favorite moment of the day: after i went through the passport line in germany, i was in the baggage claim room. i was looking around and i saw this really handsome mountain man through the window and i still haven’t wiped that smile off my face.
after i got my bag and hugged tayte for about 7 minutes, we got in a taxi and went to our hotel to drop all my stuff off. then we went to an italian restaurant nearby to grab some grub. we weren’t sure what to get, but right after we ordered, we realized that we ordered the wrong pizza; everybody else in the world was ordering this one pizza that had a salad on top of it…which was not either of the ones we ordered. oops. but after some tasty pizza and some really expensive water, we went back to the hotel, watched some soccer (anyone who has ever met tayte should not be surprised by this), and went to bed.
wednesday, june 24we spent the day in berlin. we saw so many cool things here! here we go.
kaiser wilhelm memorial church
ok we only saw the outside of it. it wasn’t until we were on the train going home that tayte realized that we never went back inside. oops.
ok we only saw the outside of it. it wasn’t until we were on the train going home that tayte realized that we never went back inside. oops.
jewish memorial
the actual name of this memorial is the “memorial to the murdered jews of europe” and was made public on may 10, 2005. there are 2,711 concrete columns, all of different heights, and honors the up to six million jewish victims from all throughout europe.
from the top picture, it looks like they’re all about the same height, but the ground slopes down, so some are actually pretty tall as you can see here.
brandenburg gate
this gate symbolizes peace, freedom, and unity.
tayte was beyond excited about this gate
here’s the thing on the top.
this gate symbolizes peace, freedom, and unity.
tayte was beyond excited about this gate
here’s the thing on the top.
pergamon museum
this is the first museum we went to today. we had to stand in line for about 40 minutes, but it was definitely worth it.travel tip: go to the pergamon museum at about 9:15 or 9:30, stand in line for a bit, and when you buy your ticket, buy the one that will get you into the neues museum too. (or just reserve your tickets online)
we saw a lot of cool things in this museum. proof:
above is the isthar gate in babylon (obviously reconstructed). (please excuse the slight distortion. i had a bit of a struggle with the panoramic view on my phone). this gate was built by order of king nebuchadnezzar II back in 575 bc and was the eighth gate to the inner city of babylon. it was dedicated to the babylonian goddess isthar, hence the name. it was considered one of the original seven wonders of the world, but was replaced fairly early on. pretty cool.
this is the market gate from miletus (again, obviously reconstructed). it was built way back in the early hundreds ad (like 120-130 ad). it collapsed a few centuries later, thanks to an earthquake. luckily, in the early 1900s, a german archaeologist named theodor wiegand happened to be in the area doing what he did best (aka: excavations) and found it. fun fact: he did a presentation to wilhelm II (german emperor at the time) using models of the gate, and the emperor liked it so much he wanted a full scale replica to be made to go in the pergamon museum. so a big thanks to wilhelm for being an emperor and having an eye for cool stuff. and i mean, huge shout out to theodor for finding the dang thing. i’d like a replica to be built in front of my future home, if it’s not too much to ask.
neues museum
this museum had cool stuff too, but to be honest, we were only really interested in seeing one thing (we looked at other stuff too, but we pretty much looked at some stuff, found her, looked at some other stuff, went back to see her, and left).
yes, this is indeed nefertiti, in the flesh. well, sort of. nefertiti was the wife of pharaoh akhenaten of egypt. it’s believed that this bust was created by a guy named thutmose way back when in 1345 bc. it was found in said thutmose’s workshop back in 1912 by another german archaeologist, ludwig borchardt. this should explain how this egyptian queen came to live in germany. ever since the discovery was made, egypt has tried to get her back, but they haven’t been very successful.
we couldn’t take any pictures of her, which was super annoying.
also, yes she is missing her left eye. (technically just the iris)
neptune fountain
yup. there it is.
east side gallery
the east side gallery is a 1.3 km long stretch of the original berlin wall. this is under a preservation order, but there’s a lot of cool graffiti along the wall.
for anyone interested, you could get your passport stamped here if you wanted to.
check point charlie
during the cold war, this was the best-known crossing point between east and west berlin. it became a symbol of that separation of the east and the west.
they’ll stamp your passport here, too.
what you would have seen if you were standing on
the american side: german soldiers.
what you would have seen from
the german side: american soldiers.
i think this next picture sums up our trip quite well, so i’ll end with it.
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