Berlin is one of those huge cities where owning a car would be like having a giant albatross around your neck at all times. It is bustling, crowded, and under the operation of traffic laws that would stymie any Edmontonian (hell, any Canadian) driver.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
The place is packed, and I mean packed, with classical treasures from Rome, Greece, Egypt, Babylon, and other locales. The Pergamon Museum contains several rooms in which major archetectural features have been reconstructed, including the Ishtar Gates, the Pergamon Altar and the full-size frieze that surrounded the Pergamon temple, a Roman gateway, and a Hellenic courtyard. The scale of these exhibits is mind-boggling. That is in just one of the five closely-spaced museums in this area. Another one houses the famous Nefertiti Bust. She causes a great deal of trouble, as there is such a fuss of visitors around her that you have to reserve a time to enter the museum itself, lest the building be mobbed around the clock.
There were other sites we visited - the Marienkirche being one of our favourites, as well as the Berliner http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifDom (which is an impressive and rather revolting Baroque contrast to the cleaner medieval lines of the Marienkirche. We dragged our karate buddy Sean on walks that spanned several hours. That is the standard type of touring that Glen and I do, but it appears to be tortorous to the uninitiated. I think that Glen and I have simply grown accustomed to it. The walking isn't much of a negotiating point or a matter of stubborn cost-saving for us, it's just what we do.
Berliners seem to have an ongoing obsession with beach culture. As a way of paying homage to this, as well as to give our heads a break from non-stop sightseeing, we stayed overnight at Tropical Islands, an ultra-cheesy and somewhat overpriced holiday trap about an hour south of Berlin. It is the ultimate expression of brainless entertainment - utterly devoid of anything that requires you to think, and quite enjoyable for it. It is an escape in a manner similar to how Las Vegas is an escape. Just turn your mind off, boggle at the weirdness of the architecture, and let yourself drop into the fantasy. While marinating ourselves in the various pool yones, we also discovered that we rather like the Sauna treatments. Being hotboxed for 15 minutes in a room that reaches a hellish 80 degrees celcius while strange, minty scents are distributed by a towel-whirling attendant is surprisingly revitalizing. So too is the procedure of dousing yourself in cold water and then rubbing yourself down with handfuls of ice after you emerge from the slow-cooker. As an added bonus, your skin is baby-soft afterwards.
And before you ask, the answer is yes - I do still like to eat lobster.
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i was much more prepared for the walking the second day, and probably the only reason that the first day attempted to ruin me so hard was that we forgot that on the maps, distances look much shorter than they actually are, aka that walk to Burgermeister. (still worth it, the burgers were fantastic.)
and i wasn't the only one who was wishing the walking would stop by the end of day one. glen was right next to me on a fair few of the benches in the museum with nefertiti's head.
see you guys in munich.
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