Museum Island

We spent most of the day on Museum Island. At first it's kind of hard to even tell your on an island, but you go over a bridge, and you can see the water that surrounds everything, but it's so close, the 'island' is hard to read. The first thing we did this day was go the the Berlin Dome, on the inside it is a cathedral with high ceilings and many domes. Around the edges are the tombs of former Kings. Below ground there is a huge crypt of all the past Kings and related member of the royal families. You can see how over time the tombs became more elaborate and decorated. There are also many child tombs, because the lifespan if you lived passed infancy was so short. Some of the dates stated children aged 1 day, 3 days, a few months, and maybe 2 or 3 years. It was quite interesting to see it all, but quite creepy at the same time, One of the tombs was even falling apart, and you can see that it was a box inside of another box, so the inside box with the person remains is still intact and very well preserved. After this we were able to walk higher up the dome, until we reached the top, were you can look out and see the whole island. The higher you walked the more narrow it became, until its a winding staircase with super small steps and a low, ceiling where most people had to be cautious of hitting their head.

view from higher up.

not quite to the top yet. view from higher window

I made it to the top!

After lunch we toured the rest of museum island, and we saw the Altes Museum by Schinkel. My favorite part about this museum was the center room which was circular and surrounded by statures and paintings at the top. The exhibits were also interesting, there was also a room, which featured litlte trinkets and things from that period that were believed to ward off evil spirits, such as flying penisis that could be worn around the necks. I also liked this building because when we learned about it in history, all the pictures we've seen it was not surrounded by anything. So seeing it in person was much better than just seeing it in pictures, because they have added glass around the columns on the inside yet it never touches the columns which was cool.

The Pergamon Museum was older looking and not as impressive to me, and it was the most confusing to get to. You can't really see the front from the street or any other museum due to the construction going on near it, but once you walk all the way around the construction you are right in front of it. It was also hard to find because the front does not face the same way as all the other museums close to it, so at first we thought the side was the front, but couldn't find a way into the museum. Once the confusion was all over and we had our tickets we headed inside. The Pergammon houses original size monuments from Turkey, such as the Pergamon Alter and the Market Gate of Miletus. The Pergamon Alter is right as you walk in and what I liked the best was the fact that they had collected the sculptures from it and they were lined on the wall, but they didn't have all the pieces so it was like a giant ongoing puzzle on the wall. It was interesting to me, because it probably looked like what it did when they were first building it. Some people believe that the monuments should be returned to Turkey where they came from, and I kind of agree with them, they should be built where they were originally intended to. The rest of the museum was mainly an exhibit on the Middle East.

The Neues Museum was the last museum on museum island that we saw. I thought it was going to be really coo, because of the mummies that were going to be there, but apparently someone was slacking on their job, because the mummies were sick with some kind of disease. So we really only got to see the sarcophagus's that were still on display. We also saw mumified animals, such as cats, which i was unaware that even happened. I learned that when the ancient egyptians died four of their main organs were placed in four separate urns that would send them to the spirits faster. After wandering around a bit, i guess we looked tired, or in need of a tour guide, because a security guard asked Rebecca and I if we were tired, and we told him that we had just been to a lot of museums and it was a lot to take in. So he said he would help and he proceeded to tell us about NAGA! It was a very interesting conversation, but when we talked about it later no one had ever heard of it. So if you were doubting my story here is a link to learn more about Naga. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naga_Kingdom