Indian food! Yum yum! Why does Paris not have cheap Indian food? They have Indian food, don’t get me wrong, but why is it not cheap? Why God Why? Anyway, we filled our bellies for sure on curry and naan (thanks for the recommendation Mac!) and discussed the days events, and plans for the following day.
If I were going to live in Berlin (which would be difficult since I don’t speak a word of German beyond bitta and danke and nine) I would want to live in this little neighbourhood because it had so many yummy looking restaurants and nice apartment buildings and little shops that I am sure I could have spent hours looking in, if it hadn’t been close to 11:30pm and everything was closed… and my eyes kept wanting to close too, and we made the trek back across the quiet city to our hostel, with many of the sites and sounds and smells of the day swirling around in our heads with high hopes for tomorrow to explore the Bauhaus Museum and the Jewish History Museum… and after walking all day around the city, I slept very well that night.
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