Last Days of Berlin

These were a bittersweet couple of days. We're all ready to get home, but at the same time trying to soak up all the last moments and sites of Berlin life. Monday, we visited an I. M. Pei project and went through the museum inside. The museum covered all of German history. I. M. Pei designed the addition to the old museum. The two buildings were connected underground and appeared to be two separate buildings from the street. There was a lot of information to cover in the museum in a short amount of time, so we kind of breezed through. Then we went to St. Canisius Kirche. This building is a modern church that dealt with bringing in light in different ways, contrast in materiality, and visual connections of symbolic forms. The detailing of this church was not flawless, but the overall feeling of the church was calming. Later this day, we went to a James Stirling Post Modern project. It was a social science research center. I think that since post modernism is seen as so out of style and dated, it is hard to get past aesthetic displeasure and appreciate the conceptual strides for the time.

Tuesday, we went to Museum Island which we had to reschedule from another day. We didn't have enough time to go through all of them, but we hit the most pertinent ones. The first museum contained a ton of ancient artifacts. The building was very neat in that it had survived the war, but still showed its scars (bullet holes). I really enjoyed looking at and photographing the statues. The next museum we went to was the Pergammon Museum. The Germans had stolen a TON of ancient Greek and Roman ruins. This museum reminded me of the British Museum of all the stolen ruins of theirs. The cool thing about it though, was the actual Pergammon Temple. They stole an entire third of the structure!!!! You walk into this room and "holy cow" or phrases of the like is the only thing that comes to mind. The sheer size of these columns, statues, pediments, stairs, etc. are just incredible. To think that they had to transport these pieces all the way to Germany! This was a fun museum. Each room had remnant - huge remnants- of different buildings, one being the gates of Babylon. Its so neat to see actual pieces of Biblical history! After this museum we went back to the Reichstag one last time and got a tour of the inside. The neatest thing about this tour was to see the remnants of some Russian graffiti from when they had occupied the Reichstag. I like the fact that the German government can acknowledge the fact that this point in history did happen and that they've overcome it and moved on. The building itself was able to tell its own story w/o words.

We were able to have our last doners for lunch both days. Doners will definitely be missed. Monday night we caught up on school stuff and just had a quick dinner down the street. Tuesday night we wanted to find a fun place to watch the game. (Netherlands vs Uraguay) We went to a street that Segrin had suggested - Oderberger Strasse if I remember correctly. We ended up finding a good game watching seat at a Thai restaurant. I was a little hesitant of not eating German food for my last meal but one of the things Berlin is known for is its variety of food, so I felt ok about experiencing more of this variety. After dinner we went to another area of town that we'd been hearing about but hadn't been to yet. We went there to check things out and then headed home to just hang out and pack. It was a fun last night in Berlin.

We had a journey to the airport w/ all of our luggage, finally made it, got on the plane, made it to london, had TGIFridays in the airport - with tap water!, got on another plane, watched the plane tracker go right over Hot Springs, and FINALLY landed in Dallas! My first meal was a big green salad - something I was definitely craving! I also got my Dr. Pepper w/ ice fix taken care of at Sonic, and it was wonderful.

This was an awesome month, and I learned alot! Its been great to see so much interesting architecture and historic sites with fun people that are just as interested as I am. What a way to end my education! Now its back to the real world!