May 4, 2nd day in Berlin

   Today we ventured into the UBahn station near our apartment where we bought a 3-day travel pass combined with a Museum Pass for the 5 museums on Museum Island. We went one stop on the underground to the Unter den Linden stop and then walked toward Museum Island. 

  Our first choice was to go to the German History Museum, but it is not covered by the pass, so we decided to try on Museum Island as we are limited to the three days. We tried to go to the Pergamon Museum, Berlin's equivalent to the British Museum, but the passes were sold for the day. But, there was a slot for the Neues (new) Museum, so we went there.While it may be called "new," it has the oldest collection.

   We went on all 4 levels of the gorgeous building which had been left in ruins for 40 years due to bombing. 

   Highlights: 

-Neanderthal skull of an 11-year old boy who lived in France over 45,000 years ago.

-A "golden hat", one of only 4 in existence. They were probably worn by Celtic priests who worshipped the sun. A pound of gold was pounded into the conical hat, over 30 inches tall and less than millimeter thick. The intricate designs on the hat amazingly predicted full moons and solstices five years in advance. It included both a lunar and a solar calendar and took account of leap years. Amazing!

-Bust of Nefertiti, Queen to the Pharoah Akhenaton  - the most famous piece of Egyptian art in Europe. It is incredibly beautiful. 

Afterwards we walked along the river Spree a bit and found a restaurant where we ate our first curry wurst at Cafe Wilhelm, formerly known as Gesellschaft for which we were looking. 

Then we strolled back along the Unter den Linden where we found the Bebelplatz, Square of the Books, where the Nazis burned thousands of books across from the Humboldt University where Marx and Engels studied and where Einstein taught until he fled. There is a hard-to-find glass window embedded in the pavement where you peer down into empty bookshelves, symbolizing the burned books.  The Germans make a point of teaching their history despite discomfort.

See the glass square where you peer down to where there are empty book shelves. Humboldt University is in background. Einstein taught there till he fled.

One of the other sobering things installed by the Germans are called Stolpersteines or stumbling stones. They are in the pavement where victims of the Nazis lived. They are raised slightly in order to call attention to them. There are tens of thousands of them. Each plaque lists the name and dates of the victim and how and where they died. They are also made of brass to stay polished as you walk over them.

I wish that our country would do more things like this to highlight the victims of our country - Indians, enslaved peoples, immigrants, exploited workers. Having the stolpersteines so evident makes it impossible to ignore the magnitude of the atrocities.

  We stopped into the VW showroom of futuristic and older model cars.

    Then we went to the ReWe store and got some groceries and then went home via Charlottenstrasse where we popped into the expensive chocolate store, Rausch where there is chocolate made into

landmarks such as Brandenberg Gate as well as fanciful animals and objects. We only looked.

   We came home and had a dinner of cheese, bread, ham and tomatoes on our outside deck.