Friday, September 12, 2014

Berlin - Thursday some Art and more Todd!

We took some moving again today and were up and out a little late - perhaps understandable as this is a long campaign!! We had a Museum focus so headed for Museum Island where the queues  for the Permagon were two hours long, so, on the advice of Trip Advisor, we decided to book a slot for Saturday online later.
We took in the incredible range of architectural styles on the Island and poked our noses into the Cathedral (the "Dom") before walking through the business district to "Checkpoint Charlie" to complete our Berlin Wall tour from yesterday. This part is a bit more touristy but still worth seeing - it really is incredible imagining what it must have been like with a city divided so coldly ... we have made an intention to re-read "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold"!

Intent on art we headed to the Kulturforum and the Gemaldegalerie which houses "one of the world's best collections of European art from the 13th to the 18th Centuries".
There were actually very few people here and the collection is quite amazing with all the heavyweights (especially the Dutch) featuring strongly. You could take fifteen frames from any room and put them in an exhibiton in the NGA in Canberra and the Hume Highway would be chockers with tour buses, but here it was just a few of us!!! It is quite an extraordinary experience to have such access to pieces by Botticelli, Titian and everyone else on the list - what a wonderful place to live this would be!!!!

We dropped into the Philharmonia Hall,
just on the off chance, and lo and behold there were tickets left for the Berlin Philharmonic on Saturday night!!! (only 8 Euro each .. up behind the orchestra on benches, but who cares!!!). We headed home on the 200 had a beer, caught up online, and headed out to meet Todd in a different area of Kreuzberg for schnitzel. We all enjoyed the biggest schnitzel imaginable, at least the size of two and a half dinner plates. It was good to see and talk with Todd again, especially as we are tied up the next two evenings.

Home on the "U" to a cup of tea and a deep, deep sleep .... lots of snoring from the  tired duo!!!

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